Common candidate.fyi terms

Last updated: June 23, 2026

Getting started

🕑 3 min read

OVERVIEW

When using a new tool, inevitably there will always be terms that don't align with the common terminology used inside your team or company. To ease that friction, we have terms and definitions below and an explanation of what you might know them as alternatively.

KEY TERMS

Sandbox vs. Production

Sandbox: the testing environment to ensure that teams can practice the tool ahead of working in production.

Production: the live environment that connects to real candidates and creates live scheduling events.

Interviewer

The internal resource who will conduct and assess candidates.

Round(s)

Also known as: Interviews (Recruiter Screen, Hiring Manager Interview, Team Panels, Presentations, Folio Review, Coding Exercise, Case Study, etc)
One stage of the hiring process. This could be one candidate and one interviewer, or a series of interviews(panel) with a single candidate. Panel rounds can be a true panel (1 candidate meeting 3 interviewers at the same time) or sequential single interviews (one candidate meeting one (or two) interviewers at a time, in different interviews.) These can be back to back or scheduled over multiple days, however they are grouped together in a single round as they all add up to a single hiring decision.

Interview Plan(s)

Also known as: Hiring Steps, Hiring Plan, Hiring Process, Interviewing Blueprint, Hiring Cycle
The framework that holds Rounds, in order of candidate experience, from initial screening to hired/rejected.

Queue(s)

A designated space for requests to be sent and then triaged from, in order to:
- assign and share workload between a group of schedulers
- keep specific candidates together while moving through scheduling steps (i.e. handy for hiring sprints!)
Think of Queues like a doctors office waiting room. Patients(candidates) are put in the waiting room(queue) and then the Medical Admins(Schedulers) can call them up to schedule them as they decide, or the system decides they have the capacity to.

Booking Link

Also known as: personal calendar link, sourcing call link, Calendly link
A calendar link that allows anyone to book a slot of time directly into the calendar connected to the link.

Request / Scheduling Request

A request or scheduling request can be one of these four definitions.

A scheduling request (the interview event created per candidate/round)
An availability request (the email sent asking a candidate for times to interview)
A self-schedule request (the email with a booking link for the candidate to select from)
A request to schedule (the candidate being routed to a scheduling coordinator/RC or queue)

Schedule Now

Schedule Now allows the user to schedule a candidate immediately through the extension.

Request to Schedule

Request to Schedule creates a task to initiate scheduling by a different person than the one making the request or to a queue.

Scheduling Windows

A block of time that is added to calendars and allows interviews to be booked over existing calendar events within those windows.

Capacity

A defined count of how much availability a person has to complete a task.
- i.e. Interviewers have a default capacity of no more than 2 interviews/day and 6 interviews/week.

Scheduling Agents

The CFYI Scheduling Agent is specifically a follow-up automation tool (24/48/72h nudges).

Training Paths

The ability to have interview specific shadowers and interviewers on the same interview to shadow/reverse shadow, allowing for more interviewers to be trained in a specific interview type. Training paths once completed will add tags to an interviewers profile to be found for other similar interviews when scheduling.

Not to be confused with Team Training that is done in onboarding and is a general guide to using the platform.

Auto-Replace

When an interviewer declines and the interview has been set up with either a specific alternative or is from a tag with an interview pool, a backup interviewer will replace the declined party.

NOTE: If the interviewer declines within the cutoff window defined on the round(usually 24 hours), it stops the auto-replacing function and alerts the scheduler instead. This is to ensure the candidate experience isn't impacted and an interviewer isn't assigned to an interview without any notice to prepare.

Smart Tag

Also known as: dynamic tag
A tag added to interviews in the individual interview slot and represents a specific role on the job (Recruiter). Smart Tags work to pull availability in to look like a single calendar for availability when finding options to book interviews.

Token

Used for email and calendar templates, tokens are dynamic filler blocks that pull in job specific context and are essential for creating cross functional templates. They tailor communications for candidates and interviewers without having to be filled in each time they are used.
Tokens are applied by clicking the tag icon on the format bar.

Insights

The area of the platform that houses data.

Locks

These act as a view only function for Rounds, Templates and Interview plans. Anyone who is not the editor or has Admin level permission, can unlock the template to edit.

Portal

The Portal is job-specific and candidate-facing, and consists of pages that are visible to the candidate once they move through the hiring process. Each mapped step can be a new page of content. The content consists of blocks that are specific designed content.

Portal Blocks

These are content blocks that are housed in the library to be used on one or more portals for candidates. global content library). Portal blocks being edited, is what changes the candidate experience when they log into their portal.