Purpose

The purpose of these scheduling workflows is to give the client users access to scheduling events permissions through perm_ schedule_events.

Audience

This guide is intended for use by stakeholders who are responsible for scheduling interviews of prospective candidates.

Types of scheduling

There are four types of scheduling that Eightfold has available for interview schedulers:

• Open scheduling: Clicking on a link displays all the free slots of a particular interviewer and a scheduler can pick the most appropriate time for an interview.
• Request to Schedule: Choosing the request to schedule option can allow a scheduler to assign a coordinator for multiple candidate interviews at the same time.
• Pipeline and Profile Wizard based scheduling : Using the scheduling wizard option in Pipeline and profile sections can help schedule the entire interview process with prospective candidates in one go right from the interviewer name to Whatsapp notification.
  

Let’s look at all these scheduling options in detail.

Open scheduling

This is a free form of scheduling where a link can be accessed by a user who has the permission for perm_schedule_events and has connected his/her calendar to Eightfold. The user can share the link with anyone who will then be able to view an interviewer’s free slots and schedule interviews accordingly. They can also have a look at who the interviewer(s) is, the window of availability, and name & duration of the meeting. The Open type scheduling template selected by the scheduler determines the conference link.

The link can be accessed from one of four entry points:
1. Account > Calendar
2. Scheduling Center
3. Chrome Extension
4. {{openSchedulingLink}} variable

Fig: 1.1 New Open Template type that can be cloned

Multiple Open scheduling links can be set-up for each user, per user. While all of them can be accessed only from Account > Calendar, only the link designated as Default gets picked from the remaining entry points, mentioned above.

Fig: 1.2 Cloning the system default template to set up a personal template

Any link shared is powered by the Open type scheduling template selected. The important thing here is that changing the template will impact the user clicking on the link to book a slot.

Fig 1.3 Selecting the template to be associated with the link

Fig: 1.4 Open Scheduling link in Scheduling Center

Fig: 1.5 Open Scheduling variable for use in outreach emails

Meetings using Scheduling link only start showing on the Scheduling Center after a meeting is set-up by the user, with whom the link is shared. Once set up, it is just like any other meeting which can be rescheduled or declined by the candidate or the organizer.

Request to Schedule

Request to schedule is an accompanying workflow for Scheduling aimed at making the handshake between the recruiter & coordinator easier, eliminating the need for repurposed stage advance notifications, interview schedule request forms or off platform messages.

The workflow involves three steps:

1. Recruiter selects one or more candidates from a Pipeline (Or from the candidate profile) & clicks on Request to Schedule action. By default, this is an option in the Schedule button & can be reconfigured by the customer.
2. The scheduling wizard opens up where a coordinator needs to be assigned. This is the only mandatory field to send the request to the Coordinator though practically recruiters. You can pass additional information about the interview to the scheduler by adding a scheduling note, which will only reflect if you open the Request to Schedule action from the pipeline.
3. Once the request is sent by the recruiter, the coordinator then gets a notification from which he can access the request in Scheduling dashboard & complete the scheduling using the scheduling wizard.

A. There are two ways in which coordinator assignment works.

• If the coordinator information is being synced to Eightfold from the ATS as a custom field & populate_coordinator_from_ats is set as true in the scheduling_config of the group ID, the coordinator is automatically picked up from the sync. Should the user want to change it in the wizard before confirming the request to schedule, (s)he can but the change won’t persist for future requests for which it will pick up the coordinator from the sync by default.
• If populate_coordinator_from_ats is not defined/set as false or there is no coordinator information being synced to Eightfold from the ATS as a custom field, the recruiter will need to enter the coordinator the first time they are using the Request to Schedule action for a position. Only users with perm_schedule_actions can be added as an assigned coordinator. For subsequent Request to Schedule actions, the last assigned coordinator for that position will be remembered & auto-populated.

B. Scheduling note is a free form field which the recruiter uses to share explicit scheduling instructions to the coordinator. To ensure the recruiter shares all the requisite instructions with the coordinator, templates for the scheduling note can be saved as part of the scheduling template.

C. Rest of the fields are the standard fields in the scheduling wizard & are directly passed to the Coordinator in the wizard when (s)he opens the request.

Adding to this, users can add attachments to email interview invites while scheduling, creating a richer user experience.

Attachment properties:

• Users can attach multiple files (maximum of 6 are supported).
• Each file must be <3 MB and the overall size of all attachments combined must be <8 MB.
• PDF, DOC or DOCX, TXT, PPT or PPTX, ODP and ZIP file formats are supported.

Attachment limitations:

• This support is ONLY provided in the candidate email communications template (part of Scheduling templates).
• This functionality is not extended for the reminder emails that are triggered to the candidate if (s)he has not RSVPed to the initial invite.

Fig: 2.1 Request to Schedule action in Pipeline

Fig: 2.2 Assigning a Coordinator

Fig: 2.3 Defining a template for Scheduling note in Scheduling template

Fig: 2.4 Scheduling note being passed from Scheduling template

Wizard based scheduling (Pipeline and Profile)

The scheduling wizard can be accessed using the Schedule action in Pipeline, Profile & Scheduling Center (also called Scheduling requests tab for Coordinators). The wizard based scheduling is supported without associating a Profile with a Position as well.

The first screen of the scheduling wizard is where all the details of the interview rounds are added - Round name(s), duration(s), interviewer(s), feedback form(s), conferencing link(s), room(s), live coding link(s) and the interview(s) timing is determined.

EF supports three modes of selecting an interview timing:

• Suggest times
• Specific time
• Let candidate select

Note: If more than one round is defined on the first screen, only Suggested times & Specific time scheduling options will be available for the scheduler to use.

1. Suggested times: Eightfold automatically identifies the available slots from the interviewers' calendars in the next 14 days & presents them to the scheduler to pick from. This is particularly helpful when one or more interviewers are spread across multiple time zones. If rooms were enabled in the first screen, the scheduler will have to select the building which will then offer the rooms available in each time slot.
2. Specific time: The scheduler can key in a specific time & room for the interview to be scheduled. This option doesn’t confirm if the specific slot is available or not but simply places the event on the interviewers' calendar(s).
3. Let the candidate choose: The scheduler doesn’t pick the specific interview time here but instead selects a window length which then sends a request to the candidate to pick one slot from all the available slots of the interviewer(s) over the window length days. The window length starts from when the candidate opens the link to pick the slot & not from when the scheduler sends the request.

The second screen is where the scheduler can preview the email notification that’ll be sent to the candidate. In addition the scheduler can choose to send SMS and / or WhatsApp scheduling notification to the candidate. More on that below in the Scheduling SMS & WhatsApp notifications section.

CC attendee

EightFold also supports CCing an interviewer in Wizard-based scheduling, Open scheduling link as well as Event scheduling. For more information, read Optional Interviewer.