Sometimes when you’re scheduling an interview, you might want to just place holds on the interviewers’ calendars without sending any confirmation to the candidate yet - Gem Scheduling gives you the tools to do this. In this article we will talk you through some common workflows, then demonstrate how to place schedules on hold, how to edit holds, and how to confirm held schedules.
The two most common workflows we see for this are:
- Your interviewers have very busy schedules. Instead of asking the candidate for availability first and then finding a time for the interviewers that work within those times, you find blocks of times that work for your interviewers, and then you ask candidates which of the blocks they prefer.
- You’ve found a schedule that works for almost all interviewers, but there’s one conflict that you’re not sure if you can book over. However, while you’re checking on this conflict, if you don’t block off this time for your other interviewers, they will probably schedule other meetings during this time, so you want to create temporary events to indicate that an interview will eventually happen at that time.
How are holds different than scheduling normally?
When putting a schedule on hold instead of scheduling it normally, the Gem Scheduling system will:
- For interviewer calendar events, add “[HOLD]” to the event titles.
- Make a note in your ATS that schedules were put on hold.
And will not:
- Send out the candidate calendar event.
- Send out the confirmation email, even if you enabled it.
- Report the interview times to your ATS.
- Create the video conferencing link yet (if you have video conferencing enabled and don’t use Zoom. If you do use Zoom, the system will create the link so that it can hold the Zoom host as well).
Once you’re ready to confirm a held schedule, the system will then continue creating all of the items that weren’t previously created.
How do I place a schedule on hold?
To get started, you don’t need to configure anything special for the stage or candidate. To create holds for a candidate, just go through the normal scheduling process. Once you get to the Schedule step, you’ll see a button for holding schedules. Select this to hold the schedule - at this point you can choose whether or not to send notification emails to the interviewers.
Everything else about the scheduling process will be exactly the same.
Can I edit a held schedule?
Just like non-held schedules, you can change anything about the interviews (e.g., swap out interviewers, change times, enable/disable video conferencing, etc). You can also edit the candidate calendar event and the confirmation email as well.
How do I confirm a held schedule?
Once you have a held schedule that you’re ready to confirm and send out details to the candidate, you can confirm the hold from either the Scheduling Queue, or the candidate’s record. Wherever you see a button for the default scheduling method (either Schedule or Self-schedule), select the arrow next to it and choose Confirm hold from the dropdown.
This will jump you to the Review step of the scheduling process, with everything already filled in using the held schedule’s details. At this point, you still have the opportunity to edit the schedule before confirming it.
Once everything looks good, you can confirm the schedule, and the system will start making the changes to finalize it, including sending communication to the candidate. It will also automatically delete any other held schedules you may have had for this candidate as well.
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.
- How are holds different than scheduling normally?
- How do I place a schedule on hold?
- Can I edit a held schedule?
- How do I confirm a held schedule?