Welcome to Lever!

If you haven't read our guide How to get started with Lever, please review that article first. Depending on how your organization is structured, the interview scheduling process may be handled by a dedicated employee, a recruiting team, or individual hiring managers. Make sure to confirm who handles candidate outreach and scheduling at your organization before diving in!

Once you're able to navigate your Lever account and you're familiar with your candidate pipeline, you're ready for more advanced tasks like:

• How to understand feedback forms
• How to schedule an interview
• How to schedule an interview through Easy Book
• How to keep track of your interview tasks

How to understand feedback forms

Feedback forms are short questionnaires which are assigned to members of your organization to fill out after speaking with a candidate. Feedback forms live in your Feedback form settings page and can be customized by admins at your organization. Make sure your feedback forms are configured for your role before you begin scheduling interviews - that's why we put this section first!

Your account comes with a few default feedback forms built in, but these are completely customizable. Many customers create custom feedback forms for different roles, or for different stages of their interview process:

Left: default feedback form, Right: customized feedback form

Once you've defined the interview questions for each stage of your process, you can help the team stay organized by building out your feedback forms.

One key best practice we want to highlight: whether you start with the default feedback forms or build your own custom versions, we strongly recommend that you make your overall rating question required on every feedback form. This will ensure your team's feedback is action-oriented so you make hiring decisions faster, and will help you find top-rated candidates quickly. Simply click the asterisk until it turns orange to make the question required.

How to schedule an interview

When you're ready to schedule an interview with a candidate, make sure they're in the right pipeline stage (e.g. Phone Screen) and then click the calendar icon or the blue box prompt at the top of their profile:

You'll see a pop-up scheduling window. On the first screen, you'll be asked to set the basic details of the interview:

You'll input: the date (and time zone), the start time of the interview, the length of the interview, the interviewer, the feedback form filled out afterwards, and the conference room (optional). You can also choose to add this interview to a shared interviews calendar or your own.

You can click "Add Interview" to create a new interview segment, and you can drag and drop multiple interviewers into the same segment. You can automate the scheduling process for these complex interviews through a default interview plan:

When you're finished, click "Schedule" to proceed to the next screen - note that your invitation will not go out to anyone yet!

In the next window, you can add a confidential note (only visible to your interviewers - not the candidate), set up feedback reminders, and decide whether to send a candidate an email and/or a calendar invite. We usually send both!

All done? Click "Preview" to reach the final screen:

There's no action necessary here - this is just one last chance to review the details of your interview and make any final adjustments. If everything looks correct, click "Send All" to send out invitations to your interviews and, if you chose to do so, your candidate. You're all done!

You'll see this upcoming interview on the candidate's profile, as well as on your candidate list view:

Sometimes a candidate may be considered for multiple opportunities at a time. If you try to schedule an interview for a candidate who already has an upcoming interview scheduled for another opportunity, you'll be able to see this on the candidate's profile:

How to schedule an interview through Easy Book

If you're setting up a 1:1 phone interview, you can skip all the tedious back-and-forth scheduling emails by sending your candidates an Easy Book link! They'll be able to view your available time slots and self-schedule the phone interview at a convenient time.

First, begin by configuring your first Easy Book link in your Easy Book settings:

Email your link to a candidate or multiple candidates at a time. You can simply drop a link into an email via the dropdown menu:

Sending out the same Easy Book link over and over again? Add your link to an email template:

You're all set! You'll be able to see which candidates have already received Easy Book links, on individual profiles or on the candidates list view:

A few things to remember about Easy Book links:

• Only you can see the Easy Book links you've created. You cannot see Easy Book links created by other users.
• You can create an Easy Book link on behalf of someone else. For example, a recruiting coordinator can create an Easy Book link on behalf of each of the hiring managers for whom she schedules. (Make sure you have access to their calendars by checking your email provider settings.)

How to keep track of your interview tasks

If there's one single feature which distinguishes a Lever power user, it's our call-to-action buttons, located in the interview stages of your Interview pipeline. (Don't see your buttons? Read this.)

Use these buttons to keep track of your next steps and ensure candidates don't fall through the cracks:

What's next?

If you haven't done so already, read our guide to How to get started with Lever. If you're an admin, read our guide How to get started with Lever as an admin.

Before you begin interviewing, make sure you have all the routine email templates you need, and that your feedback forms are customized. Need help? Check out our feedback form templates and our email templates.

If you'd like to see what the interview experience looks like for colleagues with an Interviewer access role, see our guide How to get started with Lever (Interviewer access role).