Gem Scheduling is integrated directly into Gem ATS, meaning you can 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.
In this article we’re going to take you through the basic steps to get up and running with scheduling within Gem ATS, including:
- Connecting your calendar to Gem Scheduling
- Setting up scheduling as part of the job setup process
- Requesting candidates’ availability
- Scheduling one or more interviews
This article assumes that someone in your organization has already connected your ATS to Gem Scheduling, selected a scheduling calendar and (if required) connected a video conferencing tool. For information on how to do all of this, see our Gem Scheduling: Initial setup article.
Requirements: The Gem Scheduling feature must be enabled. If you do not have this feature but are interested in adding it, please contact your Gem Customer Success Manager.
Eligibility: Available to all Gem Scheduling teams.
Connecting your calendar
As mentioned earlier, the assumption for this article is that the Gem Scheduling: Initial setup of Gem Scheduling has already taken place, part of which involves connecting a calendar to Gem Scheduling (we support either Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook). It is, however, worth double checking that this has been done before you go any further.
To do this, go to the Scheduling Queue page within the Scheduling section in the left-hand navigation. At the top of the screen, look for a banner prompting you to connect your calendar:
If this banner doesn’t appear, your calendar is already be connected and no further action should be required.
If this banner does appear, however, you will now need to connect your calendar to Gem Scheduling. Select the Connect button to open an authorization pop-up for either Google or Microsoft (depending on your global account settings). From here you can sign in with either your Google or Microsoft account.
Once that’s done you can move on to the job setup process.
Job setup
As best practice, we recommend configuring all of the scheduling-related elements of a job at the same time as you initially set up the job. It’s worth spending some time getting everything set up correctly at this point, so that when you’re ready to start scheduling interviews that process is as quick and straightforward as possible, without needing to manually select or set up templates etc. every time you schedule a candidate.
NOTE: In this article we’re not going to take you through every step of the job setup process, as that’s out of the scope for Gem Scheduling. If you have any questions about job setup overall, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Gem support team at support@gem.com.
When setting up a new job, there are several scheduling-specific elements within the Interview plan step. These include:
- Setting scheduling details and interviewers when you create a new interview.
- Setting scheduling defaults for each interview stage.
Once you have gone through these elements, any interviews you want to schedule later on will have the bulk of the details already there - you can then tailor to specific candidates if required on a case by case basis.
Creating a new interview
When you select the + Add interview option within the Interview plan step, there are two scheduling-specific elements of the Create interview pop-up that we’re going to talk about: Scheduling details and Interviewers.
These two elements allow you to:
- Define the name and details of the interview, as the candidate will see them.
- If required, set a specific time frame for the interview to take place within (only needed if the interview must take place at a certain time of day, e.g. a lunch interview occurring between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.).
- Create a pool of possible interviewers from which to select every time an interview is scheduled.
You can also set the interview name and duration under the General section.
If you’re not sure how interviewer seats and pools work in Gem, you can read more about this concept by expanding the Interviewer pools section below.
Interviewer pools
Scheduling defaults
With one or more interviews created for a stage, you will see a section just underneath the interview(s) labelled Scheduling default.
Within here are a number of settings that you can configure against the interview stage as a whole - anything you set here will apply to all interviews within this stage.
Scheduling default
Set what you want to be the default scheduling option when a user views a candidate at this interview stage. For example, within the Application section of the candidate record:
You can set this to Request availability, Self-schedule, or Schedule depending on what you think the most commonly-used option is going to be for this stage.
Automation
Set whether you want to default to automatically sending availability/self-schedule requests when candidates reach this stage, or whether you would prefer to manually schedule interviews.
With this enabled on a particular interview stage, when a candidate is moved into that stage the system will automatically apply the scheduling default without any user action required.
To start, we recommend using the default Automation off setting. Enabling automation allows Gem to do things such as send an email to the candidate once they are moved into a stage, but requires additional setup steps - see below for more details of these.
Advanced settings
This option opens up a host of detailed settings which allow you to adjust the defaults that were created when Gem Scheduling was first set up, and tailor them to this particular interview.
To begin with, we recommend leaving most of these options as they are, and coming back to them when you’re more comfortable with Gem Scheduling. There are a few settings, however, that we do recommend you familiarize yourself with at this point:
- Templates for the various emails that are generated during the scheduling process.
- Whether video conferencing should be enabled by default for this stage.
Templates
By choosing templates at this point, you won’t have to spend time assigning, amending or creating a new email or invitation every time you schedule an interview.
Everywhere you can choose a template, you have the following options:
- Select an existing template from the dropdown, and use it as it is.
- Select an existing template then amend it to suit this interview stage.
- Create your own message subject and body, and save as a new template.
- Set the template to No email if you don’t want to send anything (although we don’t recommend this).
