When requesting availability from candidates within Gem Scheduling, you may want to first configure the specific stage that they are in with default settings. In this article, we’ll walk through how to do this.
1. Ensure a stage is enabled for scheduling.
Before being able to access the settings for requesting availability, you need to enable the stage for scheduling first. You can find out how to do that Gem Scheduling: Configure a job for scheduling. We recommend setting the default workflow to be “Request Availability & Schedule” if you plan to request availability often for this stage. Once you’ve enabled scheduling, you’ll be able to go to the Availability Preferences tab.
2. Configure default settings.
Click the Edit button in the Dates section.
2a. Preferred date window
With this setting, you can suggest a preferred window to the candidate to input available times. This won’t limit the candidate’s ability to submit times outside of this window—in case they actually don’t have any other times available—but it encourages them to try to submit an earlier time to keep the interview process flowing quickly. This value is in calendar days, not business days.
The default is 14 days, but you can change that to be whatever works best for you. The value of this setting will be shown on the candidate-facing availability page.
2b. Minimum duration
This setting determines the minimum duration for every time slot that the candidate submits. This ensures that the candidate doesn’t provide a 1-hour block for a 5-hour interview. They can submit longer than this time, but it will show the candidate a warning if one of their time slots is too short and prevent them from submitting.
2c. Total availability
Similar to the minimum duration, this setting is to enforce a minimum on the total duration submitted by the candidate. The purpose of this is to provide you with more possible time slots for redundancy, so if the candidate’s earliest available time doesn’t work out for your team (e.g., all the available interviewers have conflicts), you’ll have more times to work with without having to go back to the candidate to ask for more time. If the candidate doesn’t provide at least this much time, it will show them an error.
2d. Advanced notice
This value determines how many hours (at a minimum) are required in between the time the candidate submits availability and their first available time slot. This ensures that candidates can’t submit all their availability within the next 24 hours, forcing you to scramble to quickly schedule them. Many interviewers appreciate this setting so that they don’t have to worry about interviews appearing at the last minute for them. If a candidate tries to submit times within this window, it will show them an error and prevent it.
The default is 24 hours, but you can change that to be whatever works best for you and your company. This won’t show up on the candidate-facing availability page, but it will be grayed out in the calendar picker.
Scheduling window
One setting that affects availability requests but doesn’t live on this page is the scheduling window. This is configured on the Gem Scheduling: Configure a job for scheduling but applies to both scheduling and availability.
If it is set, it will be shown on the candidate-facing availability page.
And that’s it! To learn more about what it would look like when you’re actually sending an availability request to a candidate, check out our article on Gem Scheduling: The request availability workflow.
- 1. Ensure a stage is enabled for scheduling.
- 2. Configure default settings.
- 2a. Preferred date window
- 2b. Minimum duration
- 2c. Total availability
- 2d. Advanced notice
- Scheduling window