How to make scheduling interviews simple with Microsoft Bookings

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Interview scheduling can be hard for recruiters and other HR pros. There are lots of competing needs from candidates and the schedules of your interviewers. Did you know you can use Microsoft Bookings to make this really simple and a better experience for everyone involved?
Chapters:
0:01 Introduction
0:18 Solution use case
1:14 Create a new Bookings calendar
1:39 Settings for interviews
3:19 Set up a service for interviews
6:42 Use Virtual Appointments in Teams
8:01 Send a link to the service to your candidates
8:48 Demo of self-service booking
9:33 Demo of limited availability of interviewer
10:36 Seamless web browser join
11:59 Conclusion
Check out our website at www.brightideasagency.com
Connect with Nick on LinkedIn at / nickdc or the Bright Ideas Agency page at / brightideasagency
Apart from publicly accessible information all user data or other related information shared in this video is created for demonstration purposes only. User accounts, passwords, or other data used as part of any demonstrations shown in this video have been created specifically for that purpose and are not any individual or company's private information or data.
Bright Ideas Agency is an Ohio Limited Liability Company. The content of this video is for informational and entertainment purposes only. No guarantees are given in connection with the information shared and you should seek independent technical or business advice before implementing anything you see in this video. If you want to hire us for your project, visit www.brightideasagency.com and get in touch.

[@brightideasagency]

What tools do you use to help set-up interviews with the minimum fuss? Will you be adding Microsoft Bookings to your interview scheduling process?

[@cece09251]

Hi Bright Ideas Agency. I followed your video tutorial to set a service for a job interview for Jul 31 with custom hours (8 a.m. - 11 a.m. and 2:15 p.m - 4 p.m, 45 minutes per interview per candidate, no buffer) and saved all changes, . I then opened the service boking page link in a new window and tested making a booking for July 31, no availability is shown available unfortunately. Instead the message "There is no availability on this date. Please choose another one." is shown up. Have I missed something? Could you please help? Thank you.

[@brightideasagency]

The availability you’ll see is a combination of what you set up for the service plus the availability on the included user calendars. Check there are corresponding available times and recheck the availability (service and/or business) in Bookings. Thanks for watching

[@ChloeLynn-tm4fq]

my issue is that people keep booking then rescheduling minutes before the interview is supposed to start. How can I make it so they need to connect with me to be able to reschedule? Any help is appreciated!

[@brightideasagency]

Thanks for watching. No, there is no explicit capability to do this. The point of using a tool like Bookings is to allow users to self-service manage their appointments. However, I would suggest adding terms to the effect of "Reschedules with less than X notice will only be honored in exceptional circumstances. If you need to reschedule at late notice please email Y to provide an explanation, otherwise your appointment will be cancelled and you will no longer be considered for Z". You could also attach this to some sort of Power Automate flow to run the late notice change through an approval workflow so you can automate removing it from your calendar. Assuming these are job interviews, I would probably just take what you're outlining as an intolerable red flag about that candidate's reliability without explanation.

[@sierrajones6087]

Thank you for this video! Is it ever possible to create pre-set interview slots (As in the case of an interview day where you don't want candidates selecting random times, but instead want them to choose from pre-determined slots)?

[@brightideasagency]

Thanks for watching. You cannot do this directly, but by using a combination of availability in the Bookings calendar and selective blocking of at least one participant's calendar, you could effectively achieve what you're asking. Say you have a schedule open 8-5:30, and you 60min slots with 30min blocked time afterwards. If you block your calendar at 9:30-10:00, 11:30-12:00, 1:30-2:00, 3:30-4, then your candidate will see availability at 8am, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, and will only be able to book one of those times. There may be other ways to achieve the same by really playing with the service availability, but this is the simplest solution I can think of.

[@rachelwilkinson9210]

Thank you for this video! Do you know if I can set up an interview schedule where a candidate can select a timeslot that works for them when 2 people (of 8 staff) from the staff list are available. So the interview panel is not the same depending on the time? EG. the candidate can select a 9am interview slot as 2 people from the staff are free but the other 6 are not?

[@brightideasagency]

Thank for watching. What you are suggesting is not possible with Bookings as multi-staff Bookings work on the basis of all being available, not a subset group. It would conceptually be possible to develop a custom solution extending Bookings to achieve this result using Power Automate and some sort of web frontend (possibly Power Pages but more likely a generic web app with application access into your Graph API Bookings data). This would be neither simple or cheap. If you'd like to connect for me to explain the process of how you might go about building this capability, drop me a message at our website at www.brightideasagency.com

[@rachelwilkinson9210]

@@brightideasagency thanks, I thought that might be the case!

[@AndyG5435]

What about when a candidate is trying to join the interview from their cell phone and does NOT have MS Teams installed. Aside from downloading the app, is there a web based function similar to the desktop mode described in the video?

[@brightideasagency]

Thanks for watching. If you select to send an anonymous link when you set up your service the meeting will always open in the browser on mobile or desktop whether or not a Teams client is installed. This is designed to protect a user's privacy - perhaps you are joining a medical appointment from a work device. Where this will not work is in situations where someone wants to join voice only using a phone call rather than data - in this case a different solution would be needed.

[@AndyG5435]

@@brightideasagency Thank you for getting back so quickly.. I must be doing something wrong then because the anonymous link is checked but its still not working. Its almost like there are two accounts. One for the "Administrator" and one for the actual individual "booking page" and the two are operating separate from one another??

[@brightideasagency]

@@AndyG5435 there can be multiple booking calendars and then multiple services in each booking calendar - anonymous links must be set on the individual service level for each booking. Remember, this only applies to the person who is the guest at the booking, your internal staff attending the meeting will still join through their teams client.