How to use Calendly to schedule interviews like a pro

This is an Eval Central archive copy, find the original at evalacademy.com.

Scheduling can be a nightmare. We have all had the experience of trying to schedule a time to meet with someone and the subsequent cascade of back and forth availability emails that ensue. Now multiply that by the number of people you need to interview in your evaluation (we are currently working on an evaluation where we are interviewing up to 60 people!).

Back in the day, we would have built a healthy line item in our proposal to account for the time required to schedule all those people. However, about three years ago we discovered a tool called Calendly that changed our interview scheduling process for the good.

This article describes how to use Calendly to schedule interviews in three simple steps.

What is Calendly?

But first, a bit more about Calendly. Calendly is a scheduling platform that allows you to set up and book meetings in a seamless, integrated way.

How does it do that you ask? First, Calendly connects to your calendar, so it automatically knows your availability. Second, it allows you to create ‘events’ and specifics around that event. For example, if you need to recruit people for a 30-minute interview you would set up a ’30-minute interview’ event.

Calendly also integrates with a number of other platforms like Microsoft Teams to automatically insert meeting links into meeting invites.

Still not completely sure? Let’s walk through three steps for how to schedule 30-minute individual interviews.

Steps to schedule interviews in Calendly

Step 1: Create an Event in Calendly

Sign-in to your account. Select the ‘Create’ button. It will give you the option to create an Event, choose a One-off meeting, or create a Meeting poll. Select ‘Event type.’

After selecting ‘Event type’ a window will open that will give you four different Event options.

For scheduling one-on-one interviews, you would choose the One-on-One option at the top. However, if you have multiple people on your team who would be conducting the interviews, then you would select the Round Robin feature. The Round Robin feature allows interviewees to see the availability of all the interviewers on your team whose calendars you have synced to Calendly. The other options, Collective and Group, could be used if you were setting up group interviews.

Once you select the One-on-One option, a window will open where you can insert the details of your Event, including the event name, location and description. For the location, a drop down menu will appear that will give you the option to choose a physical location, phone call, or various online options (e.g., Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Zoom, GoToMeeting, etc.). Alternatively, you can even select an option that asks the interviewee to select the location (remember when we did things in person?).

When you hit ‘Next,’ another window will open where you can customize when interviewees book their interview. For example, if you need to complete the interviews in the next 30 days then you could indicate that. This is also where you could set the days and times people could choose for their interview, including date overrides (maybe you plan to take a day off!). You probably don’t want people to book back-to-back interviews, since some interviews can run long. To avoid back-to-back scheduling you can add time before or after an event to give yourself some buffer.

Once you’ve set up all the details for interviews you will have a custom Calendly link that is ready to share with your interviewees.

Step 2: Insert your Calendly link into the interview recruitment material

When Three Hive conducts interviews, we often prepare an information sheet that outlines the specifics of the interview, including what we are asking interviewees to do (download a template here). This information sheet is a great place to insert the Calendly link.

However, if you are recruiting people via email you will also want to insert the link into the body of the email that goes out to potential interviewees (make sure to bold it and make it visible so people don’t miss it!) An additional option is to add a scheduling page to your website. We haven’t done this for interview scheduling yet, but it is an option in Calendly.

Step 3: Send out the Calendly link

When you send out the link out to your potential interviewees they will click on it (hopefully!) and be brought to your event page that will look something like this:

Once the person selects the date and time that works for them, they will be brought to a form to enter their name, email and any other information they want to include to prepare for the meeting. The person is also given the option to ‘Add Guests.’

Once all the information is entered correctly they will receive a confirmation page and a calendar invitation that is sent directly to their email. The meeting will show up in the interviewer’s calendar – no back and forth trying to find times and locations.

Calendly also has features that allows you to build in automations, such as email and text notifications and thank you emails. All the interviewee and interviewer need to do is prep and show up for the interview.

Calendly really has been a game-changer for our consultancy. It has saved us so much time, but more importantly, also provided our clients (and evaluation participants) with a more seamless experience. Do you have some upcoming interviews you need to schedule for your evaluation? Give Calendly a try – I promise you won’t go back!

If you’re looking for some other ideas for ways to streamline your evaluation consultancy then check out this Eval Academy article: Business Tools You Need to Run Your Evaluation Consultancy.

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