Setting up Schedule Interview Activities

this guide covers how to add to job interview plans to set up a structured interview process within ashby these activities are typically used whenever you need to schedule interviews with specific interviewers, as opposed to take home activities, application reviews, or questionnaires which do not have interviewers assigned research has found that running a structured interview process in which each candidate is assessed in the same way better predicts job performance and reduces the impact of bias on hiring decisions ashby facilitates building a structured interview process by adding schedule interview activities to the interview plan associated with a given job these activities contain complete interviewer instructions, feedback forms, and standardized candidate communication, ensuring consistency across the interview cycle permissions configuring schedule interview activities see the table below for information on the roles that have access to set up and edit schedule interview activities access role has access? limited access ❌ agency users ❌ elevated access external recruiter (not linked to an agency) ❌ elevated access analyst ❌ elevated access hiring team member ❌ elevated access hiring manager ❌ elevated access admin ✅ elevated access admin private ✅ organization admin ✅ elevated access admin and elevated access admin private users will only be able to edit the schedule interview activities on the roles they have access to creating a schedule interview activity if you’d like to establish settings to be used by default across schedule interview activities, check out our guide on scheduling defaults docid\ obyntivrg5pxertem4tml navigate to the job, then go to the interview plan identify the interview stage that you'd like to add activities to, and click add activity to and then select schedule interview next, move on to configuring the activity's various settings below configuring a schedule interview activity there are six tabs within a schedule interview activity that can be configured, and each one is covered in its specific section below schedule confirm the interview type (including feedback form), your interviewing panel, and any interview rooms communication configure the calendar invites sent out to both candidate and interviewer meeting hours you can set specific meeting hours for this interview activity more on setting meeting hours at meeting hours docid\ uzctzxvpfxqeftmihw jo direct booking & candidate availability set scheduling limits and a meeting here reminders configure any reminders that should be sent to interviewers and candidates pre interview automation automate the sending of a direct booking link or candidate availability link schedule on the schedule tab, you'll add one or more interviews along with their interview instructions and feedback forms you’ll also be able to assign specific interviewers or pools of interviewers to each slot on the panel selecting the interview type the first step on the schedule tab is selecting the interview type you'll have the option to either link to an existing shared interview or create a new interview for the job in the add event section we would recommend clicking + add shared interview when determining your interview event to select from the list of interview types you set up in admin > interviews & scheduling > interviews https //app ashbyhq com/admin/interview/interviews the feedback form you have linked to your shared interview type will be used for the activity if you click + create new interview this will create a totally new interview type that can only be used for this specific activity you can either assign a shared feedback form or create a new one specifically for the activity as part of the setup you can add multiple events to a schedule interview activity; however, you will not be able to use direct booking links to schedule and should instead send out candidate availability links multiple events may be used when you want to schedule a series of activites all at once, such as a virtual panel event with multiple rounds of interviews with various interviewers for more on scheduling activities with multiple interview events, please check out how do i use multi day scheduling? docid 4j ogip ouvgscipiixyy indicators in the top left corner show whether direct booking links or candidate availability links can be generated for the activity automatically if these show in green, you can send out direct booking links and/or candidate availability links to schedule in your interview more on both direct booking and candidate availability links in direct booking & candidate availability links docid 8syy2li7vkire 76zrwwm if you're adding multiple interviews within one schedule template and are setting zoom, google meet, or microsoft teams as the location, a unique meeting link will be generated for each calendar invite sent out to the candidate assigning interviewers once you’ve configured your interview type or types, you can then assign interviewers so ashby can determine the calendars that availability is being pulled from for direct booking links or manual scheduling when you click interviewers within the configure section, you’ll be able to determine how many slots are on the panel, and either assign specific users to those slots or select a pool of interviewers if multiple interviewers could take one slot on that panel for more on assigning interviewers, check out interviewers assigning, rescheduling and setting interviewer limits docid\ u87fcsbruh9pkclyl2qko if you have a rotating interviewer pool, and you don't know up front who will be conducting a given interview, you can create a separate schedule interview activity within the same interview stage for each interviewer you can then remove the schedule interview activities that don’t