> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.alex.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Rounds and Interview Guides

> Understand how interview rounds and guides work in Alex

Every job in Alex can have one or more interview rounds. Rounds represent the stages a candidate progresses through during the hiring process -- from an initial screening all the way to a final interview with the hiring manager.

## Rounds

A round is a single stage in the interview process for a job. Every job must have at least one round, but there's no limit to how many you can add.

### Types of Rounds

Each round is one of two types:

**AI Interview Round** -- Alex conducts the interview autonomously. You configure what Alex asks and how she evaluates candidates by attaching an interview guide to the round.

**Human Round** -- A recruiter or hiring manager conducts the interview, and Alex joins as a note-taker. You configure:

* **Who** the interviewers are (one or more recruiters or hiring managers. The candidate sees a unified availability view across everyone selected; if multiple are free at the chosen slot, one is round-robined per round)
* **Duration** of the interview, so Alex knows how long to stay in the meeting

<Warning>Human rounds require the **Coordinator** add-on. If you don't have Coordinator enabled, only AI interview rounds are available. See [Coordinator](/workflows/coordinator) for more information.</Warning>

### Example Round Structure

A typical job might have:

| Round   | Type                         | Purpose                             |
| ------- | ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------- |
| Round 1 | AI Interview                 | Screening call with basic questions |
| Round 2 | AI Interview                 | Technical assessment                |
| Round 3 | Human (requires Coordinator) | Final interview with hiring manager |

### How Candidates Move Through Rounds

How a candidate progresses from one round to the next is controlled entirely by the **application workflow**. Using the **Initiate Outreach** group, the **Move to Round** utility, and conditional logic, you define the rules for when and how candidates move forward.

For example, you could set up your workflow so that:

* After completing Round 1, if the candidate scores above a threshold, they automatically advance to Round 2.
* After Round 2, Alex sends the recruiter a notification and waits for a manual decision.
* Once shortlisted, the candidate is handed off to the hiring manager for Round 3 (requires [Coordinator](/workflows/coordinator)).

## Interview Guides

An interview guide contains everything Alex needs to conduct and evaluate an AI interview. Key settings include:

* **Introduction** -- how Alex opens the conversation
* **Questions** -- the questions Alex will ask during the interview
* **Outro** -- how Alex wraps up the interview
* **Evaluation criteria** -- how Alex scores and assesses the candidate's responses
* And more -- interview guides have additional configuration options beyond what's listed here

### Connecting Guides to Rounds

Interview guides are attached to **AI interview rounds**. Each AI interview round on a job has one interview guide configured.

Interview guides are reusable -- a single guide can be shared across multiple jobs and rounds. This is useful for standardizing interviews:

* **Generic guides** -- a screening guide with five basic questions, reused across all roles
* **Role-specific guides** -- a Python technical guide used for all Python developer positions
* **Job-specific guides** -- a custom guide created for one particular role

### Setting Up Guides via Job Workflows

When jobs are imported automatically from your ATS, the **job workflow** is where you configure how interview guides are assigned to rounds. Using the **Configure Job** action, you can specify:

* Whether to use a specific existing interview guide
* Whether to generate a new guide based on the job description
* Whether to generate from a template
* Custom generation instructions (e.g., "Screening call with basic technical questions")
* Question limits

For more on this, see [Job Workflows](/workflows/job-workflows).