Connecting your calendar

Connect Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar to Recruit so interview availability is read from your diary and bookings appear in it.

Every user connects their own calendar, from their own profile. Nobody can connect a calendar on someone else's behalf. If you host interviews in Recruit, connect yours before any event that uses your availability is published.

Who needs to connect a calendar

Anyone who will be a host or interviewer on a scheduling event should connect. It matters most for calendar-availability events. Recruit will not let one of these events be published until every host chosen for it has a connected calendar, because candidates are offered only the times when all hosts are free.

Slot-based events read the primary interviewer's calendar, so that person should connect. Static events do not need a calendar to run, but a connected calendar is what lets Recruit create the online meeting for them.

Admins and HR users can also switch on a reminder for everyone. In Settings, open Events and turn on Prompt users to connect calendar. Anyone without a connected calendar then sees a message reading Connect your calendar, with a link that reads Connect it in your profile settings. It appears once per browser session.

Connect Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar

Open Settings and choose My Profile (under Personal).
Find the Calendar Integrations card. If nothing is connected you will see a red alert reading Not connected.
Choose Google Calendar (Connect with Google) or Outlook Calendar (Connect with Microsoft). If one calendar is already connected, use the Connect button on the other row.
Sign in with the account whose diary you want Recruit to use and approve the permissions on the screen that follows.
You are returned to My Profile with the message Calendar connected successfully. The row now shows a Connected badge and the email address of the account you connected.

You have about ten minutes to finish the sign-in and approval. If you leave the approval screen open for longer, the attempt is rejected and you need to start again from step 3. If you decline the permissions, nothing is connected. If Recruit cannot start the process at all you will see Failed to connect calendar. Please try again later.

Connect only the calendar you actually keep your meetings in. Recruit reads one calendar per person for availability, so connecting both a Google and an Outlook calendar does not combine them.

What Recruit asks permission for

You are asked to approve the permissions every time you connect or reconnect.

Google: see whether you are free or busy, create and edit events on calendars you own, and see your email address.
Outlook: read and write your calendar, sign in and read your basic profile, and stay connected while you are not signed in.

Write access is what allows Recruit to add interview meetings to your calendar. It does not open your diary to other Recruit users. Colleagues who build an event can see when you are busy and whether a calendar is connected, but never the titles or attendees of your meetings.

How your availability is read

Recruit asks Google or Outlook when you are busy. For Google that is your main calendar. For Outlook it is your default calendar, and anything not marked as free counts as busy, including tentative meetings. Only the start and end times are used.

For a calendar-availability event, a time is offered to a candidate only if it sits inside the weekly schedule you set, is outside every blocked period, meets the minimum advance notice, and every host is free. Candidates see times over the coming seven days. Blocked periods are set on the event itself and apply to every host, so they are not read from anyone's calendar.

Busy times are checked with a short delay, so a meeting you have just added can take a few minutes to block out a slot.

How bookings are written to your calendar

When a candidate books an interview with the format set to Online, Recruit creates an event on the host's calendar and adds a Google Meet link (Google) or a Microsoft Teams link (Outlook). The primary interviewer's calendar is used first. If that person has no connected calendar, Recruit uses the first connected calendar among the other hosts and interviewers on the event. In-person events are not added to your calendar by Recruit.

The other interviewers are added as attendees. If the event is marked Private event, the calendar entry is private too. On Google the candidate is added as a guest without Google sending them its own invite. On Outlook the candidate is not added. Either way, the candidate receives Recruit's confirmation email, which carries the meeting link.

Cancelling or rescheduling a booking, and closing or deleting a static event, removes the calendar event again. If the calendar event could not be created, the booking still goes ahead, but it has no meeting link.

Disconnect a calendar

Open Settings, then My Profile.
On the calendar row, choose Disconnect.

You see Calendar disconnected. and the connection is removed straight away. Recruit also tries to delete the online interview meetings it created on that calendar for the next 90 days. If any cannot be removed, they stay on your calendar and you need to delete them yourself. Your bookings in Recruit are not cancelled.

After you disconnect, you no longer count as a connected host. Any calendar-availability event that lists you as a host cannot be published again until you reconnect or you are removed from it.

When a connection shows Error

Recruit renews your connection automatically when it is about to expire. If Google or Microsoft refuses the renewal, for example because you removed Recruit's access from your account, the connection changes to Error straight away. Failed availability checks for any other reason also turn it to Error once three in a row have failed.

To fix it, open Settings, then My Profile, and choose Reconnect on the row marked Error. You sign in and approve the permissions again, and the connection returns to Connected.

If checks keep failing, Recruit emails you with the subject Action required: Reconnect your calendar after five failures in a row. It sends this at most once every 24 hours.

Common problems

Cannot publish a calendar-availability event. You see a message such as One or more hosts do not have a connected calendar. Connect their calendars before publishing. The event form also shows a Calendar not connected banner naming the hosts, with a link that reads Connect calendar in profile settings. Ask each named person to connect. You cannot do it for them.
We couldn't check calendar connections just now. This is a temporary failure. Publishing is refused until the check works, so try again in a moment.
The availability view says a calendar could not be read. When you book from the team availability calendar, a message names anyone whose calendar Recruit could not read and asks them to reconnect in Settings, then Profile. Their busy times are unknown, so those slots cannot be booked until they do.
The availability view says a person has no calendar connected. Their availability is not shown, but you can still book those slots.
Candidates see Scheduling Unavailable. Recruit could not read at least one host's calendar. It shows no times rather than risk a double booking. Ask the hosts to check My Profile and reconnect any calendar marked Error.
Candidates see Calendar Not Connected. The interviewer's calendar is not connected, and the candidate is asked to contact the recruiter. Connect the calendar, or change who is on the event.
No meeting link in the confirmation. The calendar event could not be created, usually because the connection needs reconnecting. Reconnect, then send the candidate the link yourself.
Wrong account connected. Recruit connects whichever account you approve on the sign-in screen. Check the email shown on the row, then disconnect and connect again with the right one.