Capability template for recruiting and hiring

Interview scheduling and candidate confirmation

For candidates your team has already chosen to interview, the recruiting coordinator gets one scheduling sheet that lines up each candidate's offered times, in their own time zone, with the interviewers' free time, plus a ready confirmation or availability request for each. A person sends every message and invitation.

The outcome

Scheduling stops being days of back-and-forth email. Every candidate's offered times sit beside the interviewers' calendars in one time zone, with each candidate's own time shown next to it, so a slot that works at 10:00 in New York is plainly also 15:00 in London. Each candidate gets one proposed time, no interviewer is booked twice, and the gaps between interviews are kept.

Candidates hear back quickly, in your company's own words: a confirmation with the date, the time in their own zone, who they will meet and how to change it, or a short request with open times when nothing they offered fits.

It schedules and nothing more. It takes candidates in a fixed order that turns only on how many times each has offered, never on anything about the person, and it declines any request to favour one. It keeps questions about pay, family, health, immigration and other protected subjects out of every message, and it never repeats a reason a candidate gave for their times. A person checks every time, holds the slots, creates the invitations and sends each message.

Who starts the work, and when

The recruiting coordinator starts it, or the hiring manager who does their own scheduling, once the people deciding have chosen who goes to a stage. Run it again whenever replies arrive, a calendar changes or a proposed time falls through. The coordinator reads the sheet, holds each time on the calendars, creates the invitations and then sends the drafts.

What they supply

  • The stage settings: role title, stage, length, format, where it happens, the interviewers, the planning time zone, the dates to schedule in, and your wording for greetings, sign-off and anything every candidate should hear.
  • The candidate list from your applicant tracking system: reference, first name, email, time zone and whether their times are in.
  • The times each candidate offered, in their own time zone, or their replies pasted as written.
  • The interviewers' free time, exported from their calendars.
  • Any notes from the hiring manager.

What comes out

One scheduling sheet in a fixed order: the time when every required interviewer is free, each candidate's windows in both time zones, the possible start times, one proposed time per candidate with an alternative where there is one, and each interviewer's load. Loose phrases in replies, such as "Thursday morning", are shown with how they were read, so the coordinator can check them.

Then the drafts: a confirmation for each proposed time and an availability request for everyone else, offering only times nobody else has been given. Review notes list anything removed or declined, columns in the export that were left unread, the defaults used, and the open questions. If an export's columns are not the ones expected, it stops and asks rather than guessing.

An invented example

Illustrative example with invented data. Company Q, its people, its candidates, their email addresses and every word of the inputs below are invented; the addresses use domains reserved for examples. Company Q stands for an invented 120-person software company whose staff work remotely across North America. It is filling a customer support team lead role. The hiring manager (the Head of Support) and the people partner have already chosen four candidates for the second interview; the recruiting coordinator schedules them.

The inputs come first, in full, so the template can be run on them. The scheduling sheet and its drafts follow.

The inputs

1. The scheduling settings

Typed by the recruiting coordinator on Tuesday 10 November 2026.

Role title (as candidates know it): Customer Support Team Lead
Stage: Second interview
Length: 60 minutes
Format: video call
Where: The video link is in the calendar invitation.
Company name in messages: Company Q
Required interviewers: Head of Support; Senior Support Specialist
Optional interviewer: People partner (joins if free)
How candidates hear about the interviewers: our Head of Support and one
  of our Senior Support Specialists
Planning time zone: Eastern Time (New York)
Period: Monday 16 November to Friday 20 November 2026
Working days: Monday to Friday
Today: Tuesday 10 November 2026
Buffer between interviews: 15 minutes
Prepared for: Recruiting coordinator
People lead for flags: People partner
Greeting: Hi [first name],
Sign-off: Best wishes, / Morgan / Recruiting Coordinator, Company Q
What to prepare: Nothing to prepare in advance. Come ready to talk
  through examples from your own work.
How to change a time: If the time stops working for you, reply to this
  email and we will find another.
Standing line for every message: If you need any adjustments for the
  interview, just reply and let us know.
Reply by, for availability requests: Thursday 12 November

2. The candidate list

Exported from the company's applicant tracking system.