need to be used for that specific candidate once they’re moved to that stage along with assigning your own pools to interviewer slots, you’ll also have the option to select hiring team roles and pull users with those roles on job considerations to be on the panel hiring team roles are assigned within each job’s settings, and these roles are not pulled from the permissions set on a user’s profile on the employees page meeting rooms if you have meeting rooms synced over via your google workspace integration, you can configure a default room to be used for your schedule interview activity click set default room to specify your interview room if multiple rooms could be used, you can also set up a meeting room pool more on this at meeting room pools docid\ ejhk524h knpqv9zy lgy timing and sequencing the ability to set timing settings on schedule interview activity events is only available if you have the advanced scheduling automation add on docid\ ycrhy6o 0hutvzyuuzmk1 or are an enterprise customer this is a part of the auto schedule feature set if you are an enterprise customer or plus customer with the advanced scheduling automation add on, you may also see a timing button under the configure section selecting this button allows you to indicate whether an event under your schedule interview activity must be scheduled at a fixed time additionally, if you have multiple events as a part of this interview activity (such as a panel with multiple interview sessions) you can determine the sequence in which they should occur, if any communication on the communication tab, you can modify the details of both the candidate and interviewer calendar invites communication settings jpg expand for more details on the communication tab the calendar dropdown menu lets you select which calendar the calendar events will be scheduled to all calendar events for interviewers and interviewees are added to this calendar the calendar cannot be changed on rescheduling if you are not permitted to add events to this calendar, events will be added to your personal calendar instead we would recommend keeping this as default interview calendar, or selecting the name of the shared calendar you have set up to add interview events to the location dropdown menu allows you to add physical or remote location details set custom text, or select one of the integrated options the integrated options will automatically generate a unique video conference link and include it in the invite current video conference integrations include google meet, microsoft teams and zoom you can also choose to set a phone call as the location, which will pull in the candidate’s primary phone number the is private? toggle lets you set invites as private when toggled on, the calendar invite details (e g title, attendees) are hidden from others and interviewers are only marked as busy the direct booking email template dropdown allows you to choose an email template this email template docid 8syy2li7vkire 76zrwwm will be used when sending a direct booking request from the candidate profile the candidate availability email template dropdown allows you to choose an email template this email template will be used when sending a candidate availability request from the candidate profile the candidate confirmation email template dropdown allows you to select an email template this email template will be used when a confirmation is sent out once an interview has been scheduled once you’ve selected your email template, you’ll then see the option to automatically send this confirmation email if the candidate books via a direct booking link and the option to select a sender please note when a user schedules an interview manually for the first time, if a confirmation email is set within the interview activity, the confirmation email will default to being sent this can be switched off in the communications tab when manually scheduling the interview if the user chooses to turn off the email confirmation, confirmations will default to being off for the future interviews that user schedules (unless they opt to switch them on again) the invite to candidate template and invite to interviewers templates let you enter the title and description for each calendar invite, for both candidates and for the interviewers on your panel use tokens to fill in standard details, or add entirely custom text that the candidate will see meeting hours (optional) on the meeting hours tab, you can set a primary interview time zone as well as any custom meeting hours for this interview these meeting hours will be used when determining what interview times are available to candidates when they reach this interview stage by default, meeting hours are set to 9 to 5 in the interviewer's timezone, but you can set a primary interview timezone to override individual timezones setting specific meeting hours for an interview activity isn’t commonly used relying on the interviewer’s calendar availability or their own meeting hours is typically enough you can read more on this at meeting hours docid\ uzctzxvpfxqeftmihw jo to set meeting hours for a schedule interview activity, head to the interview plan section of your job, then click modify on the schedule interview activity in question in the meeting hours tab, you can toggle on enable custom meeting hours? to set specific hours for that interview activity only this will override the availability set for the company meeting hours and the meeting hours set in the user’s personal settings conflicts on the user’s google calendar will still be considered when displaying availability looking for how to update the timezone on a particular interview? see how are interview time zones determined and how do i change them? docid\ ofi ci85gmejvaag8s2rt direct booking and candidate availability (optional) if you're using direct