Scheduling Job Placement Interviews at a University

We describe experience with a job interview scheduling system that has been in use since 2001 at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business(UCGSB). During interview season, a typical week has 300 job-seekers requesting 1000 interviews from 100 interviewing companies, to be scheduled into 1200 timeslots. We match job-seekers with companies with time slots so that we maximize the number of desired interviews scheduled, no job-seeker has two interviews scheduled at the same time, no interviewer has two interviews scheduled for the same time, and no interview is scheduled for a job-seeker during an interval which he has designated as unavailable. One complication is that each company specifies(in advance) its interview length, ranging from 30 to 120 minutes. For example, a 30 minute interview slot with Company X may conflict with two 45 minute slots with Company Y that overlap with it. The interview scheduling system is part of a larger job interview bidding system. We examine some of the complications of directly combining the interview assignment part with the auction part.