A panel interview is conducted by a group of people that interview a candidate and is one of the trickiest job interviews to run smoothly.

For candidates they can be intimidating. Mostly because people don’t enjoy having a room of strangers watch and ask them tricky questions. At Waitroom, one of our most important interview rounds is the culture interview - which we run as a panel interview. As a remote-first company, this interview is done by a manager and team members that would be working with the candidate.

Panel Interviews using Waitroom are simply better

  1. Improved communication: Waitroom's interactive features such as the queue and timers to ask questions, and the ability to screenshare their work, streamlines the communication flow of the interview - this increases participation & contributions.
  2. Better engagement: The queue and timers limiting the speaking time, can help to keep the panel members engaged and focused during the interview.
  3. Better flow management: Interviews are kept on track and interruptions are prevented as each conversation is essentially a one-on-one. This helps the interview flow more smoothly.
  4. Better record keeping: If interviews are recorded with Waitroom, the recording can be analysed later and used to take note of the candidates performance for comparison against other candidates.

Getting your interviewee and panel interview set up on Waitroom

<aside> 💡 For Panel Interviews, we recommend having the candidate set up the Waitroom session as the Host, with the interviewers joining the queue one after the other. See the email template at the bottom of this page. You can also share the following link with the interviewee:

Setting up your Panel Interview on Rumi

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👩‍💻 For the hiring manager:

A Panel Interview on Waitroom is different from other types of meetings and it is recommended that the candidate should host the Waitroom session. This type of interview is used when hiring candidates who go through the company's Culture Interview process and should be set up following specific guidelines.

  1. Candidate sets up and hosts Waitroom meeting and shares link with hiring manager.
  2. Hiring manager shares link with panel.
  3. Hiring manager joins queue first, followed by the candidate as host.
  4. Panel members join queue for 15 minute conversation each.

<aside> 💡 Share the email template below with the candidate for instructions on setting up their Waitroom session.

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