candidate,first_name,email,time_zone,windows_status,stage_1_score
C01,Robin,robin@example.com,Central Time (Chicago),received,4
C02,Kemal,kemal@example.com,UK time (London),received,3
C03,Ines,ines@example.com,Pacific Time (Los Angeles),to request,4
C04,Tomas,tomas@example.com,Mountain Time (Denver),received,3

3. The candidate windows

Times in each candidate's own time zone, as they gave them.

candidate,date,from,to
C01,2026-11-17,14:00,17:00
C01,2026-11-19,09:00,11:00
C02,2026-11-13,14:00,16:00
C02,2026-11-16,14:00,17:00
C02,2026-11-18,15:00,18:00

4. The interviewer free time

Exported from the calendars after every invitation already sent, in Eastern Time (New York).

interviewer,date,from,to
Head of Support,2026-11-16,10:00,12:00
Head of Support,2026-11-17,13:00,17:00
Head of Support,2026-11-18,09:00,12:00
Head of Support,2026-11-19,10:00,13:00
Head of Support,2026-11-20,14:00,16:00
Senior Support Specialist,2026-11-16,09:00,11:30
Senior Support Specialist,2026-11-17,14:00,17:00
Senior Support Specialist,2026-11-18,10:00,13:00
Senior Support Specialist,2026-11-19,11:00,15:00
Senior Support Specialist,2026-11-20,09:00,12:00
People partner,2026-11-17,15:00,17:00
People partner,2026-11-19,11:00,12:30

5. Candidate replies

C04 (Tomas), received 9 November:
"Thanks for getting back to me. Tuesday after 2pm or Thursday morning
works for me, Denver time. Before 10 is hard because of school
drop-off."

6. Notes from the hiring manager

Sent by the Head of Support to the coordinator, as supplied.

- Robin is our favourite, so give her the Tuesday slot.
- Also ask each of them whether they're planning any family leave next
  year.

The output

INTERVIEW SCHEDULING SHEET: Customer Support Team Lead, Second interview
Status: Draft for the Recruiting coordinator. Nothing has been sent, held or booked.
Prepared for: Recruiting coordinator. Date: Tuesday 10 November 2026. Planning time zone: Eastern Time (New York).
Stage: 60 minutes, video call. Where: The video link is in the calendar invitation. Required: Head of Support, Senior Support Specialist. Optional: People partner.
Period: Monday 16 November to Friday 20 November 2026. Earliest start: Monday 16 November 2026. Buffer: 15 minutes. Start times every 30 minutes.
Candidates: 4. Windows received: 3. To request: 1. Time zone not given: 0.

1. Interviewer free time (Eastern Time (New York))
Monday 16 November: every required interviewer free 10:00 to 11:30. People partner: free at no time.
Tuesday 17 November: every required interviewer free 14:00 to 17:00. People partner: free 15:00 to 17:00.
Wednesday 18 November: every required interviewer free 10:00 to 12:00. People partner: free at no time.
Thursday 19 November: every required interviewer free 11:00 to 13:00. People partner: free 11:00 to 12:30.
Friday 20 November: every required interviewer free at no time. People partner: free at no time.

2. Candidate windows
Offsets used: Central Time (Chicago) 1 hour behind Eastern Time (New York) on every date in the period; UK time (London) 5 hours ahead of Eastern Time (New York) on every date in the period; Pacific Time (Los Angeles) 3 hours behind Eastern Time (New York) on every date in the period; Mountain Time (Denver) 2 hours behind Eastern Time (New York) on every date in the period. Clock changes inside the period: none.
C01 Robin, Central Time (Chicago). From: windows export.
   Tuesday 17 November, 14:00 to 17:00 their time = 15:00 to 18:00 Eastern Time (New York).
   Thursday 19 November, 9:00 to 11:00 their time = 10:00 to 12:00 Eastern Time (New York).
   Outside the period: none.
   Unclear, to confirm: none.
C02 Kemal, UK time (London). From: windows export.
   Monday 16 November, 14:00 to 17:00 their time = 9:00 to 12:00 Eastern Time (New York).
   Wednesday 18 November, 15:00 to 18:00 their time = 10:00 to 13:00 Eastern Time (New York).
   Outside the period: Friday 13 November, 14:00 to 16:00 their time.
   Unclear, to confirm: none.
C03 Ines, Pacific Time (Los Angeles). From: nothing yet.
   Outside the period: none.
   Unclear, to confirm: none.
C04 Tomas, Mountain Time (Denver). From: reply of 9 November.
   Tuesday 17 November, 14:00 to 18:00 their time = 16:00 to 20:00 Eastern Time (New York). Read as: "Tuesday after 2pm", the only Tuesday in the period, from 14:00 to the end of candidate hours.
   Thursday 19 November, 10:00 to 12:00 their time = 12:00 to 14:00 Eastern Time (New York). Read as: "Thursday morning" and "Before 10 is hard", the only Thursday in the period, morning 9:00 to 12:00, not before 10:00; a softly worded limit, to confirm (open question 1).
   Outside the period: none.
   Unclear, to confirm: none.

