Gem Scheduling: Configure a job for scheduling

Overview

Before using Gem Scheduling to schedule interviews, we recommend configuring your job’s default settings. It’s worth spending some time getting everything set up correctly at this point, so that when you’re ready to start scheduling interviews the process is as quick and straightforward as possible, without needing to manually select or set up templates etc. every time.

This article covers how to set up a single interview stage for scheduling. You can then follow this process for any other stages that you’d like enabled.

Requirements

• Your team must use Gem Scheduling.
• You must have admin access on your Gem account.

Process

We recommend you follow these steps in order for each interview stage:

1. Enable a stage for scheduling
2. Create an interview
3. Configure scheduling defaults
4. Configure scheduling automation
5. Configure scheduling settings

Enable a stage for scheduling

In Gem Scheduling, you configure scheduling per interview stage in the job’s interview plan.

Many interview stages, such as ‘Application Review’ or ‘Take Home Test’, might not need scheduling. As such, we let you decide which ones you want to use Gem Scheduling for. By default, scheduling is disabled - so if you would like to use scheduling on a stage, the first step is to enable it.

1. Navigate to the Interview plan page for your job.
2. Any stage that does not already have scheduling enabled will have an Enable scheduling button associated with it. Select this option to enable scheduling for that stage.

3. With scheduling enabled, you should now see some additional options against each stage on the Interview plan page.

4. We’ll go through each of these in the sections below.

For a video walkthrough of how to configure a job for scheduling, watch from the 2 minutes 35 seconds mark of Gem Scheduling How-to: Configuring job stage settings (10 min). It covers setting scheduling defaults, and configuring advanced settings like email templates, shared scheduling calendars, calendar events, and workflow settings.

For more details on how to add interviewers to a particular interview, see our Gem Scheduling: Interviewer seats and interviewer pools article.

Create an interview

With scheduling enabled for the stage, the next step is to create one or more interviews for that stage.

Follow these steps to create a new interview:

1. Make sure you’re in the job’s Interview plan tab.
2. Under the Interviews section for the relevant stage, select the Add interview option to open the Create interview pop-up.

3. If you already have an interview template set up and ready to use (refer to Gem Scheduling: Interview templates for more details), you can select that from the Template dropdown. 

4. If not, fill in the Interview name and Interview duration fields and then populate the Interviewers, Interview prep, Code assessment link, Scheduling details, and Scorecard sections. Refer to the table below for details of each element on this pop-up.

5. Select the Save as template button if you want to save the details of this interview as a template, for future reuse.
6. Select the Create button to save and confirm the details of the interview.
7. Repeat steps 1 to 6 if you want to create multiple interviews within the same stage.
8. With all of the relevant interviews created, move on to configuring how scheduling works for the stage as a whole.

Configure scheduling defaults

The Scheduling defaults dropdown allows you to set what you want to be the default scheduling workflow to be.

Whichever option you choose here determines the default name on the scheduling button 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 workflow is going to be for this stage. See the Scheduling preferences section below for more details of these three options.

Configure scheduling automation

The schedule automation dropdown allows you to set whether you want to default to automatically sending availability/self-schedule requests (based on the default scheduling workflow - as per above) 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 apply the scheduling default without any user action required. Depending on whether the scheduling default is set to Request availability or Self-schedule, the system will automatically send the relevant email, based on the email template selected in the workflow settings for that stage (see the Workflow settings sections below).

For a video walkthrough of scheduling automation, watch Gem Scheduling How-to: Automations & Bulk-self-scheduling (4 min). It covers how to configure a job to automatically send either self-scheduling or availability request links - and what happens when this automation is triggered - and how to use the bulk self-scheduling functionality.

Configure scheduling settings

Select the Advanced button to open the Scheduling settings pop-up for that stage:

This pop-up includes sections for:

• Scheduling preferences: Broad scheduling-related settings for this stage.
• Calendar events: Defaults and templates for calendar events generated via scheduling.
• Request availability workflow: Settings relevant to sending availability requests.
• Self-schedule workflow: Settings relevant to sending self-scheduling requests.

You can go through all of these sections when you’re setting up a job - just make sure to select the Save button when you’re finished.

Scheduling preferences

The first option from this section allows you to select the default scheduling workflow for this stage. The three possible workflows are:

• Request availability: Invite candidates to provide blocks of available time that match your interviewers’ availability windows. Most suited for use with multiple-interview stages, or when an interviewer doesn’t have good calendar hygiene.
• Self-schedule: Allow candidates to book time directly with interviewers, requiring no confirmation from the team and automatically populating calendar meetings. Most suited for use early in the interview process with a single-interview stage, and where an interviewer has good calendar hygiene.
• Schedule: Enables manual scheduling, which offers no automation. This will be the least likely setting for you to use - most suited when an interview requires hands-on coordination.

If you enabled scheduling automation on the previous screen, the Stage automation option here will default to ON. Alternatively, you can enable scheduling automation using this toggle. With this set to ON, the default scheduling workflow will be automatically triggered when a candidate enters this stage.

Hiring team channel

If you have enabled the Slack integration, you can automatically create a private Slack channel specific to this candidate, for internal discussions between the members of your hiring team. This channel will not include the candidate.

Scheduling confirmation email

Here you can choose a template for the email that will be sent to a candidate when their interview is scheduled. Alternatively, you can create a new email here and save it as a template to be reused in the future.

This email is optional, but it can provide an extra candidate touchpoint to send them attachments, the agenda, or any other prep materials. As you schedule an individual candidate, you can customize the email further or disable sending it entirely.