When you’re setting up Gem Scheduling for the first time, we recommend creating a new message and saving it as a template.
Here’s an example of how this looks:
The template options within Advanced settings are for:
- Scheduling confirmation email templates.
- Calendar event templates.
- Availability request templates.
- Self-scheduling request templates.
Of the last two, we recommend setting a template for whichever option you set earlier as your default workflow.
Additionally, you can create and manage all of your templates in the Templates section of Gem Scheduling, under either Messages or Interviews & scheduling.
Video conferencing
Under the Calendar events tab you can also set some defaults for video conferencing, assuming that a video conferencing tool has been connected.
You can leave this set to No video conferencing if you don’t plan on running video interviews, or alternatively select Google Meet Microsoft Teams or Zoom from the dropdown to enable video conferencing for this interview stage.
We recommend setting this here, so that video conferencing will be automatically enabled for each interview and you won’t subsequently have to remember to manually create a video link.
Requesting availability
The most time-consuming part of arranging interviews can often be going back and forth to discuss what times candidates are available. To help with this, before you schedule an interview you can use the Request availability functionality to ask the candidate for the details of their availability, which Gem Scheduling will take into account when recommending interview times.
From the Application section of a candidate’s record, select the Request availability button to open a Request availability pop-up.
By default this pop-up will be populated with the settings you chose when initially setting up Scheduling, for things like the minimum amount of time you’d like candidates to submit. You can modify any of these settings for a specific candidate - this will only affect that particular candidate, and won’t change any of the default settings - but for the purpose of this article we’re going to assume you’re happy with the defaults.
You can also amend the message that will be sent to the candidate along with the availability request. For example, you might want to choose a different email template to the one you set as the default earlier, or modify the default template with some slightly different wording.
Feel free to amend this wording however you like, then once you’re happy with it you have two options:
- Send request via email: Select this to send the availability request to the candidate - this generates an automated email in a new email thread.
- Save & generate link: This will copy a link to your clipboard that you can then send out manually to the candidate instead of generating an email - for example if you already have an email thread going with the candidate, and would prefer to keep everything in that one place.
With the availability request sent (using either method), the candidate’s Status (everywhere it displays, such within the candidate’s record) will now show that availability has been requested.
What happens next?
Once an availability request has been sent, the candidate can go ahead and provide their availability when they’re ready.
When a candidate submits their availability, the following things will happen:
- The user who sent the availability request will receive an email notifying them that the candidate has submitted their availability.
- If any other members of the hiring team have opted into notifications (in Profile settings, under Notifications) for when candidates submit availability, they will also receive emails.
- The candidate’s Status will change from Availability requested to Ready to schedule.
Scheduling interviews
Once a candidate has submitted their availability, you can go ahead and schedule an interview (or multiple interviews). In the Application section of the candidate record you will see that the candidate’s Availability now reflects the details that have been submitted:
From here, select the Schedule button which will take you to a schedule page showing the candidate’s name and the relevant interview stage.
The first two panels within this page offer additional functionality for configuring the interview stage preferences, and information regarding the candidate’s availability.
Having set up your job-level defaults earlier, for common interview processes you shouldn’t need to adjust these preferences often. If you do need to make a per-candidate change though, you can still do that.
Assuming that you’re happy with those preferences and the availability, the next step is to choose which interview(s) to schedule. If there are multiple interviews within the stage, you don’t have to schedule all of them at this point - you can choose one, several or all of the available interviews.
If you need to, you can amend each interview at this point - for example, if you want to change the order in which they’re scheduled, or amend the interviewer pool. When you’re happy with everything at this point though, make sure you have at least one interview selected and then select the Generate schedule button.
Choosing a schedule option
This will open up a calendar view showing the calendars for the candidate and a selection of interviewers, from where you can choose a time slot (or slots) that best suit everyone involved.
This page works by presenting 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 to see all of the other options you can scroll through them using the controls at the top of the screen, above the calendar view:
If you want, you can also manually adjust the timings by dragging and dropping or clicking into each interview.
When you’ve found an option that you’re happy with, make sure that option is selected and 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.
From here you can either go ahead and schedule the interview(s), or put them on hold if you need to check anything with any of the interviewers.
- If you choose the Put schedule on hold option, all interviewers will be notified of the schedule, but the candidate will not be notified until the hold is confirmed.
- If you choose the Schedule interviews option, the candidate and all the interviewers will be notified of the schedule.
Once scheduled, the candidate’s status will display as Scheduled.
➡️ Next, you’ll learn how self-scheduling works in Gem Scheduling.
- Connecting your calendar
- Job setup
- Creating a new interview
- Interviewer pools
- Scheduling defaults
- Scheduling default
- Automation
- Advanced settings
- Requesting availability
- What happens next?
- Scheduling interviews
- Choosing a schedule option