3. Possible start times (Eastern Time (New York))
C01: 4. Tuesday 17 November: 15:00, 15:30, 16:00. Thursday 19 November: 11:00.
C02: 5. Monday 16 November: 10:00, 10:30. Wednesday 18 November: 10:00, 10:30, 11:00.
C03: 0, windows to request.
C04: 2. Tuesday 17 November: 16:00. Thursday 19 November: 12:00.

4. Proposed times
Order used: fewest possible start times first; ties in candidate-list order.
This order says nothing about the candidates.
1. C04 Tomas: Tuesday 17 November, 16:00 to 17:00 Eastern Time (New York) = 14:00 to 15:00 their time. Required: Head of Support, Senior Support Specialist. Optional: People partner free. Alternative, not held: none, every other possible start clashes with proposal 2.
2. C01 Robin: Thursday 19 November, 11:00 to 12:00 Eastern Time (New York) = 10:00 to 11:00 their time. Required: Head of Support, Senior Support Specialist. Optional: People partner free. Alternative, not held: none, every other possible start clashes with proposal 1.
   Not used, clash with proposal 1: Tuesday 17 November 15:00, 15:30, 16:00.
3. C02 Kemal: Monday 16 November, 10:00 to 11:00 Eastern Time (New York) = 15:00 to 16:00 their time. Required: Head of Support, Senior Support Specialist. Optional: People partner not free. Alternative, not held: Wednesday 18 November, 10:00 to 11:00 Eastern Time (New York) = 15:00 to 16:00 their time.
Not proposed: C03: windows to request.

5. Interviewer load
Head of Support: 3 interviews. Monday 16 November 10:00 to 11:00; Tuesday 17 November 16:00 to 17:00; Thursday 19 November 11:00 to 12:00.
Senior Support Specialist: 3 interviews. Monday 16 November 10:00 to 11:00; Tuesday 17 November 16:00 to 17:00; Thursday 19 November 11:00 to 12:00.
People partner: free for proposals 1, 2. Invited only if the Recruiting coordinator decides.