Scheduling windows

Use this section to define the working hours during which you want to schedule interviews for this interview stage. For example, you might set the window as 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM, Monday to Friday, ensuring you select the relevant time zone too.

By filling out the scheduling window here, you save a step when scheduling a candidate, as the system will pre-fill the scheduling windows with the defaults you provide here. This way, you can ensure that candidates can only request time slots which are within your team’s normal working hours. If need be, you can still modify the scheduling windows for any individual candidate.

There may be other reasons you might want to set scheduling windows. For example, if there are certain stages you always schedule in the mornings, you can use the scheduling windows to reflect that.

Calendar events

Here you can set default values for the various calendar events tied to this job stage.

Scheduling calendar

For interview stages that have only one interviewer, you can set their calendar as the default here. You can always adjust this when scheduling any candidate, if you need to have someone else on the team conduct the interview for any reason.

Video conferencing & locations

Select your video conferencing option to use as the default, or remove video conferencing if this stage is always in-person to avoid confusing a candidate.

With video conferencing enabled, you can also set the meeting host for your video conferencing, including potential alternates if your first default is not possible.

For in-person interviews, if your team has a room dedicated to interviews you can set that as the default room. You can either choose a specific room, or use a room tag - in which case, when you come to schedule an interview, the system will choose from the pool of rooms which have the chosen tag.

Candidate-facing and Interviewer-facing calendar events

Here you can choose which templates to use for the calendar events that will be sent to each candidate, and to each interviewer. Alternatively, you can create a new event here and save it as a template to reuse in the future. As you schedule each candidate, you can customize the event message further.

Privacy

For interviews that are sensitive in nature, either for your team or the candidate, you can set the default for the calendar event to be private.

Workflow settings: Request availability

These settings apply when you send availability requests to candidates.

Availability request email

Here you can select a template for the email that will be sent to the candidate when you send them a request for availability. Alternatively, you can create a new email here and save it as a template to reuse in the future. As you schedule each candidate, you can customize the email further.

Toggle the Automated follow-up option to ON if you want to automatically send email follow-ups to candidates who haven’t submitted their availability within a given time frame. After you turn this on, enter the number of weekdays after which you want to send the follow-up email.

If this is your first time setting up a job and you haven’t created any email templates yet, we recommend reading our Gem Scheduling: Email templates article first to better understand email templates.

Availability selection preferences

These settings will help you define the availability windows and durations for this interview stage, to ensure your interviews are scheduled in a timely manner, and that the Scheduling system has enough time available in the candidate-defined blocks to arrange the interview(s).

• Default selection window: This can be set to the next 7, 14, 21, or 30 days. We recommend you select either 7 or 14 days to ensure the interview plan progresses in a timely manner.
• Minimum duration: The minimum length of time a candidate can submit in a block to ensure there is enough time to accommodate the interview.
• Minimum total availability: The smallest amount of time in total that candidates will have to submit. For interview stages with multiple interviews, such as panel interviews, you want to set this as the sum total of time you need for the interviews to be scheduled in sequence.
• Advanced notice: The minimum amount of notice (in hours) that candidates will have to provide, so that you have time to confirm the interview slots, and your teams have time to prepare for the scheduled interviews. We recommend setting this to 24 hours.

Workflow settings: Self-schedule

These settings apply when you send self-scheduling requests to candidates.

Self-scheduling request email

Here you can select a template for the email that will be sent to the candidate when you send them a self-scheduling link. Alternatively, you can create a new email here and save it as a template to reuse in the future. As you send each candidate a self-scheduling request, you can customize the email further.

Toggle the Automated follow-up option to ON if you want to automatically send email follow-ups to candidates who haven’t self-scheduled interviews within a given time frame. After you turn this on, enter the number of weekdays after which you want to send the follow-up email.

This email is optional; when you create a self-scheduling request, you can choose to send the candidate their self-scheduling link some other way, like through text message, WhatsApp, etc.

If this is your first time setting up a job and you haven’t created any email templates yet, we recommend reading our Gem Scheduling: Email templates article first to better understand email templates.

Booking preferences

These settings will help you define the availability windows and durations for this interview stage to ensure your interviews are scheduled in a timely manner and that the Scheduling system has enough time available in the candidate-defined blocks to arrange the interview or interviews.

• Advance notice: How much notice is required between an interview being scheduled and when it takes place. We recommend setting this to 24 hours so that candidates can’t schedule interviews the day they take place, while still allowing for plenty of flexibility.
• Booking options interval: The interval between time slots that candidates can book. We recommend setting this to 30 minutes so that time slots are on the hour or half-hour.
• Allow candidate to reschedule/cancel: The minimum amount of notice candidates need to give between rescheduling or canceling an interview and when it was originally due to take place. We recommend setting this at 0 hours to allow for rescheduling or canceling with no restrictions.

Repeat for any other stages

If you have more stages that you need to set up for scheduling, repeat these steps for each stage.

With all of the settings configured and saved, you can now start scheduling candidates for this job.

Additional resources

To learn more about Gem Scheduling, check out the following resources.

• Gem Scheduling: Navigation
• Gem Scheduling: Schedule an interview
• Gem Scheduling: The request availability workflow
• Gem Scheduling: The self-scheduling workflow

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
• Requirements
• Process
• Enable a stage for scheduling
• Create an interview
• Configure scheduling defaults
• Configure scheduling automation
• Configure scheduling settings
• Scheduling preferences
• Calendar events
• Workflow settings: Request availability
• Workflow settings: Self-schedule
• Repeat for any other stages
• Additional resources