booking or candidate availability links, you have options to set parameters around when meetings can be scheduled and how much candidate availability should be submitted you have the following options enable public booking link by default, booking links are unique to the candidate and the interview they are scheduling enable this option if you’d like to create a public link that you can send to any candidate or lead this will then schedule them in for the interview, even if they haven’t been considered for the job or added to ashby previously more on this at public booking links docid\ fyg7 o qk73981cicoxju minimum scheduling notice here you can determine how far in advance a candidate can schedule to ensure that interviewers have appropriate notice rolling days available here you can determine how far into the future the candidate can schedule if you set the number of days to 14 for example, the candidate would only be able to book within the next two weeks direct booking availability increments this setting allows you to determine the frequency of available time slots by default this is set to 30 minutes, so if an interviewer was available from 9am to 11am, the slots would show as 9am, 9 30am, 10am, 10 30am minimum days of availability use this field to configure the minimum number of days a candidate can provide when submitting their availability allow candidates to suggest times? if enabled, the candidate can share their availability and suggest interview times if they can’t find a suitable time when booking with a direct booking link meeting buffers allow you to add time before and after an interview to avoid ashby interviews being scheduled in back to back we would recommend using these if you need breaks between interviews here you can also determine the meeting organizer, the user who should receive notifications about candidate’s scheduling or adding in their availability more on this at what is a meeting organizer? docid\ c1tlsdkvuj7s15oa8poql interview reminders this section covers reminders about the upcoming interview if you are looking to set up scorecard or feedback reminder notifications, these are sent automatically if the interview is set as required you can read more on setting up interviews at feedback forms and interviews docid\ hlojgxrvp xkuw1ammkur if you have an upcoming interview with multiple events in one day, you can opt to either limit the reminders to one per day, so all events are included in one reminder email, or send a reminder for each calendar event multiple calendar invites are sent if there’s a gap between interview events set up interview reminders two default reminder email templates are included for you to use immediately you can customize these templates or create new email templates in admin > organization setup > email templates https //app ashbyhq com/admin/organizational settings/email templates more on setting up these templates can be found at email template creation and management docid\ wq6uoydzwfatdmzhopsfj interview reminders can be configured in the reminders tab, either for all interviews in admin> interviews & scheduling > scheduling defaults https //app ashbyhq com/admin/interview/scheduling defaults/communication , or within specific schedule interview activities on the interview plans of your jobs setting up a reminder in the schedule defaults section of admin you can also amend or add additional interview reminders when scheduling a candidate’s interview via manual schedule click add candidate reminder or add interviewer reminder to get started you can then specify when the notification should be sent, who the notification is from and the template used for the reminder if you haven’t already, ensure that an email template is set up for direct booking links or candidate availability links in the communication tab of your schedule interview activity this is the email that will be sent out to the candidate automatically when they’re moved to this stage of your pipeline you will have the option to undo the automation each time it is triggered send determine how the reminder should be sent for candidates, you will only have the option to send an email if you have the integration for slack in place, you can opt to send an email or slack reminder to interviewers from determine the sender email address for the candidate’s reminder this can either come from the default no reply email address or the scheduler’s email address when configure the number of days, minutes or hours prior to the interview that the reminder should be sent using template select the reminder template to use + add candidate reminder create or add an additional reminder if your interview has multiple events (and potentially gaps between those events), you can opt to send one reminder for all calendar events that day or a reminder for each event reset if you have scheduling defaults in place, click this option to revert back to those defaults when the reminder email is sent, the substitution tokens within your interview template will be pre filled with the appropriate details an example of a candidate’s interview reminder multiple interview events if you have an upcoming interview with multiple events in one day, you can opt to either limit the reminders to one per day, so all events are included in one reminder email, or send a reminder for each calendar event multiple calendar invites are sent if there’s a gap between interview events configuring candidate scheduling reminders if you are generating candidate availability or direct booking links from your schedule interview activities, you can also configure candidate scheduling reminders on the reminders tab of your schedule interview activity these reminders are automatically sent if the candidate has yet to take the following action candidate availability link if the candidate