Ronald McDonald House

A Doodle User Experience Study

From scheduling interviews to setting up meet-the-team lunches, organizing the recruiting, hiring, and onboarding that keeps an organization running can be a demanding task - and at most workplaces, it’s a task that falls to the HR team. Doodle supports HR professionals with time-saving scheduling options, an at-a-glance meeting dashboard, and a host of features, like inbuilt response deadlines and dedicated 1:1 scheduling tool, designed to optimize meeting organization.

We spoke to Beth Voegtli, HR Assistant at Ronald McDonald House, St Louis, about how she uses Doodle across a range of meeting scenarios.

"I schedule most of the training...when I’m trying to schedule someone outside the organization, these committee members in particular or if it’s a volunteer, something of that nature I would default to Doodle."

Doodle is a simple solution for external scheduling

When everyone in the office uses the same software suite and shared calendar, internal scheduling doesn’t need to be a hassle. External scheduling? That’s another story. Without access to your guest’s calendar, it’s easy to waste days going back and forth over email, trying to settle on a time that works for everyone. Doodle takes the pain out of external scheduling. Avoid the email back and forth by sending a poll or, for one on one meetings, a Doodle 1:1 link. When you find a time that works, Doodle will sync the meeting to your calendar and your guest’s calendar, regardless of whether you’re using G-Suite and they’re using Outlook. Simple. Even scheduling multiple one-on-one training sessions, as Beth sometimes has to do, is hassle-free. Doodle 1:1 allows you to schedule one on one meetings, by offering individual time-slots to as many individual guests as you need to. As soon as one 1:1 slot is taken, it disappears from your calendar, so you never need to worry about double-booking.

Large board meetings are easy to schedule with Doodle

Ronald McDonald House St Louis is a non-profit that arranges free accommodation for the families of children receiving pediatric care in the city. Like many non-profits, its board of directors is made up of external volunteers donating their time to the Ronald McDonald House cause; most board members have full professional schedules of their own. Organizing board meetings to decide on new hires, then, presents Beth a unique scheduling challenge. She needs to find a time that works for everyone, and she can’t rely on an internal calendar to do so. That’s why she opts for Doodle. Says Beth, “...our challenge is just accommodating so many people externally when we don’t even have an idea of their preferences.” Sending out a Doodle poll lets meeting participants choose a time that works for them; Beth can even set a response deadline, so she doesn’t end up waiting for RSVPs.

Hiring is easy when you schedule with Doodle

Like any HR professional, Beth knows that the hiring process demands a lot of administrative work and requires a lot of meetings. Aside from scheduling the interviews themselves, each new hire has to be approved by various stakeholders, which can only mean one thing: still more meetings. At Ronald McDonald House, new hires don’t only need to meet with internal approval, they also need to be signed off by the board. Beth turns to both Doodle to organize each round of interviews and to streamline the follow-up meetings needed to come to a decision on each new hire. From organizing board meetings and scheduling trainings to managing the hiring process, Beth saves hours of work time with Doodle. And, in a bootstrapped non-profit, every hour counts!

Use Cases: Recruiting, team meetings, external stakeholders, one-on-ones, training sessions, board meetings