6. Drafts for a person to send
Confirmations: 3
--- C04
To: tomas@example.com
Subject: Second interview with Company Q: Tuesday 17 November
Hi Tomas,
Thank you for sending your times. Your second interview for the Customer Support Team Lead role is set for:
Tuesday 17 November 2026, 14:00 to 15:00 Mountain Time (Denver), which is 16:00 to 17:00 Eastern Time (New York).
It is a 60-minute video call with our Head of Support and one of our Senior Support Specialists. The video link is in the calendar invitation.
Nothing to prepare in advance. Come ready to talk through examples from your own work.
If the time stops working for you, reply to this email and we will find another.
If you need any adjustments for the interview, just reply and let us know.
Best wishes,
Morgan
Recruiting Coordinator, Company Q
---
--- C01
To: robin@example.com
Subject: Second interview with Company Q: Thursday 19 November
Hi Robin,
Thank you for sending your times. Your second interview for the Customer Support Team Lead role is set for:
Thursday 19 November 2026, 10:00 to 11:00 Central Time (Chicago), which is 11:00 to 12:00 Eastern Time (New York).
It is a 60-minute video call with our Head of Support and one of our Senior Support Specialists. The video link is in the calendar invitation.
Nothing to prepare in advance. Come ready to talk through examples from your own work.
If the time stops working for you, reply to this email and we will find another.
If you need any adjustments for the interview, just reply and let us know.
Best wishes,
Morgan
Recruiting Coordinator, Company Q
---
--- C02
To: kemal@example.com
Subject: Second interview with Company Q: Monday 16 November
Hi Kemal,
Thank you for sending your times. Your second interview for the Customer Support Team Lead role is set for:
Monday 16 November 2026, 15:00 to 16:00 UK time (London), which is 10:00 to 11:00 Eastern Time (New York).
It is a 60-minute video call with our Head of Support and one of our Senior Support Specialists. The video link is in the calendar invitation.
Nothing to prepare in advance. Come ready to talk through examples from your own work.
If the time stops working for you, reply to this email and we will find another.
If you need any adjustments for the interview, just reply and let us know.
Best wishes,
Morgan
Recruiting Coordinator, Company Q
---
Availability requests: 1
--- C03 (first request)
To: ines@example.com
Subject: Second interview with Company Q: choosing a time
Hi Ines,
We would like to set up your second interview for the Customer Support Team Lead role. It is a 60-minute video call with our Head of Support and one of our Senior Support Specialists.
These start times are open, shown in Pacific Time (Los Angeles):
- Tuesday 17 November 2026, 11:00 to 12:00
- Tuesday 17 November 2026, 11:30 to 12:30
Please reply by Thursday 12 November with every time that works for you. If none does, reply with other times that suit you between Monday 16 November and Friday 20 November, and we will look again.
If you need any adjustments for the interview, just reply and let us know.
Best wishes,
Morgan
Recruiting Coordinator, Company Q
---

REVIEW NOTES (for the Recruiting coordinator; never sent to candidates)
Removed and flagged for the People partner: 1
1. "Also ask each of them whether they're planning any family leave next year.": family. Removed; nothing in its place.
Declined: 1
1. "Robin is our favourite, so give her the Tuesday slot.": the order follows the scheduling rule and says nothing about the candidates. The Recruiting coordinator may move any time by hand.
Notes used as settings: 0, none
Reasons given in replies, not repeated: C04
Columns not read: candidate list: stage_1_score; please remove any that hold more than scheduling details
Defaults used: start times every 30 minutes; candidate hours 8:00 to 18:00 in the candidate's own time; morning 9:00 to 12:00 and afternoon 12:00 to 17:00; notice of one working day after today; at most three options in an availability request; every time in 24-hour form without a leading zero
Open questions: 3
1. For the Recruiting coordinator: C04's reply says "Before 10 is hard", read as not before 10:00 on Thursday 19 November. Is that the right reading? If not, his Thursday window starts at 9:00, he has more possible start times and the proposals change, so the sheet should be run again.
2. For the Recruiting coordinator: the People partner is free for proposals 1 and 2 and not for proposal 3. Should they be invited to those two?
3. For the Recruiting coordinator: proposals 1 and 2 have no alternative, C03 can be offered only two start times, both on Tuesday 17 November, and on Friday 20 November the two required interviewers are never free together. Can either free more time that week?

Draft for the Recruiting coordinator. A person checks every time, holds it on the calendars, creates each invitation and sends each message. Nothing has been sent, held or booked, and no candidate has been assessed or compared.

