Yext automates global interview scheduling to secure a 4.58/5 candidate experience

Yext’s recruiting team transitioned to candidate.fyi’s platform as they sunsetted their previous scheduling tool, Prelude. The move was driven by a need to consolidate the tech stack and improve overall recruiting efficiency. Olivia Bashiri, Senior Recruiting Ops Analyst, reflects on the transition: “We were already using candidate.fyi’s portals feature, which showcased the entire candidate journey on one page. Our recruitment marketing team had built out the portal function, allowing us to serve up a more engaging and interactive experience to candidates. When Prelude was sunsetting, it only made sense to expand our partnership with candidate.fyi to include their scheduling tool. The decision streamlined our processes and aligned with our operational goals.”

Maximizing efficiency with automated scheduling

The automated scheduling function in candidate.fyi has proven to be a game-changer for Yext. Historically, managing schedules across different time zones and teams was inefficient and error-prone. Katie Garcia, Senior Coordinator of People Operations, handles much of the North American scheduling at the company. “What used to be a tedious manual process is now nearly effortless,” she explains. “Employees set their working hours in Google Calendar, and the integration reflects that in candidate.fyi. If someone’s work hours are from 10 to 5, they won’t appear as available outside that window when I’m scheduling an interview.” Candidate.fyi allows coordinators to schedule interviews in either their own time zone or the candidate’s, flagging time zone conflicts and accounting for interviewer availability. “We’re no longer wasting time on manual calendars,” Olivia adds. “The platform allows us to create tags, like interviewer pools, that define locations, time zones, and any blackout hours for interviewers. All of these features are customizable on our end, and simplify Katie’s job significantly.”

Candidate.fyi’s load-balancing feature has been particularly valuable for managing interviewer capacity. Each interviewer has a profile that details their interview capacity and the types of interviews they’re trained to conduct, Katie explains. “Typically, interviewers are scheduled for no more than two interviews in a week and no more than one interview in a day. When scheduling, I can hover over an interviewer’s initials in the platform to instantly see who has reached their capacity and ensure I don’t overburden anyone.” This visibility not only helps prevent interviewer burnout but also allows Katie to manage schedules efficiently—especially when dealing with high volumes of interviews, such as for software engineering roles.

“When scheduling, I can hover over an interviewer’s initials in the platform to instantly see who has reached their capacity and ensure I don’t overburden anyone.” Katie Garcia, Senior Coordinator of People Operations

The platform also offers a flexible system for managing changes, such as when an interviewer needs to decline or reschedule. “If somebody declines an interview, the platform pulls in another trained interviewer who’s available at the same time,” Katie adds. This feature ensures that the candidate’s interview experience remains uninterrupted, even when adjustments are necessary.

Automated scheduling has also provided insights for operational decision-making, helping to address potential issues before they become roadblocks. “When we notice frequent reschedules or declines,” Olivia explains, “we use candidate.fyi’s load balancing reports to identify capacity issues. Are the interview pools for this job actually at capacity? If interviewers aren’t meeting their quotas, we can address this—whether with the interviewers themselves or with their managers—with data-backed evidence. On the other hand, if we see that they’re maxing out their capacity, we know we need to ramp up more interviewers.” This data-driven approach has empowered Yext to identify and resolve scheduling bottlenecks, ensuring that they can meet hiring needs while maintaining an efficient and balanced interview process.

“We use candidate.fyi’s load balancing reports to identify capacity issues. If interviewers aren’t meeting their quotas, we can address this—with the interviewers or their managers—with data-backed evidence.” Olivia Bashiri, Senior Recruiting Ops Analyst 

Innovating campus recruiting with a custom solution

Campus recruiting is a cornerstone of Yext’s talent strategy, but manual processes made it a significant challenge. Emily Baer Cohen, Manager of Campus Recruiting, explains: “Historically, we’d attend career fairs, rank hundreds of resumes, and manually schedule interviews using Google Sheets.” Students would enter their initials next to a time slot in the spreadsheet and notify a campus representative via email. The Yext team then manually locked cells to prevent students from taking each other’s time slots, updated Greenhouse, and created separate spreadsheets for interviewers and campus representatives. “Obviously, that process was unbelievably labor-intensive and inefficient,” says Emily. “And because we held interviews on campus right after the career fair ended, it was a super-tight turnaround. We were typically up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning just getting everyone scheduled.” 

candidate.fyi partnered with Yext to build a custom campus recruiting feature that transformed the team’s approach to scheduling on-campus interviews. The tool automates the entire scheduling process, allowing candidates to select their preferred time slots while seamlessly syncing with Yext’s internal systems. It features a QR code check-in system that’s proven invaluable for monitoring candidate engagement and analyzing the types of profiles Yext draws at large career fairs, which are often attended by thousands of students. “candidate.fyi’s campus recruiting module completely changed our process,” Emily says. “I can't emphasize that enough. It changed our life on campus. What once required literally sleepless nights is now automated, and we have time to focus on what matters—which is conducting excellent interviews and identifying top student engineers. It significantly improved both recruiter and candidate experiences.”

“candidate.fyi’s campus recruiting module changed our life on campus. What once required literally sleepless nights is now automated, and we have time to focus on what matters—conducting excellent interviews and identifying top student engineers.” Emily Baer Cohen, Manager of Campus Recruiting

Showcasing Yext’s culture through an engaging candidate portal

Before adopting candidate.fyi’s portal feature, Yext’s recruiting team used a combination of Greenhouse and Prelude to handle candidate communications. But these tools were limited in their ability to provide a cohesive, branded experience for candidates. “Initially, our email confirmations were sent from Greenhouse,” Olivia recalls. “Those emails were very generic, without any branding, and often got filtered into spam—which meant that great candidates missed out on vital information.” Emails sent from Prelude also appeared generic and uninspired, though the team packed them full of links to take candidates to more branded content. While informative, these methods lacked the unique and interactive experience Yext wanted to provide.

