You can schedule interviews for a candidate on their profile. When you schedule a candidate's interview, it will create an interview schedule and send an invitation to their email. An interview won't show up as scheduled until the candidate accepts the invitation.
In other words, it's easiest to understand Greenhouse's scheduling process in a three-step flow:
- Create an interview schedule and invite the candidate to it
- Configure and send interviewer invites
- Confirm interviews and send a confirmation email
This article will walk through the different steps of creating and sending an invitation to a candidate.
Create an interview schedule
All scheduling information is located on the Stages tab of the candidate profile. You can use this section to help create an interview schedule that works for both the candidate and the interviewer.
Individual interviews can be added to the calendar by clicking Automated scheduling or Schedule manually:
- Automated scheduling automatically searches the calendar for the best time slots based on the candidate's availability, the interviewer's availability, and different scheduling setups like default interviewers, working hours, and interviewer training settings.
- Manual scheduling allows the user to select a specific time slot in a traditional calendar view.
In a multi-interview stage, you can schedule multiple interviews quickly by clicking Schedule All.
When you schedule an interview, a calendar will open in a new tab.
The left panel includes interview information, like the interviewer's name, additional candidate information, or resources.
The calendar in the center of the page is used to pick the specific interview time.
Use the scheduling panel on the left to enter a date and time manually, or double-click the calendar view on the right to create a new event.
When you assign a user to an interview, their availability appears in the interview column on the calendar. If enabled by your organization, you can also add a location or resource in the left panel to show its availability on the calendar.
If you clicked Schedule All to book multiple interviews, selecting a time for the first interview automatically creates chronological placeholders for the others. You can adjust any interview time by entering a new time in the scheduling panel.
If a candidate completed an availability request, their selected times will appear. Grey times are outside their availability; white times match their submitted preferences.
Click the Settings icon in the top right to change the calendar type or name. This lets you schedule to a shared calendar or view times in a specific time zone.
Any of the candidate's details can be found in the left panel by hovering over the icon next to their name.
Once you have completed the necessary fields for the selected interviews, click Customize details at the top right of the page.
Configure and send interviewer invites
The Send Calendar Invite to Interviewers page allows you to configure interviewer invites and add any video interviewing options.
Note: Interview times selected in the previous step are not sent to the interviewers' calendars until the steps below are completed. If you exit the scheduling process before sending the invites, the interviews will not be scheduled.
The Schedule Summary panel on the right displays the finalized interview schedule. Add a Location and Video Conferencing in the right panel.
To use video interviews, your organization must have set up a video interviewing integration, such as Zoom.
If any of the interview details listed in the Schedule Summary panel require updating, click Back to calendar at the top right to return to the Scheduling page.
If you are scheduling multiple interviews, you can use the same email template for all calendar invites, or create individual invites for each interview. The option to Use the same email template for all interviews is selected by default.
You can customize invite emails manually or use an alternative template by unchecking the box next to Use the same email template for all calendar invites.
Note: Because the information populated by email tokens is unique to each interviewer, if you use the same email template for all interviewer invitations, email tokens will not be added in the interviewer invite preview, but will show up when the interviewer gets the email in their inbox.
When you're ready, click Schedule interviews. If you're using Google Calendar or Outlook to schedule your interviews, click Open in Google or Download .ics File to send the interviewer invitation and complete the scheduling process.
The invitations are sent to the interviewer through their calendars. The scheduled interviews will appear on the candidate's profile momentarily.
Note: Candidates can be added to calendar events by turning on the setting Send candidate calendar events via connected calendar integration under Configure > Permissions > Scheduling.
Send the candidate interview confirmation email
By default, candidates are not included in the calendar event created through the scheduling process outlined above, although this can be changed in system settings.
If your organization hasn't enabled candidate events, notify the candidate by sending a candidate interview confirmation email once the interview is scheduled internally.
From the candidate's profile, click Send Interview Confirmation under the stage where you have scheduled the interviews.
In the Availability dialog window, select the appropriate Candidate Interview Confirmation email template and make any necessary changes to the body of the email. When finished, click Send Email to send the confirmation to the candidate.
Additional resources
To learn more about scheduling in Greenhouse Recruiting, including details regarding specific calendar integrations and scheduling across time zones, see the following Support Center resources: