Running a Full Interview Panel
Why panels are different#
With one interviewer, you are matching two calendars. With five, you are looking for a window that clears six sets of constraints at once, while the candidate's own availability keeps moving because they are interviewing elsewhere too.
The manual version has a predictable failure: whoever replies fastest sets the slate, and the people who reply slowest get scheduled around badly or left off.
Looping in Vela. Please set up a 4-hour onsite loop for Priya with Marcus, Dana, Wei, and Sofia next week.
Name the participants and the shape. Vela handles the rest of the constraint solving.
Rather than asking each interviewer for availability and assembling replies by hand, Vela negotiates against all of them simultaneously and finds windows that actually clear.
The candidate sees real, confirmable options — not a request to send their availability into a void.
If an interviewer cannot make the agreed window, Vela re-negotiates that slot against remaining availability instead of collapsing the whole loop.
If a hiring manager wants fifteen minutes beforehand, Vela books it. Resumes go out attached to the invites.
Once the loop has run, Vela follows up with each interviewer so the debrief is not another chase. See Collecting Interview Feedback.
When something moves#
It will. A panel that shifts by two days is a full re-coordination with every participant — see Rescheduling for how Vela handles the cascade without restarting the thread.
Related: Interview Coordination, Time Zones.