Recruitment Marketing Public

Overview

The "Schedule a Conversation" functionality within Recruitment Marketing makes it easy for you to schedule initial 1:1 conversations between a potential candidate and members of your Talent Acquisition team. Making that first person-to-person contact with a candidate can be a vital part of engaging and attracting the best talent to your organisation, and the "Schedule a Conversation" feature removes the administrative burden of trying to arrange a mutually convenient time for you to connect.

Our partnership with Cronofy, a world-leading provider of integrated scheduling technology, allows you to easily connect your team's work calendars to the scheduling engine with just a few simple clicks. Once that's done, your team can embed links, which allow candidates to select available time slots from your calendars, directly into the communications you send the candidates from the Recruitment Marketing system.

When you generate the invitation links for the candidates, you can easily choose what time slots you make available for them. For users of GApps or Office 365, you can automatically include conferencing links. Once a candidate has selected a time slot, not only will the meeting automatically show up in your work calendar, but the candidate will receive an invitation to ensure that they can add it to their calendar as well. As you would expect, the status of those invites can also be viewed directly from the candidate's profile within Recruitment Marketing.

Initial Configuration

Before you can use the "Schedule a Conversation" feature for the first time, you will need to connect your work calendar to the system. To complete the initial configuration steps, refer to Schedule a Conversation: Initial Configuration. 

Acceptable Use Policy

Unless otherwise agreed, our partnership with Cronofy allows Recruitment Marketing customers with the CRM module to utilise a maximum of 25 actively synchronised calendars per calendar month at no additional cost.

An actively synchronised calendar is defined as any connected calendar which has been included in a scheduling request, either as the "Event Host" or as an "Other Attendee", during the calendar month.

If your organisation requires more than the inclusive allowance noted above, subject to appropriate commercial agreements, an additional monthly allocation of actively synchronised calendars can be made available. Additional capacity is charged annually and is available in increments of 25 actively synchronised calendars.

Creating a scheduling link

Once you've connected your calendar to the system, you are all set to start generating scheduling links which can be shared with candidates.

To ensure that candidates can schedule themselves into a 1:1 conversation without needing to manually enter their contact information, the scheduling links which the system generates are specific to the candidate you are communicating with. As you generate the link, the candidate's information is automatically attached by the system.

To generate a scheduling link:

1. Navigate to the candidate profile screen for the appropriate candidate.
2. Click the Emails tab at the top of the profile screen.
3. Click New to launch the Compose Email dialogue.
4. Compose a new email to the candidate, or select to use an existing Saved Reply.
5. Place your cursor in the body of the email at the place where you'd like to insert the scheduling link and click the Schedule button.
   
6. If you haven't already completed the initial set-up, you'll be prompted to do that now. Refer to the Initial Set-up section above for more information.
7. If you are not already logged into Cronofy, you'll be prompted to log in using your GApps or Office 365 account.
8. Once logged in, you will be presented with the scheduling set-up screen. Complete the relevant information:
   1. Event host - Will be pre-filled to the name of the logged-in user, but it can be changed to other users from your organisation who have also connected their calendars.
   2. Invitee - Will be pre-filled with the name of the candidate.
   3. Other attendees - You can add the details of other members of your organisation who will attend the session. If those people have also connected their calendars, their availability will also be taken into account when the system generates available time slots.
   4. Title - Enter a title for the conversation you are scheduling.
   5. Location - Optionally enter the location (if relevant).
   6. Duration - Set the duration of the conversation.
   7. Description - Optionally add a description for the candidate.
   8. Tags - This can be ignored.
   9. Files - Optionally attach any files you'd like to have attached to the calendar confirmation.
   10. When will they be able to choose?
       1. Working hours - This makes available any free slots during the working hours defined in your calendar during the next x days.
       2. Custom hours - This allows you to select available slots from a visual representation of your calendar, and also specify whether your availability should be overrideable.
          
       3. Specific slots - Enter specific slots that the candidate can select from, and also specify whether your availability should be overrideable.
          
   11. Rescheduling - Indicates whether the candidate should be able to reschedule once they've selected a time slot.
9. Once you are happy with your selections, click the Create Invite Link button.
10. The scheduling link will be automatically added to the body of your email message.
11. Finalise your email message, and click Send Email.

Note: You could also copy the scheduling link, and add it to other communications such as an SMS message to the candidate.

Viewing the status of the scheduling link

Once you have generated a scheduling link for a candidate, the status of that link can be viewed directly from the candidate's profile:

Selecting a time slot

Once the candidate has received the communication containing the scheduling link, they will be able to self-select a time slot from the options you've made available to them.

Upon clicking the scheduling link, they will be presented with a screen which shows the available options, localised to their timezone (based on their browser settings):

Once they select a slot, they will be asked to "Confirm", and once they have done so, they will receive a confirmation message. If you opt to allow rescheduling, that option will be available here also.

All attendees will receive a confirmation email, allowing them to add the session to their calendars, and the session will automatically be added to the host's calendar.

The status of the invite will also update on the candidate's profile within Recruitment Marketing, showing the date and time of the slot which the candidate schedule themselves into:

Additionally, the slot will also show on the "Scheduled Conversations" section of the host's dashboard:

FAQs

Can we use the "Schedule a Conversation" functionality to arrange interviews later in the recruitment process?

The "Schedule a Conversation" functionality within Recruitment Marketing is intended to help facilitate those important initial conversations at the top of the recruitment funnel. It should complement the "Interview Scheduling" functionality available within your Applicant Tracking system and is not intended as a replacement.

Can multiple recruiters be invited to be included in a scheduling request?

When creating the scheduling link, you can specify "Other Attendees" from your organisation. If those individuals have connected their work calendar to the system (by completing the initial set-up steps), then their availability will be taken into account when the system determines the available slots to present to the candidate.

Can we generate scheduling links to share with candidates who are not yet in our CRM?

At this stage, scheduling links can only be generated for specific invitees. Based on customer feedback, we may consider adding functionality to allow more generic links to be created which would allow candidates who are currently unknown to the CRM to schedule a slot.