hasn't submitted their availability by the time specified in your reminder configuration, then an email or text will be generated from the template selected and sent to them as a reminder direct booking link if the candidate hasn't scheduled an interview using the direct booking link provided by the time specified in your reminder configuration, then an email or text will be generated from the template selected and sent to them as a reminder please note that if the candidate submits availability or schedules using their direct booking link, the reminders will be cancelled automatically for sms reminders, you will need to have candidate texting enabled on your account for more on this, check out candidate texting onboarding docid\ lrscwwbh0i1rwpuqxdqrn and candidate texting docid\ eqo rlp7jpwh3ykaonv84 to add a candidate scheduling reminder, click + availability request reminder or + direct booking reminder to create the reminder from here you can then set your reminder settings when configuring your scheduling reminders, you can configure the following send how the reminder is sent to the candidate either via sms or email from determine the sender of the email this can be the meeting organizer or a no reply email when configure when the reminder should be sent this can be specified in days, hours or minutes since the request was sent using template select the email or text template to use to generate the content of the reminder default reminder templates for candidate availability and direct booking link schedule reminders are available within admin > organization setup > email templates these can be edited as needed you can set up multiple reminders too after you've finished setting up your reminder, click + availability request reminder or + direct booking reminder to add another one reminders will only be created and sent if the candidate availability link or direct booking link has been sent directly via ashby if the link has been copied and shared with the candidate outside of an email from ashby, then reminders will not be sent once you've sent the link to the candidate, you will see the scheduled reminders on the interview activity on the candidate's profile these can be manually deleted as needed hover over the tab with the bell icon to view when the reminders are due to be sent to make amendments, click on the tab click the trash can icons beside any reminders you'd like to remove on the manage scheduled reminders pop up that follows you can click delete all to remove all of them automation when setting up or amending your schedule interview activity, click on the automation tab then check the automate on stage entry checkbox from there, you’ll be asked to specify the automation type (whether you’d like to send out a direct booking link or a candidate availability link automatically) if you haven’t already, ensure that an email template is set up for direct booking links or candidate availability links in the communication tab of your schedule interview activity this is the email that will be sent out to the candidate automatically when they’re moved to this stage of your pipeline you will have the option to undo the automation each time it is triggered faq h ow do i assign interviewers? for a full guide on assigning interviewers to interviewer slots, check out interviewers assigning, rescheduling and setting interviewer limits docid\ u87fcsbruh9pkclyl2qko ar e interviewers required for a schedule interview activity? yes, interviewers do need to be assigned to interviewer slots for a schedule interview activity changes will not be saved to your schedule interview activity until interviewers are assigned to all interviewer slots or the empty interviewer slots have been deleted if interviewer slots are not created for a schedule interview activity, you can only schedule this interview via the candidate availability or manual schedule options why should i set up schedule interview activities? adding schedule interview activities to your job or job template’s interview plans will help to automate your scheduling process you can set up the interview type, interviewer and interview location in advance from there, when a candidate is moved to that stage in your pipeline, you’ll be prompted to schedule an interview and all of the interview settings will be generated automatically if direct booking links or candidate availability links can be generated, then they will be produced automatically if i add a new schedule interview activity to my job's interview plan, will candidates already in that stage have the activity added to their job consideration? yes, the interview activity will be added to candidates already in that stage with other activity types (such as send email ), the activity will not be added to job considerations already in that stage w hy does an interview slot in my schedule template show that the slot is invalid when i add an interviewer into that slot? this can happen if the interviewer is a service account has their user account is disabled in ashby is globally paused for all interviews doesn’t have a google workspace or microsoft calendar w hy am i seeing two calendar events for an interview on my personal calendar? when booking in an interview and sending out calendar invites, calendar events are sent out to three calendars separate calendar events are sent out for interviewers and candidates so party specific interview information can be included one for the calendar the overall interview is scheduled on one for the interviewer’s calendar one for the candidate’s calendar if there are multiple interviewers on the panel, an event will be sent out for each interviewer’s individual calendar if the overall interview is scheduled on an interviewer’s personal calendar, they will receive the calendar event for the calendar the