Getting Started for Hiring Managers

Welcome to Lavalier. There's almost nothing here for you to set up — your recruiting team has already loaded your interviews, your questions, and the candidate details. Your part is the conversation itself. Lavalier records it, transcribes it, and drafts your feedback afterward, so you can focus on the candidate instead of your notes. Here's the whole flow, start to finish — it's shorter than you'd expect.

Before Your Interview

When your team schedules you as an interviewer, the interview is waiting for you — you don't create or schedule anything yourself.

1. Sign in to Lavalier. You'll land on the Interview Calendar tab, where each card shows the candidate, role, time, and interview type.
2. Click Open Interview on the one you're about to run to reach the prep screen.
3. Review the candidate's details, the role, and your prepared questions.
4. When you're ready, click Start Interview to begin recording. (For a virtual meeting you're joining yourself, the button reads Join Interview.)
   
   

What happens when you start:

• Virtual Meeting — Lavalier's notetaker joins your Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet call automatically. (You can also click the link in your own calendar invite — the notetaker still joins.)
• Phone Call — Lavalier places the call to the candidate.
• In-Person — Recording starts on your computer's microphone.
  
  

During the Interview

Once recording starts, there's nothing to manage — Lavalier transcribes in real time while you focus on the candidate. A few tools are there if you want them:

• Questions — Your prepared questions. Mark them answered and add follow-ups on the fly.
• Notes — Optional. Type anything you want to remember; notes save automatically. To flag a standout moment, use the marker buttons — they look like a thumbs-up (Positive moment), thumbs-down (Area of concern), and a bookmark (Bookmark), and each links to that exact point in the transcript.
• Transcript — Updates live so you can check what was said.

When you're done, click the red End Interview button. Lavalier processes the transcript in about a minute and turns it into a summary.

Tip: Flag a moment whenever something stands out — it makes writing your feedback afterward much faster.

Want a closer look at the tools during an interview? See Conducting an Interview in Lavalier.

After: Your Summary and Feedback

As soon as the interview ends, Lavalier surfaces what mattered most, so you're never starting from a blank page:

• Interview Strengths — Where the candidate excelled
• Observations — Patterns in how they think, communicate, and approach problems
• Things to Consider — Areas worth probing further in later rounds
• Key Takeaways — Quick insights to inform your decision

Click into any item to jump straight to the moment in the transcript that supports it.

When you're ready to record your verdict:

1. Open the Write Feedback tab in the right-hand panel (it becomes active once the interview ends).
2. Pick your hiring recommendation (your admin sets these labels).
3. Click Generate Feedback and Lavalier drafts a structured write-up from the transcript and your notes — so you're editing, not writing from scratch. You can also write your own.
4. Use Tweak Feedback to refine the draft with a quick instruction, like "focus more on communication."
5. Your feedback saves automatically and is visible to the rest of the hiring team.

For interviews synced from an ATS, click Open in [ATS] to jump to the matching scorecard.

For more on generating, refining, and editing feedback later, see Writing Interview Feedback.

What's next?

• Bookmark this guide — Come back before your next interview for a quick refresher.
• Want to compare candidates or schedule your own interviews? Those live in the full role view. Ask your recruiting team to grant you Full Access to a role. Once they do, the role's Actions menu adds Compare Candidates (and you'll be able to Ask Lavalier AI about the field), and you can set up interviews yourself.
  
  

Questions? Reach out to support anytime, or browse the knowledge base for detailed guides on every feature.