Candidate Interview Self-Scheduling
Is there a way for my candidates to schedule interviews?
Purpose: This guide will walk you through how to set up your account to allow candidates or recruiter to schedule interviews, and teach you how to track and manage those interviews.
Scheduling an interview can be a time-consuming process as you try to work out a time between two or more schedules. Every second counts when you are trying to secure top talent. Allowing candidates to self-schedule interviews in BambooHR saves time for everyone involved and makes the process smooth and simple.
Interview scheduling settings
There are a few pieces of this feature that you need to set up before you can start scheduling interviews. See below for the details.
First, navigate to Settings > Hiring > Calendar & Video Access. The Account Owner, Full Admin users, and any custom access level users with access to Hiring under Settings can access these settings. Here, you will choose which calendar and video provider your organization uses. For security, we will ask for access permissions to these apps any time you request a user shares their calendar or video access.
If you choose Google under '"Calendar," select either Google Meet or Zoom as your video conferencing app.
If you choose Microsoft under "Calendar," select either Microsoft Teams or Zoom as your video conferencing app. Be sure to click Save to confirm your settings.
Important: While you are able to change your calendar and video conferencing settings, you want to be very careful. If you change them, you will see a warning informing you that only interviews scheduled in the future will be synced between BambooHR and your calendars. Also, you will need to send out new invitations for users to sync their calendars.
In Settings > Hiring > Calendar & Video Access, clicking Invite Employee will allow you to type the names of users you would like to invite to sync their calendar and video conferencing apps with BambooHR for interview scheduling. Their availability will sync when scheduling interviews.
Once you have entered all desired users, click Request Access to send the invitation.
Once you have sent the invitations, you will see a list of those you have invited, their acceptance status (Pending or Granted), and an option to resend a single invitation or all invitations (Resend All).
Email invitation
Once you send the invitations, the selected users will receive an email where they can click Grant Permission to allow BambooHR to access their calendar and video conferencing app to schedule interviews. It will open a modal where they can choose the account they would like to link.
Please note that they will be able to any Google or Microsoft account, even if it does not match an email address they have connected to their profile in BambooHR.
Once they click Grant Permission in the email, they will be taken to the Account Settings page in their BambooHR account, where they will see confirmation that the integration (Google, Microsoft, or Zoom) is synced. They can also click Remove to disconnect their calendar and video conferencing app.
Users can also access this Account Settings page directly (without an email/link) to connect their calendar and video conferencing app.
The second setting for scheduling interviews in Settings > Hiring is Interview Templates. This allows you to set up a template with pre-set schedules for candidate self-scheduling.
- New Template: Create a new template (see below for more details).
- [Template Name]: Click on the name of an existing template to edit any of the details.
- Duplicate: Duplicate an existing template to quickly create an additional template that just has small differences.
- Delete: Delete an existing template to remove it from your list.
New template
When you click +New Template, the system will open a new page, where you can enter the following details: template name, the title you would like to show on the calendar, the duration of the meeting, the location/method (Google or Zoom), and a description (8,000 character limit).
Once you have entered this information, click Next Step to move on to the next page.
On the second page of the interview template setup, you will create the parameters for scheduling interviews.
- Select the number of weeks within which a candidate can schedule an interview after receiving the scheduling link.
- Select the buffer time you would like to allow between when a candidate schedules the interview and when the interview takes place.
- Set your schedule for each day to automatically block any times you will be unavailable for an interview.
- Configure your daily schedule to automatically block any times when interviewers are unavailable for interviews.
When you are finished, click Save Template.
Creating an interview self-scheduling invitation
On a candidate's profile, the Account Owner, Full Admin users, and any custom access user with permission to manage job openings will see a tab called "Interviews." Here, you will be able to send and manage interview self-scheduling links. First, click Send a Self-Scheduling Link.
If you have not created any interview templates, you can fill out the interview details here. If you have created your interview templates, select which template you would like to use, and the system will auto-fill the details. Then, click Next Step.
The second page will also be auto-populated with details from the template. At the top of the page, select any interviewers who will be attending and who the meeting organizer will be. The meeting organizer has full control of the calendar event. Video conferencing links are connected to their account.
If you select a user who has not synced their calendar and video conferencing app as a interviewer, you will see a warning informing you that their app is not synced. You will be able to send them a request by clicking Send Link.
In the bottom right corner of the page, click Preview Booking Page to see what the scheduling page will look like to the candidate.
Click Done and then Next Step.
The last step is to set the content for the email that will be sent with your interview scheduling invitation. You can add the details manually or pull from any templates you have created in Settings. To insert the calendar link, click Add Self-Schedule Link, and it will appear in your email like any other placeholder. Click Preview Email if you would like to preview the email before sending.
Once you are ready, click Send Interview Invitation to send the invitation to the candidate.
Once you have sent the interview invitation to the candidate, you will be taken back to the Interviews tab on their candidate profile. Here, you will see any interviews that have been scheduled, sorted by descending date. You will see the following details and options for an interview:
- Whether the interview is upcoming or completed.
- An option to delete the interview.
- If the the attendees have not yet selected a time, you will see the option to resend the invite.
- A list of the attendees and a question mark if they have not confirmed their attendance or a checkmark if they have.
- The location and details of the interview.
The candidate experience
The candidate will receive the email you created, and from there, they can click on the self-schedule link.
Clicking Choose a time will open a new tab in their browser, where they will see the names of the interviewers, duration of the interview, the conferencing selection (Google or Zoom), and the interview description. They can also select the date and time (out of those available) that works best for them.
When the candidate clicks Submit, they will see a confirmation that they are all set and letting them know they will receive an email invitation to add to their calendar. BambooHR will send this information to create the event on the organizer's calendar. Your calendaring system will then send the invitations to the other attendees (the candidate and interviewers).
Though rare, here are some potential situations your candidate may encounter when scheduling an interview:
- If a time slot becomes unavailable before the candidate schedules an interview, the system displays an error informing them the time slot is no longer available and they will need to select a new time.
- If there are not time slots available, they will see a note to contact their recruiter.
- If they have already selected a time slot and click on the link in their email again, they can update/reschedule the interview date and time (as long as it is still within the parameters you have set).
- If the invitation has been deleted in BambooHR, the candidate will see a screen letting them know that no time slots are available.
- The candidate is not able to cancel an event. Only the meeting organizer can cancel an event.
Editing or deleting an interview
Delete an interview
As mentioned earlier, you can delete an upcoming or past interview by going to the Interviews tab on the candidate's profile and clicking Delete Interview.
Clicking Delete Interview will open a modal, where you can confirm you would like to delete the interview. Please note this action cannot be undone. Check the box next to "Let me send an email to [name]" to send an email to the candidate informing them of the canceled interview.
This action will allow you to send an email template or create a custom email for the candidate.
The interview will be removed from the organizer's calendar, and your calendaring app will send out cancelation notifications.
If the interview is in the past, we will not remove the interview from any calendars.
Edit an interview
You can only edit interviews that have not already occurred. Editing an interview must be done in your calendaring system by the organizer of the event. The following changes to an event will sync to also reflect in BambooHR:
- Attendees added or deleted
- If an attendee is added but their calendar is not synced with your calendar and video conferencing apps of choice, you will see their email address and a blank avatar
- Attendee status
- Date and time
- Title
- Description
- Location
- Event deleted