Candidate.fyi's portal transformed this process by consolidating all candidate information in one easy-to-navigate location. The portal showcases everything from interview schedules, to interviewer details, to prep materials, to resources about Yext, making the candidate journey more cohesive and engaging. “How far along is the candidate in the process? Who are they meeting with next, and when, and what will that interview cover? All the information talent needs is right there,” says Olivia. “It’s now an interactive experience that reflects our identity as an innovative tech company with a vibrant culture.” By centralizing key information, candidate.fyi has alleviated confusion and headaches for candidates—especially global candidates in need of immediate confirmation during off-hours due to time zone differences. Katie adds, “receiving an interview confirmation now feels like an invitation to a place you’d actually want to work, rather than a standard ‘Congratulations, here’s your interview time.’”

This streamlined method has improved the candidate experience while also freeing up valuable time for Yext’s recruiters, Emily adds. “Since all relevant information is now housed in the portal, candidates can access exactly what they need without having to reach out to recruiters and await a response. It’s eliminated the number of emails recruiters receive from candidates with one-off questions, and freed our recruiters from spending valuable time digging for answers.” 

Gathering real-time candidate feedback with pulse surveys

One standout feature of candidate.fyi is its pulse surveys, which offer a quick and easy way to collect feedback from candidates immediately after their interviews. Olivia notes the significant advantage pulse surveys have over traditional Greenhouse surveys: “We’ve seen higher response rates with pulses because they’re sent after every stage of the candidate journey, unlike ATS surveys, which are only sent once candidates are hired or rejected, and so naturally see lower engagement.” Pulse surveys are simple for candidates to complete—just a quick click in their portal to provide feedback—and only require a few sentences, compared to lengthy ATS surveys. “And the insights are invaluable because they’re gathered in real-time,” Olivia adds. “This makes it possible to concentrate on areas that need fine-tuning and adjust on the spot.”

“We’ve seen higher response rates with pulses because they’re sent after every stage of the candidate journey. And the insights are invaluable because they’re gathered in real-time, making it possible to concentrate on areas that need fine-tuning and adjust on the spot.” Olivia Bashiri, Senior Recruiting Ops Analyst 

Emily emphasizes the value of pulses for campus recruiting: “We typically bring junior interviewers to campus to interview engineering students. Pulses allow us to give those recruiters feedback in real-time, helping them improve on the fly and providing candidates with a more positive experience, more quickly.” Sandra Shneider, Recruiting Operations Analyst, adds: “Pulses allow the Ops team to share feedback directly with recruiting leads, fostering transparency and enabling continuous improvement. They’ve helped us create a feedback loop that not only boosts interviewer performance but also enhances the overall candidate experience.”

Streamlining recruiting operations with a unified platform

The adoption of candidate.fyi has had a transformative impact on Yext’s recruiting operations. By consolidating the team’s tech stack and automating its processes, the platform has saved time, improved accuracy, and enhanced the candidate experience across the board. Katie summarizes the overall impact: “With candidate.fyi, we’ve integrated scheduling, calendaring, portals, and reporting into one seamless platform. It’s been a game-changer for our team.” Integrations have allowed Yext to further streamline its operations. For example, candidate.fyi’s integration with Greenhouse allows real-time syncing and refreshes, ensuring that scheduling and candidate data are always current.

Olivia adds that the platform’s integration with essential tools like CoderPad has simplified operations even further. “We recruit for a lot of software engineering roles—on college campuses, and in the United States and India. The integration with CoderPad simplifies the process. The candidate enters their portal and is seamlessly redirected to CoderPad, where they can complete the assessment in real-time,” she explains. “And that feeds directly into the calendar invite for both the interviewer and the candidate. So we don't have to keep jumping from Google Calendar to Greenhouse to CoderPad to candidate portals. Everything is done within one user interface, which means enormous time-savings for the team.” With all tools and information centralized, Yext’s processes are now more efficient and easier to navigate, providing both candidates and interviewers with seamless access to everything they need.

“With candidate.fyi, we’ve integrated scheduling, calendaring, portals, and reporting into one seamless platform. It’s been a game-changer for our team.” Katie Garcia, Senior Coordinator of People Operations

Innovating collaboratively: candidate.fyi + Yext in partnership

The partnership between Yext and candidate.fyi has been instrumental in upleveling Yext’s recruiting operations. “They literally created a specialized scheduling tool for our campus recruiting efforts, so I have only good things to say,” says Emily. The urgency of the project, with a tight timeline between July conversations and August campus events, made the collaboration even more impressive. Olivia echoes this sentiment, underscoring the speed of implementation: “We transitioned our entire scheduling system from Prelude to candidate.fyi in just three weeks. We had a ton of feature requests and non-negotiables, and the team fulfilled every one of them. Their collaboration and support were exceptional throughout that process.”

In addition to meeting implementation deadlines, the partnership’s collaborative approach has driven ongoing product enhancements. “We have a standing 30-minute meeting with the candidate.fyi team every two weeks,” says Katie, “and they’re consistently eager to hear our feedback.” These ongoing check-ins allow Yext to provide input on updates and new features while ensuring the platform evolves in line with their needs. Olivia emphasizes how easy it is to get support: “We have a dedicated Slack channel, so instead of submitting a support ticket, we just drop our question into Slack, and the team gets back to us within the hour.” 

For Yext, candidate.fyi is more than a tool—it’s a strategic partner that supports their mission of attracting and hiring top talent globally. As the recruiting team grows and innovates, candidate.fyi will be integral to their ongoing success.