OpenSlot · Guides

How to schedule with clients and candidates outside your company (whose calendar you can't see)

Inside your organization, Outlook can show you when colleagues are free. The moment the other person is a client, a candidate, a partner or a vendor, that stops: their free/busy isn't visible to you, and yours isn't visible to them. Scheduling becomes an email exchange — and the way you run that exchange decides whether it takes one message or six.

The pattern that works

Do the hard part on your side, once. Merge every internal calendar that needs to be in the meeting, pick a window (next two weeks is the sweet spot), convert to the other person's timezone, and send the resulting list with a one-line "pick any of these". They are choosing from certain-to-work times, so the reply is a single line and the invite goes out the same day.

Timezone first, always

State the timezone once at the top of the list, in their zone if you know it. "10am" without a zone is the single most common cause of a missed external meeting. If you are unsure of their zone, say yours explicitly and offer a wider spread of times.

When to use a booking link instead

Booking links are great for inbound, high-volume scheduling (demos, office hours). For a specific client or a candidate you are courting, offering times in the email itself reads as more personal — and it keeps the meeting inside a conversation they already have open.

Making the list

OpenSlot merges your internal calendars and outputs the paste-ready list in any timezone, so the "send a few times" step takes one click instead of a calendar scan. Example:

All times in US/Eastern
• Today 07/08
  03:30 PM - 04:00 PM
  05:00 PM - 05:30 PM
• Thursday 07/09
  09:30 AM - 10:30 AM
  12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
  02:30 PM - 03:00 PM