Configuring and Working with Interview Templates

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to configure individual and group interview templates to standardize recruitment workflows and automate candidate scheduling.

Interview Templates

Interview templates in SmartRecruiters help standardize and streamline your hiring process. They let you preconfigure interview settings, automate scheduling, and deliver a better experience for both the recruiting team and candidates.

These templates capture essential details for each interview step, such as interview duration, the required number of interviewers, communication settings (including email templates), and additional options like interview format and location. Using interview templates ensures consistency and efficiency in scheduling and conducting interviews.

Interview templates are useful in any recruitment process, but they are especially valuable for high‑volume hiring. They enable candidates to self-schedule both individual and group interviews with minimal involvement from the hiring team, while still ensuring that the right interview type and the right interviewers are scheduled, creating a smooth, consistent experience for candidates.

Interview Template form to create an individual interview template with fields for name, preferred hiring step, duration, location, hiring roles , and candidate email.

Key Components of an Interview Template:

Interview Duration: Specify the length of the interview to allocate appropriate time slots.
Minimum number of Interviewers: Assign the required minimum number of interviewers from your hiring team. The system can automatically select available interviewers based on their availability and scheduling preferences.
Communication Settings: Link email templates or define custom email subjects, bodies, and attachments for candidate invitations, reminders, and follow-ups.
Additional Settings: Configure options like interview format (for example, video, in-person, phone), location, and whether the invitation should be private.

Create an Individual Interview Template

Steps

Navigate to User Menu→Settings.
Select Interview Templates in the Templates section.
Select Add Template.
Enter a name for the template and configure the required fields, such as the preferred hiring step and interview duration.
Specify the number of interviewers (up to 20) and their hiring team roles. You can select anyone on the hiring team or assign specific standard or custom roles.
Include additional details such as the interview format, location, communication template, interview reminders, or set invitations as private.
Review the details and save the template for use in your hiring processes.

Create a Group Interview Template

This template is used to automate scheduling for group interviews, where multiple candidates are invited to shared sessions.

Steps

Navigate to Interview Templates.
Select User Menu→Settings.
Select Interview Templates.
Create a new template by selecting Add Template.
Select Group Interview from the dropdown menu.
Enter a name and select a preferred hiring step.
Choose whether calendar invitations should be private.
Define Time Slots:
Select the days and add time slots during which group interviews can be scheduled. Multiple slots per day can be added by selecting Add another time. The setup can be configured to repeat on a regular schedule or run as a one-off.
Set Slot Details:
Select the capacity, duration per interview slot, format, and location for each slot.
Define Interviewers:
Specify the number of interviewers (up to 20) and their hiring team roles.
Add Communication Template:
Add a group interview communication template or create your own email within the group interview template.
Decide if you want to resend the invite if the candidate doesn't book an interview within 24, 48 or 72 hours and enter the number of resend attempts.
Decide if you want to set up a reminder to be sent X hours before the interview.
Save the Template.
Watch this video on the topic of creating Group Interview Templates for more details.
This video is for demonstration purposes. Any references made in this video to previous or later videos in this course (including titles, numbers, links, or sequence) may differ from the current course structure. Additionally, some functionalities shown may have evolved over time due to ongoing enhancements or business decisions.

Edit Interview Templates Attached to a Standard Hiring Step

Efficiently managing interview templates ensures alignment with your organization's hiring process. You can configure and customize interview templates for standard hiring process steps.

Steps

Select User Menu→Settings.
Select Hiring process in the Configuration section.
Select the specific hiring process you wish to modify.
Select the Edit icon.
Locate the step with the default attached template and select Manage Interview Templates.
Preview, edit, or replace the template with another template.

Edit Interview Templates Attached to a Custom Hiring Step

You can also configure and customize interview templates for custom hiring process steps.

Steps

Identify which custom process steps involve a candidate interview. Custom process steps may or may not involve interviews.
Select Manage steps and choose the custom step name for each step that includes an interview.
Confirm that the selected interview-related custom steps appear on the main page.
Assign an interview template to the step by selecting the + button.

Interview Template Filtering

When selecting or replacing an interview template, the list is filtered to show only the most relevant templates for the current hiring step:

Matching templates: Templates assigned to the current hiring step.
Neutral templates: Templates not linked to any preferred step or marked as custom.
Irrelevant templates hidden: Templates assigned to a different hiring step are hidden to avoid confusion.

This filtering makes it easier to find the right template, especially in organizations with many templates.

Watch the video below to learn about how to create interview templates for automated self-scheduling.

This video is for demonstration purposes. Any references made in this video to previous or later videos in this course (including titles, numbers, links, or sequence) may differ from the current course structure. Additionally, some functionalities shown may have evolved over time due to ongoing enhancements or business decisions.

Manage Interview Settings for a Single Job

Customizing interview settings for individual jobs ensures alignment with specific role requirements and hiring team preferences.

Each job inherits default interview templates linked to its associated hiring process. To review or adjust these templates for a specific job:

Steps

Select Jobs.
Select the job for which you want to adjust interview templates.
Open theHiring Process tab and scroll to the Auto Self schedule section.
Mark the custom steps that involve a candidate interview by selecting Manage steps and choosing the appropriate step names.
Assign a different interview template to a step or edit the interview settings for steps with job specific default values, as needed.
Edit an assigned template by selecting the pen icon next to the template name.
You can override the default values defined in the original template for parameters like format, location, organizer, duration, communication email invite, SMS/WhatsApp communication email invite, and reminders.
Note
The organizer will be marked as the event owner on the calendar invite and will serve as the Zoom host if Zoom is selected as the interview format.

Summary

Create interview templates to standardize the interview process, including setting duration, interviewers, and communication.
Manage and customize templates for both standard and custom hiring steps, ensuring alignment with organizational needs.
Manage interview template settings for a single job.

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