Mastering Make.com Scenarios: Automate Interview Scheduling Across Multiple Calendar Platforms

In today’s fast-paced recruiting landscape, manual interview scheduling is a significant bottleneck, consuming valuable HR time and introducing potential for human error. The challenge multiplies when dealing with diverse teams using various calendar platforms like Google Calendar, Outlook, and others. This guide will walk you through leveraging Make.com to create robust automation scenarios that seamlessly bridge these platforms, enabling efficient, error-free interview scheduling and freeing your team to focus on strategic talent acquisition. By automating this critical process, you can enhance candidate experience, accelerate hiring cycles, and dramatically reduce operational overhead.

Step 1: Define Your Integration Needs and Calendar Landscape

Before diving into Make.com, meticulously map out your current interview scheduling process. Identify all stakeholders involved (recruiters, hiring managers, candidates) and the specific calendar platforms they utilize. Do you primarily use Google Calendar for one department and Outlook for another? Are there specific types of interviews (e.g., initial screens, technical deep-dives) that require different scheduling logic or participant sets? Understanding these nuances is crucial for designing an effective Make.com scenario. Pinpoint the trigger events (e.g., a candidate reaching a certain stage in an ATS) and the desired outcomes, such as sending calendar invites, updating the ATS, or notifying internal teams. This initial discovery phase is foundational for building a resilient and scalable automation.

Step 2: Set Up Your Make.com Account and Core Scenario

Begin by logging into your Make.com account and creating a new scenario. The first module in your scenario will typically be the trigger that initiates the scheduling process. This could be a webhook from your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) when a candidate moves to an “Interview Scheduled” stage, a new row in a Google Sheet, or a form submission. For maximum flexibility, a “Webhook” module is often ideal, as many modern ATS platforms can send custom webhooks. Configure this initial module to catch the relevant candidate data, such as their name, email, job applied for, and preferred interview type. This data will be the fuel for the subsequent steps, ensuring that your automation is dynamic and personalized for each candidate.

Step 3: Integrate and Normalize Calendar Data Across Platforms

This is where Make.com truly shines in handling multiple calendar types. After your trigger, you’ll add “Search Events” modules for each calendar platform your team uses (e.g., Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook Calendar). The goal is to find available time slots from *all* relevant interviewers across *all* their calendars. You’ll need to specify the date range to search and the specific calendars to query. For instance, search a hiring manager’s Google Calendar and an HR team member’s Outlook Calendar simultaneously. Use router functionality to handle different branches if certain interviewers only exist on one platform. This step is about gathering all potential availability and then using Make.com’s data operations to consolidate and normalize these disparate time slots into a single, usable dataset.

Step 4: Determine Shared Availability and Propose Times

Once you’ve retrieved availability from all necessary calendars, the next critical step is to find mutually available time slots. Make.com’s “Tools” modules, particularly the “Set Multiple Variables” or “Array Aggregator” combined with custom functions, can be used to compare the fetched availabilities. You’ll build logic to identify overlaps, ensuring that all required interviewers are free at a particular time. If you want to offer candidates a selection of times, you can generate a set of 3-5 potential slots. These proposed times can then be formatted into a user-friendly list, ready to be sent to the candidate via email or an integrated scheduling link. This ensures a smooth experience for both the candidate and the internal team, avoiding back-and-forth communication.

Step 5: Schedule the Interview and Send Confirmations

After a candidate selects a time (which can be captured via another webhook from a simple form or a scheduling tool), your Make.com scenario will proceed to book the chosen slot. This involves using “Create Event” modules for each relevant calendar platform. For example, if the interviewers use both Google and Outlook, your scenario will create an event on *both* calendars, inviting all necessary participants (candidate, interviewers). Ensure you map all event details correctly: title, start/end times, attendees, location/video conference link. Immediately follow this with “Send an Email” or “Send a Message” modules to dispatch confirmation emails to the candidate and internal team members, providing all necessary details like date, time, virtual meeting links, and any preparation materials.

Step 6: Implement Error Handling and Notifications

Even the most robust automation needs a safety net. It’s crucial to build error handling into your Make.com scenario. Utilize “Error Handlers” to catch issues such as a calendar event failing to create, an email not sending, or a module returning an unexpected error. For example, if a calendar API call fails, the error handler could notify your HR team via Slack or email, preventing a missed interview. Additionally, implement notifications for successful scheduling, keeping all relevant parties informed in real-time. This proactive approach ensures that any potential issues are addressed quickly, maintaining a professional candidate experience and preventing operational disruptions, which is key to long-term automation success.

Step 7: Test, Refine, and Optimize Your Scheduling Scenario

The final phase involves rigorous testing and continuous optimization. Run your Make.com scenario multiple times with different test cases: candidates with varying availabilities, interviewers on different platforms, and even edge cases like last-minute cancellations or rescheduling. Monitor the scenario’s execution history for any errors or unexpected behavior. Gather feedback from recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates to identify areas for improvement. Perhaps a clearer email template is needed, or the availability search logic can be refined for even better results. Automation is an iterative process; regularly reviewing and optimizing your Make.com scenario will ensure it remains efficient, reliable, and perfectly aligned with your evolving scheduling needs.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Make.com API Integrations: Unleashing Hyper-Automation for Strategic HR & Recruiting