Overview

Gem Scheduling integrates directly into Gem ATS, allowing you to schedule interviews within the same platform that you use to source talent, review applicants, and manage candidates. Syncing directly with Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook, you can effortlessly check availability, create interview slots, and send invitations - all from one interface. This article covers how to schedule an interview.

For details of how to allow candidates to self-schedule, see our Gem Scheduling: The self-scheduling workflow article.

Prior setup

Before scheduling an interview, we recommend completing the following steps:

• Configuring your company branding so that the page that candidates see will have your company's logo and colors.
• Configuring default scheduling settings for the job. This is a quick step that will help save time in the long run, because it sets up defaults for all availability requests you send out for that stage.

Assuming you have a candidate’s availability, either because they completed an availability request or because you entered it manually into Gem, you can then proceed to schedule an interview.

For a video walkthrough of how to schedule an interview, watch Gem Scheduling How-to: Primary Scheduling Workflow.

Schedule an interview

Follow these steps to schedule an interview:

1. In the Application section of the candidate record, check that the candidate’s availability is showing against their current interview stage.

2. Select the Schedule button, which will take you to the Scheduling setup page showing the candidate’s name, their availability, and the relevant interview stage.

3. Update the video conferencing fields in the Stage settings section if necessary (the defaults for these fields are set when configuring a job - see our Gem Scheduling: Configure a job for scheduling article for more details).
4. Choose which interview(s) to schedule. If there are multiple interviews within the stage, you can select one, several or all of the available interviews (by default, interviews with the status of Not scheduled or Canceled will be automatically selected, while interviews with the status of Scheduled will not be selected).

5. With at least one interview selected, select the Generate schedule button at the top-right of the screen. This opens the Scheduling calendar page showing the calendars for the candidate and a selection of interviewers (along with a room, if appropriate).

6. The default schedule option is what Gem considers the best option - see the How Gem generates scheduling options section below for more details. You now have a choice:
1. Accept the default schedule option.
2. Use the Options drop-down or the arrow buttons at the top-right of the screen to look through other options.
3. Drag and drop interviews on the calendar to manually move them around.
4. Select an interview to edit its details (e.g. changing interviewers, moving to a different day).
5. If you have multiple interviews and are happy for interviews to take place over multiple days, use the Select an optimized schedule for drop-down in the top-left corner to switch to either 2- or 3-block splits.
7. Choose an option that best suits everyone involved, then select the Select schedule & continue → button. This will take you to a new page with details of all of the candidate-facing and interviewer-facing events to be scheduled.

8. From here, either go ahead and schedule the interview(s), or put them on hold if you need to check anything with any of the interviewers.
1. If you choose Put schedule on hold, all interviewers will be notified of the schedule, but the candidate will not be notified until the hold is confirmed. See our Gem Scheduling: Place holds on interviewers’ calendars article for more information about putting schedules on hold.
2. If you choose Schedule interviews, the candidate and all the interviewers will be notified of the schedule.

Once scheduled, the candidate’s status will display as Scheduled.

How Gem generates scheduling options

On the Scheduling calendar page, Gem presents you with a series of scheduling options to choose from, with each option showing you the candidate’s availability alongside the availability of a selection of interviewers from the pool(s). You can then either select one of these options or manually adjust the selections to suit your requirements.

The system will find the best possible scheduling options to suit the candidate’s availability, the availability of the possible interviewers, and various other factors (such as interviewers’ load balance, time zones and working hours, and prioritizing the earliest available slots).

The first option will always be what the system considers the best option, but there are various ways to see other available options. You can:

• Scroll through the generated options using the controls at the top-right of the screen, above the calendar view.
• Use the calendar drop-down and/or arrows at the top-left of the screen to change the calendar to specific days.

• Manually adjust the timings by dragging and dropping or clicking into each interview.
• Use the Select an optimized schedule for drop-down to switch from the default Back-to-back interviews option to either 2-block split or 3-block split, in which case the system will generate a new set of options across either two or three days.

Additional Resources

See the links below for details of how to cancel or reschedule interviews:

• Gem Scheduling: Cancel an interview
• Gem Scheduling: Reschedule an interview

Have any issues or questions on this topic? Please feel free to contact your dedicated Gem Customer Success Manager directly or our Support team at support@gem.com.

• Overview
• Prior setup
• Schedule an interview
• How Gem generates scheduling options
• Additional Resources