Setting up the right message template to send calendar invites
Calendar invites are a great feature that allows you to send applicants — and yourself — a calendar invite for a previously agreed-upon meeting time.
To enable calendar scheduling on a specific message template, you first need to make sure that Choose date/time manually is selected in the Optional Configuration section of your message template.
Your default Confirming Phone Interview Appointment and Confirming Interview Appointment templates should have this option selected already. Click the Edit button to configure either email template.
You can verify that you are using the correct type of template if you see placeholder text like "[start_date]" and "[start_time]" in the body of the email.
Sending calendar invites
You can send calendar invites to any applicants in hiring steps with a Schedule or Schedule Interview button available. This is limited to the Phone Screen and Interview steps.
When you click Schedule from the applicant's profile — or Schedule Interview on your Applicants page (as seen above) — you will be prompted to edit and send a calendar invite to the applicant.
Use the Schedule option only after you have invited an applicant to an interview and they have confirmed the time.
When you click the Schedule button, the message that generates will include an area to set the agreed-upon date/time of the interview. Make sure that you set the Date, Start time and End time, and Timezone according to the applicant's time zone.
Note that because this is the phone screen step, the candidate's phone number has automatically populated in the Location or Conferencing field (above).
Edit the Email Content as necessary. Do not edit the "[start_date]" or "[start_time]" text in the body of the email. These fields will be automatically populated based on what you selected as the date/time of the email in the above fields.
Ensure that Send to my calendar checkbox is selected; this should already be checked by default if you're using the correct type of message template.
Note: If the Send to my calendar checkbox is not available, this means you need to edit the message template and select the Choose date/time manually option.
When you click Send Email, the applicant will receive the email along with an attached calendar invite, which can be added to their Google or Outlook calendar with one click.
You will also get the email with a calendar invite attached, so you can add it to your calendar as well.
The Schedule button by default is available for a phone screen or an in-person interview. When the email is for a phone screen (as in the example above), the phrase "Will call you at [applicant's phone number]" will appear as the meeting location. This serves to remind you of the applicant's phone number so you can call them to begin the phone screen.
When the Schedule button is used for an in-person interview — rather than the phone number — the location field will populate to your company address. If your account uses locations, the location will populate to the address of the location for which the job was posted. Again, this will be included in the calendar invite.
To cancel an interview, simply delete the event from your calendar and notify the applicant.