Consider Calendly for Cool Calendaring Collaboration
One of the best tools that I have come across this last year is Calendly.
This is a good tool for anyone who has a calendar but can be a lifesaver when booking interviews with candidates for recruiting. Other documented use cases include Sales & Marketing, Customer Success and Account Management, Education and Consulting/Freelance.
How cool would it be to book my dentist appointments or car oil changes like this? 🤔🤔
Its ability to help streamline interview setup is fascinating. I setup the tool and it just helps make things much, much easier.
Better than that, my team members including hiring managers can setup the tool as well and it speeds interviewing along at a rapid pace.
Key Features
A few key items I like about Calendly out of the box:
- KEY: Integrates multiple calendars so I have an integrated “free/busy” for my whole life.
I pull in all my work, personal and volunteer work calendars so I can be sure meetings aren’t getting booked over the top of my daughter’s spelling bee, school Governing Board meeting, or that dentist appointment I keep blocking out of my mind. - UI is clean, clear and looks great on any device. Mobile-first FTW.
- Enables candidates/anyone to book and manage their own calendar appointments. This helps keep missed calls from happening since they can move/change meetings as they need to.
- Rescheduling is as easy as drag/drop. Once the meeting is on my normal calendar, I manage it like any other meeting. Since I am the scheduler, I can just move the meeting if I need to (not that weird “propose new time” thing that happens with some meetings).
- I can create space between meetings so I don’t get completely piled up. I call this my “side work”. The things I need to do between calls like writing notes or kicking off a few action items. If I get too back-to-back in my day, then I will start “dropping packets” and missing things… not good for my colleagues or my mental state. Calendly just lets be set a buffer between meetings. Nice.
My Sweet Setup
Most of my meetings are phone interviews, so I default to 30 min blocks. Occasionally, I need more time, but I find that to be rarely true.
In my setup, I first connect to my calendar and import my work, personal and other calendars that would affect my “free/busy” status. (Maybe I need to go through a tutorial of how to get all your calendars in one place)
I also choose block “office hours” that I am available or unavailable if there’s nothing on my calendar at all, which would be rare. This is just like choosing your work hours.
Next, under “Invitee Questions” I have added two quick fields. One is Phone Number / Location (so I know where this meeting is going down) and a “Brief purpose of this call / Title of position interested in” field so I can get a little insight into what awesomeness I am about to behold when I get on the phone.
Advanced Settings
Also, and this is key, under the “When Can People Book This Event” tab, I choose the Advanced option and enable the following:
- Availability Increments:
- Increments of 10 min means people can book a 30 min meeting starting at 3:00 or 3:10 pm if they choose.
- Max Events Daily:
- I dont use Max Events Per Day, but you might. It can be nice at times to limit the number of drive by appointments to 5 or 10 or something.
- Minimum Scheduling Notice:
- I also prevent anyone from booking a meeting within 1 hour from right now. I have to have a chance to prepare, after all.
- Event Buffers:
- You can also set event buffers, which give you a little block of time before or after each meeting for travel, setup, note taking or other things.
- Secret Event:
- Here, you can also choose to hide this meeting type from your public Calendly page, if keeping secrets is your kind of thing.