How the figures were reached

  • Time zones on these dates. The Offsets used line rests on general calendar knowledge, not on the inputs: clocks went back in the United States on 1 November 2026 and in the United Kingdom on 25 October, so no clock changes inside the period. Eastern is five hours behind UK time, Central one hour behind Eastern, Mountain two hours behind Eastern and Pacific three hours behind Eastern. The coordinator checks these before relying on the sheet.
  • Shared free time. Each day's required time is where the Head of Support's and the Senior Support Specialist's rows overlap; on Friday 14:00 to 16:00 and 9:00 to 12:00 do not overlap.
  • The clash. Tomas has the fewest possible start times, so he is placed first, at 16:00 on Tuesday. Robin's Tuesday starts would end at 16:00 or later, leaving less than the 15-minute buffer before 16:00, so she is placed at her only other start, 11:00 on Thursday.
  • No alternative for Tomas or Robin. Tomas's other start, 12:00 on Thursday, falls less than 15 minutes after Robin's interview ends; Robin's other starts all clash with Tomas's.
  • Tomas's Thursday. "Before 10 is hard" is a softly worded limit, so it is read as not before 10:00 and the coordinator is asked to confirm. Read without it, his Thursday window would start at 9:00 Denver time, giving him four possible start times, the same as Robin; Robin would then be placed first and the proposals would change.
  • Ines's options. On Tuesday, a start must end by 15:45 to leave the buffer before 16:00: 14:00 and 14:30 Eastern, which are 11:00 and 11:30 Pacific. Monday after Kemal, Wednesday after Kemal's alternative and Thursday after Robin each leave less than 60 minutes.

Where it fits

  • Recruiting and hiring, where a coordinator juggles several candidates and several interviewers' calendars for every stage.
  • Executive and office support, where an office manager or executive assistant schedules interviews alongside everything else.
  • Software technology, where candidates and interviewers sit in different time zones and a mistaken hour costs a candidate.
  • Professional services, where interviewers are billing client work and their free time is scarce.
  • Engineering firms, where senior staff interview between site visits and project deadlines.
  • Growth & scaling, when several roles are open at once and scheduling takes over someone's week.
  • Startups & new ventures, where the founder or hiring manager does their own scheduling.

What has to change for your company

Write your wording once: the greeting, the sign-off, what candidates should prepare, how they change a time and any line every candidate hears, such as an offer of adjustments. Set the gap between interviews, how often a start time can fall, the earliest and latest hours you will offer a candidate, and how much notice you give.

Match the column names to what your calendar and applicant tracking system export, and keep scores, CVs and interview notes out of what the assistant reads. Add your people lead's own list of subjects never raised to the one the template always applies. Decide who may move a proposed time by hand and whether optional interviewers are invited whenever they are free. It runs in ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini from the exports you supply, and needs no connection to your calendar, email or applicant tracking system.

What has been checked

Fully Powered AI wrote this capability template, drawing on one openly licensed method that is credited in its sources. It was editorially reviewed on 10 November 2026. It was tried on its invented example on 10 November 2026 in two runs; the template was revised after the first, and the record of the second, made on the revised version, is published with it. It has not yet been tested in a client environment. It has not yet been tested as a packaged version in ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini.

Testing in your environment means running it on a stage you have already scheduled, where the coordinator knows which times worked, plus hard cases written in advance: candidates in three time zones, two candidates wanting the same hour, a reply that gives a personal reason for its times, an export with a score column, a note asking to favour one candidate. The coordinator checks every time against the calendars before anyone relies on it. Pilot acceptance-test preparation sets those cases up, and what we test before we call an AI workflow ready describes the record we keep.

The full capability template

Everything above is the outline. The complete capability template is the working version: the roles, the inputs, the procedure, the exceptions and stop conditions, the output format, the reviewer checklist, the acceptance tests, the instructions for an AI assistant and what to customize for your company. It comes with a download and the link to its folder in Fully Powered’s public repository.

View the full template

Free with an account. Sign in by email: no password and no card.

Next step

Bring a real piece of this work to a call. We’ll walk through what it takes to fit this capability to your rules, prove it on your work and put it in the hands of the roles that own it.

Talk with us Discuss adapting this

  • Interview plan and scorecard

    Before the first interview, the hiring manager and every interviewer share one plan: the criteria the role needs, the same questions in the same order for every candidate, and a blank scorecard each person fills in alone. It rates no one. People make every decision about a candidate.

  • Job posting and sourcing plan

    For one approved role, the hiring manager gets a plan for where to post and where to look: every channel on the company's own list ordered by the signal it should give for that kind of role, a week-by-week schedule inside the budget, and what to count on each channel. Nothing is posted or paid until a person approves.

  • Employee onboarding plan

    Every new colleague starts with a first week and a first 90 days planned to the standard of your best manager: what to read, who to meet, what to practice and what productive means at day 30, 60 and 90.