How to schedule interviews in Greenhouse

So you’ve invested in the Greenhouse ATS - now it’s time to get the most out of it! Embedding Cronofy’s interview scheduling tools into your workflows leverages the power of your Greenhouse ATS to new heights -  we’ll show you how.

Interview scheduling is one of the biggest recruiter bugbears. When done manually, it can easily spiral into a time-wasting back-and-forth exchange between recruiter and candidate, which leaves both parties frustrated and stressed. It can even lead to candidates dropping out of the whole hiring process; we found in our Candidate Expectations report that 62% of respondents had left the recruitment process due to delays – particularly with interview scheduling – in the past. ATS platforms allow recruiters to keep track of candidate communications and speed up processes, which is why they’re so popular; more than 90% of Fortune 500 Companies currently use one.

What is an ATS?

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software used to streamline the hiring process. It can collect applications and candidate information, such as contact details and the role they’ve applied for. It also tracks where a candidate is in the recruitment process and any communication. Recruiters can easily organize and filter prospects based on experience and skill set. At its essence, an ATS automates the manual admin that can eat into time spent on valuable tasks, like relationship building and candidate sourcing.

Greenhouse is a popular ATS within the recruitment sector. In this guide, we’ll show you how to schedule an interview through Greenhouse and how integrating with Cronofy can save your recruitment team hundreds of hours a year.

Greenhouse provides recruiting and onboarding software as a service, and is one of the top ATS providers used by recruitment and HR teams. The system is known for being feature-rich and intuitive and is now used by over 4000 companies, including Airbnb and Time Inc., to streamline their hiring processes. It is customizable and scalable, with the ability to fit a business's hiring needs.

Greenhouse software allows you to craft hiring plans for every position, customize for each member of your hiring team, and report on the results.

The main features that the Greenhouse ATS provides are:

• Candidate sourcing and screening
• Storing candidate details
• Communication tracking
• Candidate behavior reporting
• Job application collection
• Advertising roles
• Interview organization
• Resume parsing.
  

Yes, Greenhouse users can schedule interviews through the platform's native scheduling tool. Their basic scheduling setup is available to all subscription tiers and splits the scheduling process into a two-step flow: creating an interview schedule and sending the interviewer invitations. Greenhouse also offers a 'Candidate self-schedule’ option to advanced and expert subscription holders, which provides candidates with a self-booking link. You can only use this feature when scheduling a single interview with just one interviewer.

The Cronofy integration makes interview scheduling simpler and quicker than ever, no matter how quickly your business scales. Here are some of the key ways it can enhance the existing functionality of the Greenhouse scheduling tool:

• Automated interviewer selection
  When using the Greenhouse native scheduling tool, you'll need to select your chosen interviewers for each candidate manually. To save time, users can set up Cronofy to automatically select the best interviewer for the role from a pool of potential interviewers. They will have already shared their calendars with Cronofy, so choosing the ideal person is easy.
  

• Instant booking and real-time availability
  The native tool requires interviews to be organized internally between interviewers before confirming with the candidate. The recruiter then needs to manually send an email of confirmation to the candidate through the Greenhouse platform. If you're working with many candidates and interviewers, Cronofy can help alleviate some admin from your day. Candidates are emailed automatically with a self-serving booking link once they move from one stage of the recruitment process to the next. The availability updates in real-time, so no chance of double-booking. Once the candidate selects a time, it automatically updates the candidate's and interviewer's calendars for instant confirmation.
  

• Scales with complex interview use cases
  Cronofy enhances Greenhouse's native offering with scalable, sophisticated interview scheduling use cases, such as panel interviews and sequenced interviews. The Greenhouse 'Candidate self-schedule' tool works similarly to the above; candidates can choose an interview slot using a scheduling link sent to them by email. The user can use this feature for single interviews and one interviewer, but what if you have a more complex interview setup?
  

• Compatibility with all calendar providers
  One of the most common roadblocks when organizing interviews through automation is calendar compatibility. There are so many calendar providers available through various digital platforms, and scheduling automation needs to talk to whichever one both the interviewer and candidate use. You can use the Greenhouse 'Candidate self schedule' offering with Google calendar or Office 365, but if you find you need a wider range of calendar integrations, Cronofy can help. We integrate with all calendar providers, including Apple calendar and Microsoft Exchange, to ensure the scheduling process is seamless for all.
  

• Candidate privacy
  Increasingly, recruiters are becoming aware of privacy and how important it is to protect the candidate data they work with daily. This information is completely safe and secure within the Greenhouse platform to external users, and Cronofy can enhance internal privacy. By selecting the 'Make calendar events private' tick box, a candidate's availability is private to the interviewer and ensures no colleagues can see this information.
  

Using the Greenhouse platform with Cronofy scheduling enhancements could just get you ahead of the competition in the war for talent. So how exactly can it make a difference to your recruitment process?

