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BrightHire Zapier integrationAutomate BrightHire with Zapier.

The BrightHire Zapier integration offers 1 trigger, 7 actions and 2 searches, and it runs on the free plan. Here is what each one does for a hiring team, what it costs in tasks, and where a BrightHire Zap needs data your ATS has to supply.

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Overview

What the BrightHire Zapier integration is for

BrightHire records, transcribes and analyzes job interviews so a hiring team can decide with the conversation in front of it. Hooked up to Zapier, it can start an automation the moment an interview is completed, and it can receive candidates, positions and scheduled interviews sent from your applicant tracking system (ATS, the tool that holds your hiring pipeline).

Three outcomes justify the setup. Interviews ready in BrightHire before they start: Create Scheduled Interview books the session in BrightHire as soon as it exists in your ATS, with an option to force recording. A pipeline that mirrors your ATS: Create Candidate and Create Position keep BrightHire in line with the jobs and people you already track. Interview details pulled into the next step: New Completed Interview starts the Zap and Find Interview fetches the full record, transcript and notes included.

What Zapier does not do here matters just as much. There is no action to update a candidate, a position or an interview: you can create and delete, nothing in between. Every create action expects identifiers from your ATS, so BrightHire on its own cannot feed them. And there is only one trigger: nothing fires when an interview is scheduled, only when one is completed. The good news is that this trigger is instant, so the Zap starts right away, whatever your plan.

If you are still weighing platforms, see n8n vs Zapier and Make vs Zapier.

Vocabulary

Zapier vocabulary in one minute

Seven words come back on every Zapier page. Each one is explained once here, in plain English.

Zap
The automation you build on Zapier: one trigger, then one or more actions that run every time the trigger event happens.
Trigger
The event in an app that starts the Zap. Once the Zap is switched on, Zapier waits for it.
Action
What the Zap does after it starts: the step that creates, deletes or sends something on your behalf.
Task
What Zapier bills: one action your Zap completed successfully. The quota on your plan counts those.
Instant vs polling
An instant trigger is reported by the app the moment it happens. A polling trigger is checked by Zapier on a timer.
Filter
A step that lets the Zap carry on only when what arrived meets your condition, and stops it otherwise.
Search step
A step that looks up something already in an app, so the following steps can use what it found.
Cost

What a BrightHire Zap really costs

BrightHire is not a premium app: it works on Zapier's free plan. The free plan stops at two steps, though, one trigger and one action, and that shapes what you can build.

  • Free plan100 tasks per month, unlimited Zaps
  • Free plan stepsOne trigger and one action
  • BrightHire on freeYes, not a premium app
  • BilledEach successful action, never the trigger

The trigger costs nothing. Each action that succeeds counts as one task, and a failed action is not billed. A Zap that pairs New Completed Interview with one action stays free. Add Find Interview, a filter or a second action and it becomes a multi-step Zap, which needs a paid plan. Because the BrightHire trigger is instant, the polling grid below does not slow it down on any plan; it only matters for the other apps in your Zap.

Connect

Connect BrightHire to Zapier

  1. 01

    Start from the Apps page

    Open Apps in your Zapier account and click + Add connection. A connection is your BrightHire account linked once, then reused by every step that talks to BrightHire.

  2. 02

    Find BrightHire and confirm

    Search for BrightHire in the dialog, select it, then click Add connection. You need a BrightHire account of your own at this point, with access to the interviews the Zap will handle.

  3. 03

    Sign in and allow access

    Log in to BrightHire in the tab that opens and grant Zapier access. If the Zap will delete or create items that belong to colleagues, your account needs write access to them, not only read.

First Zap

Your first Zap: a debrief sheet filled after every interview

GoalEach completed BrightHire interview is fetched in full and logged as a new row in the hiring team's debrief spreadsheet.

  1. 01

    Build the trigger

    Create a Zap, pick BrightHire as the app and New Completed Interview as the event, then choose your connection. This trigger is instant, which the editor shows with a lightning bolt.