overall interview is scheduled on along with the calendar event for them as an interviewer to avoid multiple events, ensure that the shared calendar is selected when setting up a schedule interview activity and when booking in one off interviews once scheduled, the calendar the interview is scheduled on cannot be changed the interview would need to be cancelled and rebooked wh at does ‘default interview calendar’ mean? when setting up a schedule interview activity, if you have a shared calendar in place, you will see this option, along with the name or names of shared calendars you have set up as part of your google workspace integration https //app ashbyhq com/admin/integrations/marketplace/google/shared calendars if only one shared calendar is set up in your account, the ‘default interview calendar’ is referring to that shared calendar, as it will automatically be set as the default if you have set up multiple shared calendars, you can select the default here https //app ashbyhq com/admin/integrations/marketplace/google/shared calendars within the google workspace integration settings i've updated the interview type on a schedule interview activity in my job’s interview plan what happens to scheduled interviews? if you change the interview type on your schedule interview activity the changes will be applied to candidates who are currently in the interview stage, as well as candidates entering that stage moving forward if the interview has already been scheduled for the candidate, the interview type will not be updated and the interview would need to be rescheduled to update the interview type as needed wh at happens to scheduled interviews when i make changes to the feedback form or briefing assigned to them? if you make changes to the shared feedback form on the feedback forms https //app ashbyhq com/admin/interview/feedback forms page or to the briefing on the interviews https //app ashbyhq com/admin/interview/interviews page, any interviews with that feedback form assigned will reflect those changes can i copy an existing activity from an interview plan stage on one job to an interview plan stage on another? you can, yes! when you are on a job’s interview plan and click add activity to… on an interview plan stage you’ll see the option to add a new activity and a copy activities option click copy activities , then select the job, interview plan, interview stage you’d like to copy activities from choose the activities you’d like to copy the selected activities will be copied into the original stage you chose once an activity is copied over, if the activity uses a shared interview type or feedback form (more on those at what are ‘shared’ interviews, application forms, and feedback forms?), then those will be reference in the copy any custom interview types or feedback forms will be copied over and can be amended without impacting the original activity that was copied o n the direct booking & candidate availability tab, which date determines the dates available in the rolling days available option? this is calculated from the date the candidate is viewing the calendar on the direct booking link for example, if a candidate goes to the booking link today and the rolling days available is set to 7, the candidate will see availability up to 7 days from today if they view the link again tomorrow, they’ll see dates up to 7 days from tomorrow can i assign multiple potential locations to a schedule interview activity? for example, zoom or a phone call? you can only assign one location to a schedule interview activity or direct booking link it’s not currently possible to assign multiple locations, or set conditional locations if your interview has two locations (for example, one interview happening over zoom and the other in person), you can create two schedule interview activities, one for each location f or candidate availability links, can i specify a window in which candidates can add their availability? for example from 23rd november to 15th december? or up to 2 weeks away (excluding wednesdays)? yes, you now have the option to specify a window of dates that candidates can submit their availability in when preparing to send out your candidate availability link, click schedule on the interview activity on the candidate’s profile, then hover over request candidate availability from here, click edit availability window within the edit availability window pop up, select either rolling days or custom date range rolling days\ a dynamic window, starting from the earliest available interview date this will adjust depending on when the candidate clicks on the link so if the window is set to be 14 days and the candidate clicks the link on the 1st, they will see suitable availability up until the 15th if they then opt to go back and add their availability on the 3rd, they will be able to add in availability up until the 17th of the month if you see a date greyed out, this is because it is outside of your minimum notice you can hover over it to confirm custom date range set a specific start and end date for availability, or just an end date if you need the candidate to book before a specific day the specified range will remain the same regardless of when the candidate visits the page once you’ve established your scheduling window, you can then finalize your availability window if you’d like to remove or add dates within the availability window, you can click on them on the finalize availability calendar company holidays and weekends will be excluded by default you can then click save and copy link to confirm the availability window and copy the candidate availability link to send out to the candidate if you make changes to your availability window, you will need to click save and copy link in order for the changes to apply to the existing candidate availability link