The next step in creating your preview program is building out your event timeline. This step may seem complicated, but our team is here to support you. Because you will be creating a preview program and not hosting interviews, there are certain parts of the timeline you will need to fill out, but can later ignore. Please continue reading for more information regarding these nuances.
The best way to think about the Event Timeline is:
WHO gets to see WHAT and WHEN?
The WHO:
Employers
Students
Alternates (if applicable)
The WHAT:
Job postings
Student applications
Employer decisions
Student decisions
Alternate student decisions
Final schedule
The WHEN:
There are a lot of questions to consider here.
By what date would you like to have your final student decisions in?
When does employer registration begin?
How long do you want to give employers to create their postings?
When does student registration begin?
How long do you want to give students to apply?
When do you want employers to be able to view applications? Right away or after an internal review?
How long do you want to give employers to review applications and make their decisions?
Will these decisions be visible to students right away or no?
How long do you want to give students to accept or decline their interview invitations?
All of these questions will correspond to different aspects of the timeline.
Inputting Dates
Now that we have a better idea of WHO gets to see WHAT and WHEN, we can input the dates and times.
The first step will be when the employers will be able to register and post jobs:
Next, we will input when students will be able to start applying.
Note that you have the option to include a review period. This allows students to begin looking at employer job postings in order to start getting their materials ready. They will not be able to apply, however, until the application start date. There will be verbiage to clearly communicate this.
You may also place limitations on how many applications a student can submit or interviews that they can be assigned to:
You will want to decide if you would like to review student applications before they are visible to employers. Once you have made this decision, you can input when the employers will be able to view applications and start making decisions on who they would like to meet with.
*Note that the Final Schedule Availability Date refers to when the employers would theoretically have their schedule, however, we will not be sending this out. Let's come back to this field at the end.*
Moving along, we will now input when the students will be able to view employer decisions and either accept or decline the invitation to interview.
If you want students to accept or decline their invitation to interview before employers reach out to students, you should instruct employers to wait to reach out to students until after this time period.
If you want students to provide information on whether or not they actually have the interview, you may want to set the invited student decision deadline further in the future from the date employer decisions are visible.
For your preview program, you will not be using alternates. Keep this section toggled off.
Final Schedule Availability Date
Again, we will not be sending the final schedule to employers or students, because you will not be hosting interviews or running the scheduler. However, this is still a required field and you must fill it in regardless. Because of this, we suggest setting this date far in the future, or on the date you have set for your event date.
With that, your timeline is complete! In the next article, we will cover Employer Settings.