• Saves the recruiter time
  The thing that recruiters will always tell you they need more of is time. Admin is often a huge drain on resources when completed manually. Automating the interview scheduling process saves your precious time, so you can focus on what’s really important – finding the right candidate for the right role.  
  

• Improves the candidate experience
  With so many businesses looking to hire and job vacancies at a high, competition in the recruitment industry is fierce. The candidate experience means everything, and the hiring process is the first point of contact. Cronofy’s self-serve scheduling links make the candidate feel respected and appreciated - their time is precious.
  

• Speeds up time-to-hire
  Recruiters have to beat the competition with their speed-to-hire. They need to progress the hiring process from application, to interview, to job offer at a fast enough pace to keep the candidate's interest piqued. With Cronofy, there’s no time-wasting back-and-forth or interview scheduling delays, meaning you’re more likely to retain the best talent and find the perfect match for your role.
  

• Eliminates back-and-forth
  This is an inevitable part of manual scheduling: emails back and forth trying to arrange the best time and date for everyone to meet. This situation is made even more messy when taking a panel of interviewers into account. Cronofy automatically finds the best times depending on everyone’s calendar and leaves the candidate to choose from the options.
  

• All in one place
  There’s no need to switch tabs away from Greenhouse - the interview scheduling is native within the platform. All information and updates are synced between Greenhouse, the candidate record, and Cronofy for full visibility.

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Now that you know what Greenhouse is used for and how Cronofy can enhance its existing interview scheduling capabilities, we’ll show you step-by-step how you can quickly and easily schedule interviews in Greenhouse.

Step 1

First of all, make sure your interview plan is set up correctly in Greenhouse. This is where you can store the information about the role and the different stages of the interviewing process. You can find this in the Account Manager section of Greenhouse, within the ‘Job Setup’ tab.You can also assign a pool or panel of default interviewers in this section. Greenhouse has visibility of their calendars and so depending on the time the candidate chooses, an interviewer will be selected.

You can also assign a pool or panel of default interviewers in this section. Greenhouse has visibility of their calendars and so depending on the time the candidate chooses, an interviewer will be selected.

Step 2

Once this has been checked over, you can click into the ‘Candidates’ tab. Here you’ll find all your candidate details, including which role they’re applying for and what stage they’re at in the hiring process.

When you’re ready to take the candidate onto the interviewing stage, select the ‘Move stage’ button. From here you can select which stage you’d like to move the candidate to.

As Cronofy has been set up in a way to listen to recruitment stage changes in Greenhouse, so as soon as the candidate has been moved, the automatic email saved in your Cronofy account will be sent to them complete with a personalized, self-serving scheduling link. If you click into the activity feed, you’ll see the email that has been sent.

Step 3

When the candidate clicks into this link, they’ll be directed to a branded calendar page, with proposed interview times and dates that reflect when the interviewer is available. The candidate can choose a time that suits them best, putting the power in their hands.

Once the candidate has agreed on a time, this will automatically populate in both their own and the interviewers calendars, regardless of what calendar provider they use. This information will also be updated in Greenhouse.

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Congratulations, you’ve just scheduled your first interview using the Cronofy embedded tools in Greenhouse!

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You can use the same process throughout the different interview stages, setting up correlating automatic emails and assigning specific interviewers. Simple!

Cronofy’s automated interview scheduling features can be embedded seamlessly into your existing hiring workflows within the Greenhouse platform. Your Cronofy admin sets up your Scheduling Rules and automations before so they’re ready to roll out and use in your hiring workflows. Here’s a quick overview of what you can personalize for your hiring process.

First of all, you set up your Greenhouse scheduling triggers in the ‘Integrations’ section of your Cronofy account. These triggers listen in to any changes to the candidate’s status in Greenhouse – for example being moved from the application to the phone interview stage – and communicate automatically with Cronofy, to initiate the triggers you’ve created. You can design triggers for each stage of the hiring process by clicking ‘Create New Trigger’. Once these are set up, everything happens automatically, offering a consistent and efficient hiring experience for candidates and recruiters.

Once you’ve clicked into a specific trigger, you can set up Scheduling Groups. These rules allow you to define which calendar or group of calendars’ availability you use. For example, if the initial screening call can be carried out by any one on your recruitment team then you can group them together, choose for only one from the pool to be required ‘available’ and the candidate just chooses a time that works best for them. Further along in the process, a panel interview for a particular role may need certain people to be mandatory and a few people to be optional.

You can also select whether you want to ‘Make Calendar Events Private’. It’s important to protect candidates' data privacy, which is why we offer a tick box that allows you to make any  calendar events and interviews that are created, private to only you and them - others can’t view their personal details on the event.

There’s an ‘Email Template’ section, where you can upload the email copy you’d like to go out to your candidate automatically once they’ve moved onto another stage of the hiring process. This comes complete with a self-serving link that you can create in the ‘Scheduler’ section of your Cronofy account.

Once you’ve got your scheduling rules set up, you’re ready to go into Greenhouse and start moving your candidates through the recruitment process! ‍