Interview Panelists

Interview Panelists let you bring external interviewers — subject-matter experts, hiring managers from a client, or colleagues outside your core recruiting team — into your interview process without giving them full workspace access. Recruiters invite a panelist by email; the panelist then logs in to a dedicated, focused portal where they set their availability, see the interviews assigned to them, review the candidate, and submit structured feedback that flows straight back into your pipeline.

There are two sides to this feature:

1. Recruiter side — invite and manage panelists from Settings → User Roles → Panelists.
2. Panelist side — the panelist signs in to their own portal to manage availability and interviews.

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Recruiter side — invite & manage panelists

Open Settings → User Roles and switch to the Panelists tab. This screen lists every external panelist with their Name, Status and the date they were Added On, split into Active and Invitations (pending) sub-views. A total seats counter and the Invite Panellist button sit at the top right, with a Search panellists… box to find someone quickly.

Invite a panelist

Click Invite Panellist to open the invite dialog and add an external interviewer:

• Name — the panelist’s full name.
• Email — the address the invitation link is sent to.
• Validity in hours — how long the invitation link stays valid (for example 48).

Click Send Invite. The panelist receives an email with a link to join; until they accept, they appear under the Invitations sub-tab, and once they’re set up they move to Active.

Note

Panelists don’t consume a normal team seat or need a workspace role — they only ever see the interviews they’re assigned to, keeping your candidate data secure.

Panellists and workspace users

Within the same organisation, users and panellists are interchangeable. Someone on your workspace team can be assigned to an interview panel, and a panellist can be given a workspace user seat — the same person doesn’t need two disconnected accounts.

In practice that means you can build a panel from whoever is actually right for the interview — a recruiter, a hiring manager on a ₹49 Hiring Manager seat, or an external specialist — without worrying about which side of the product they were originally set up on.

Invite validity and tracking

Validity in hours accepts 1 to 168 hours (7 days), and the invite email states how long the link works. Names cannot be blank, and the email must be a full address such as name@company.com. Open the Invitations tab and use the status filter: Pending (sent, link still works), Expired (validity passed without acceptance, so send a new invite) or Accepted. You cannot send a second active invite to an email that already has a pending one. Search in the Active tab also works with a full name such as “Vinod Singh”.

Hide panelist emails from candidates

When an interview is scheduled from a connected calendar, the candidate is normally invited to the same event as the panelists, so the guest list shows panelist emails. Switch on Hide panelist emails from candidate while scheduling to hide them for that interview. Admins can turn on Hide panelist emails from candidates by default under Settings → Interviews; recruiters can still switch it off per interview.

• Google Calendar / Meet: the candidate gets the normal invite with the guest list hidden; they see only the organizer.
• Microsoft Outlook / Teams: the candidate gets the normal invite with the attendee list hidden.
• Zoho: the candidate is not added to the Zoho event. Pitch N Hire emails the interview details, meeting link and a calendar (.ics) file instead.
• Panelists still see each other in the panelist portal. Meet and Teams still show participant names during the call; only email addresses are hidden. The option applies when the interview is created, and rescheduling keeps it.

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Panellist Notes

Recruiters can leave notes written specifically for the interview panel on a candidate’s application, and every panellist on that application can read them from their own dashboard before the interview.

Recruiter side — write the note

1. Open the candidate from Job Applications (click their name) and go to the Notes tab on their profile.
2. Below your team’s own notes you’ll find Panellist Notes — “Context for the interview panel — everyone on this application’s panel can read these.” Click + Add Note.
3. Give the note a Title and write the body in the rich-text editor — both are required.
4. Save. Each note shows its author and date, and can be edited or deleted later.

Use them for what the CV doesn’t say: what your screening call surfaced, the areas you want probed, a concern to test, or context about the candidate’s situation.

Panellist notes are not private

Panellist Notes are visible to everyone on the interview panel, including external interviewers. Keep internal-only commentary — salary positioning, comparisons with other candidates, hiring politics — in your team’s own notes instead.

Panellist side — read the note

Panellists see the notes on the interview detail page in their portal, alongside the candidate’s resume and AI summary — so the context reaches them before they join the call, without a separate email.

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Panelist side — the panelist portal

Panelists work from a separate, simplified portal — they don’t see your full dashboard.

Where panelists log in

URL: app.pitchnhire.com/panellist-login Panelists sign in with the email they were invited on. There’s a Sign in as Recruiter link if they landed here by mistake.

My Interviews & availability

After signing in, the panelist lands on My Interviews. At the top, My Availability shows the time windows they’ve offered, each with Edit and Remove controls and an + Add slot button. Below, a filterable table (by Status, date From/To, and Order) lists every interview assigned to them with the Candidate, Email, Date & Time, Mode (e.g. Video), Status (e.g. Scheduled) and a View action.

Add an availability slot

Clicking + Add slot opens Add Availability Slot, where the panelist tells coordinators when they can take interviews:

• Specific date — a one-off slot on a single future date, OR
• Days in week — pick one or more weekdays they’re regularly free, with an Available on future weeks too toggle (on = repeats every week, off = this week only).
• Time window — a Start time and End time for the selected date/days.
• Timezone — the timezone those times are interpreted in (defaults to the panelist’s own).

Click Save Slot. Coordinators can then schedule interviews inside these windows.

View an interview & submit feedback

Selecting View on an interview opens its detail page. The panelist sees the interview header (date, time, duration, mode, provider), the Candidate (contact, skills, an AI Summary, and a Resume button), the Job with its description and required skills, and the other Panelists on the panel.

On the right is the Feedback panel, where the panelist submits their assessment:

• Rating (0–5) — star rating for the candidate.
• Candidate stage (optional) — selecting a stage updates the candidate’s pipeline stage directly.
• Notes — free-text observations (up to 4000 characters).

Click Submit to send the feedback back to the recruiting team.

Note

Feedback opens once the interview is due to start — for a future interview the panel shows “Feedback isn’t open yet” with the date it becomes available.

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Tips

Tip

Ask panelists to add their availability as soon as they accept the invite. Coordinators can only schedule inside the windows panelists provide, so up-to-date availability keeps interviews moving.

Tip

Encourage panelists to set the Candidate stage when they submit feedback — it advances the candidate in your pipeline automatically, so strong interviews don’t stall waiting on a recruiter to move them.

Common issues & fixes

Caution

A panelist can’t sign in — confirm they’re using the exact email you invited, and check the Invitations sub-tab: if the Validity in hours window has lapsed, re-send the invite with a longer validity.

• Panelist sees no interviews — they’re only assigned interviews where they’re on the panel; confirm the interview was scheduled with them as a panelist.
• Coordinators can’t find a time — the panelist likely hasn’t added availability, or their slots are in the past; ask them to add a future availability slot.
• Feedback button is unavailable — feedback only opens once the interview is due to start; before then it shows “Feedback isn’t open yet”.

Related

• Manage your internal team and roles in User Roles & Permissions.
• Schedule the interviews panelists attend from the Interview Calendar.