How Many Interview Time Slots to Offer a Candidate

The short answer

Offer three time slots. Spread them over two or three business days. Give each one a real window rather than a single start time, state the time zone, and say what happens if none of them work.

Two feels like an ultimatum. Six looks like you have nothing else going on, and it invites the candidate to think rather than answer.

Why three

Three is enough that a candidate with a normal job can almost always take one, and few enough that the reply is one line instead of a paragraph. A longer list does not raise your hit rate much; it raises the chance the candidate defers the decision to the evening, then to tomorrow, then not at all.

There is also a scheduling cost to a long list. Every slot you offer is a slot you should hold, at least loosely. Offer six and you have blocked most of a week for one candidate, or you have offered times you cannot honour. The second one is worse: nothing damages a hiring process faster than retracting a time you proposed.

How far out to spread them

• Screens and first-round calls: slots inside the next three business days. Speed is the whole point.
• Panels and onsites: slots five to ten business days out, because you are coordinating several calendars and the candidate probably needs to take time off.
• Senior or passive candidates: include at least one early-morning and one late-afternoon option. They are fitting you around a job they still have.

Avoid stacking all three on one day. If that day goes wrong for the candidate, you are back at the start.

Windows, not pinpoints

"Tuesday at 10:00" is a test the candidate can fail. "Tuesday, 10:00-11:30 AM ET" is a question they can answer. A window lets them pick inside it and tells them how long you expect the conversation to take.

A workable format:

Three options, all Eastern time:

• Tue Sep 22, 10:00-11:30 AM
• Wed Sep 23, 1:00-3:00 PM
• Thu Sep 24, 8:30-10:00 AM

Reply with the one that suits and I will send the invite. If none work, send me two times that do.

The last sentence matters more than the list. It gives the candidate a way to say no without ghosting, and it stops the thread going quiet for three days.

Always state the time zone

Write ET, CT, PT or the city. Never assume. If the candidate is in another zone, write the times in theirs and say so once, above the list. Your own zone on every line doubles the reading and invites the arithmetic you are trying to spare them. A candidate who joins an hour late because of an ambiguous time will blame you, and they will be right.

What to do when the panel is involved

For a multi-interviewer round, do not ask the panel for availability by email. Take their free/busy, merge it, and offer the intersection. Ask for confirmation of the one slot the candidate picks instead of asking four people to vote on three slots each.

If the intersection is empty, that is real information: the round needs a smaller panel or a later week, and you have learned it before you promised anything to the candidate.

Wording that gets a one-line reply

• Put the role in the subject line so the thread is findable later.
• Lead with the times. Do not bury them under a paragraph about the company.
• One ask per email. If you also need a portfolio, send a second email.
• No links the candidate has to sign into. The times should be readable in the preview pane on a phone.
• Say who will be on the call and how long it will run.

Booking link or pasted times

A self-scheduling link is the right answer for a high-volume funnel where the same role is posted every month and the calendar behind it is stable. The candidate picks, the invite creates itself, nobody types.

Pasted times are better when the candidate is senior, when the process is relationship-driven, when the mail passes through an applicant tracking system that mangles links, or when you need to control exactly which times are offered. Most recruiting desks do both, depending on the role.

Producing the three slots without opening the calendar

The tedious part is not choosing three times. It is reading around your own meetings, and the panel's, and converting to the candidate's zone.

OpenSlot computes open times from Microsoft 365 free/busy and hands you a pasteable list. It reads free/busy read-only with delegated Microsoft Graph scopes, uses only the availability, and stores no calendar data — availability is computed live each time.

Use "Just me" for your own times, or "Me + others" to merge interviewers into a single list. Set any time zone, a window of up to 60 days on Pro (seven on the free plan), working hours (8-5 by default), a minimum slot length so you never offer a 20-minute gap, weekends on or off, and tentative-as-busy if your team holds soft blocks. Settings roam across devices.

There is a web app and an Outlook add-in for Windows, Mac and Outlook on the web; the add-in inserts the list into the email you are writing. Free covers you plus one person on a 7-day window. Every new account starts with a 14-day Pro trial, no card. Pro is $7 per user per month or $72 a year, and Team starts at $5 per user per month with a five-seat minimum.

Related

• Send interview availability to candidates
• How to write an availability email

Questions: support@useopenslot.com or the help pages.