Thinking time

Thinking time with Willo is a great way to give candidates an indication of how long you expect them to take to complete a question. Thinking time can be set by hours and minutes, and applied to individual questions. In this article, we'll introduce you to Thinking time!

Thinking time is included with all paid plans.

Getting started

In certain assessment and interview processes, it can be helpful to limit a candidate to a specific amount of time, for example, you might want to remove or limit the opportunity for them to research the answer, or practice it too many times. 

Some great uses of thinking time are when you ask a candidate to translate a paragraph of text or solve a complex technical challenge. In both examples, giving the candidate limited time can put them under pressure to deliver an answer to the best of their ability, as quickly as possible. 

Adding pressure is great and there are many reasons for limiting the time to answer. However, Willo is also dedicated to delivering an incredible candidate experience. So to ensure your interviews get the answers you need, and the candidate experience you want, thinking time works in a unique way.

Thinking time is built around the concept of guard rails. When you set the thinking time for a question what you are essentially saying is that the candidate should take a certain amount of time to complete it. But if they exceed the set time, they won't be blocked, and can still submit an answer. The total amount of time taken by the candidate, including how much over, or under they took is presented to you in the Willo system. 

Setting up thinking time

When setting up an interview you can set thinking time by question:

Set the hours and minutes, or leave the hours blank if you just want to use minutes:

Once your interview is published you can come back and edit the interview at any time to change thinking time.

Candidate experience

Candidates will start the process as normal, and as soon as they are presented with a question using thinking time, they will see the allocated time, and the timer will start counting up:

The timer will continue to count until the question has been answered and submitted - the time recorded includes the time taken to answer the question and any retakes. 

Reviewing responses

When a new response is received you'll be able to see exactly how long the candidate took to answer the question, along with a coloured indicator to show you if they were under or over the allocated thinking time.

Answered the question in less than the allocated time

Answered the question in more than the allocated time

This indicator of time is shown on all review pages and showcase pages when you are logged in. This information is not shown on public showcase pages.