Inviting Applicants to Interview
Overview
There are 6 main steps involved in inviting applicants to interview and finalizing your interview schedule. Before sending email invitations, you’ll need to complete several setup tasks. Once invitations are sent and applicants begin selecting their preferred interview dates or registering for sessions (based on your scheduling configuration), you can move on to finalizing your interview schedule.
1. Send Applicants to the Interview Portal
In the Program Portal, once you’ve chosen applicants to interview, you can send them to the Interview Portal individually or in bulk.
To send applicants to the Interview Portal individually, open their full application and click Send to Interview Portal.
To send applicants to the Interview Portal in bulk, select the applicants from the application grid and click Interview Portal.
If you add an applicant by mistake, you can remove them in the Interview Portal via the Applicant Profile panel, as long as they're not assigned to a session. If needed, you can always re-add them from the Program Portal.
2. Adjust Program Settings
From the Interview Portal menu, open Program Settings (gear icon in the bottom left) and review the following:
- Notifications Settings: choose which staff members, if any, receive automated emails about canceled interviews and declined invitations.
- Applicants Self-Scheduling: if enabled, applicants are automatically assigned to their preferred session. If disabled, you’ll need to assign them manually. Most programs enable this feature.
- Applicant Session Waitlist: this option allows applicants to waitlist themselves for specific sessions. If enabled, when applicants accept your invitation, they’ll see only open sessions for their first choice. Once they've chosen their preferred session, they'll see all full sessions and can add themselves to the waitlist for any of them. Once a spot opens, applicants can be notified in one of two ways.
- First-Come Waitlist: when a spot opens, all waitlisted applicants are notified. The first to respond gets the spot.
- Sequential Waitlist: applicants are notified one at a time in the order they joined the waitlist. If someone doesn't respond within the time limit you set (e.g., 24 hours), they move to the bottom of the list, and the next person is notified.
- Applicant Reminder Email: sends a reminder email to applicants remaining in the Invited and Ready for Scheduling status after a specified number of days since their initial invitation.
- Session Management Deadline: sets how many days in advance applicants must accept, reschedule, or cancel their interviews.
Example of Waitlist Settings (Program View)
Example of Applicant View: Joining Waitlists
3. Enable Session Visibility
For each session, enable Session Visibility so that applicants can see the session when you send your invitations.
4. Move Applicants to the "Invited and Ready for Scheduling" Status
This status ensures applicants can see and select your sessions.
5. Send Your Invitations
Once you've completed the steps above, you can send your interview invitation emails. Applicants can access the Interview Portal directly from their application to accept or decline the invitation and select their preferred interview dates. When sending these emails, consider adding a link to the Participating in Interviews guide for applicants, which provides key information about using the portal.