  2. 02

    Test it on a real interview

    Run the test: Zapier brings back the three most recent completed interviews of your account. Pick one so the next steps are mapped on real data rather than a guess.

  3. 03

    Add Find Interview

    Click the plus icon, choose BrightHire again and pick Find Interview under SEARCH. Map the BrightHire ID of the interview from the trigger into Interview ID. This search makes the Zap multi-step, so it needs a paid plan.

  4. 04

    Add the spreadsheet row

    Add your spreadsheet app as the action and map what Find Interview returned, such as the notes and the questions, into the columns your debrief uses.

  5. 05

    Test, then publish

    Test the last step and open the sheet to check the row is there and readable. When it looks right, click Publish to switch the Zap on.

Triggers

The BrightHire trigger

1 event starts a Zap when something happens in BrightHire, and one of them is instant: the app calls Zapier straight away, whatever your plan.

1

New Completed Interview

Instant trigger

In Zapier“Triggers when an interview is completed in BrightHire.”

Starts your Zap once an interview is finished in BrightHire. It is the only trigger this app offers, so every BrightHire Zap that reacts to something begins here, not at scheduling time.

How it fires
the app tells Zapier the moment it happens, so the Zap starts right away, whatever your plan
When to use it
a recruiter wants the full interview record pulled with Find Interview right after the call ends, so the debrief can start while it is fresh.
Watch out
interviews completed before the Zap was published are not picked up, so older ones need handling by hand.
Actions

BrightHire actions: create, delete, or go advanced

BrightHire gives you 7 actions. For each one: what it does for you, when to reach for it, and what to watch out for.

1

Create Candidate

Action

In Zapier“Creates a new candidate in BrightHire.”

Adds a candidate to BrightHire. The one required field is the Candidate ATS ID, the identifier this person already has in your ATS.

When to use it
a candidate moves to the interview stage in your ATS and gets its BrightHire record without retyping.
Watch out
without that ATS ID in an earlier step, the action has nothing to link the person to.
2

Create Position

Action

In Zapier“Creates a new position in BrightHire.”

Opens a job in BrightHire. It asks for four things: the Position ATS ID, the title, the Department ATS ID and the department name.

When to use it
a new opening approved in your ATS gets its BrightHire counterpart without retyping.
Watch out
the department needs both its ATS ID and its name, so check your ATS sends the two.
3

Create Scheduled Interview

Action

In Zapier“Creates a new scheduled interview in BrightHire.”

Books an upcoming interview in BrightHire, with its name, location or meeting URL, start and end times, the interviewer's details and the candidate's ATS ID. A Force recording option overrides other settings.

When to use it
an interview slot confirmed in your ATS is recorded with no manual setup.
Watch out
Force recording still respects candidate and interviewer opt-outs.
4

Delete Candidate

Action

In Zapier“Deletes a candidate from BrightHire by their ID or ATS ID.”

Removes a candidate from BrightHire, found by their BrightHire ID or their ATS ID, whichever your earlier step carries.

When to use it
a candidate asks to have their data removed and your ATS flags the request.
Watch out
test it on a dummy profile first, since a wrongly mapped ID removes the wrong person.
5

Delete Interview

Action

In Zapier“Deletes a completed interview from BrightHire by its ID.”

Deletes a completed interview from BrightHire. It needs the BrightHire ID of that interview, which the trigger or Find Interview can supply.

When to use it
practice or calibration sessions are removed once they are over.
Watch out
it only takes the BrightHire ID, not an ATS ID, so map from a BrightHire step.
6

Delete Scheduled Interview

Action

In Zapier“Deletes a scheduled interview from BrightHire by its ID or ATS ID.”

Cancels an upcoming interview on the BrightHire side, identified by its BrightHire ID or its ATS ID.

When to use it
a slot cancelled in your ATS stops waiting in BrightHire.
Watch out
this targets scheduled interviews only; finished ones go through Delete Interview.
7

API Request (Beta)

Action

In Zapier“This is an advanced action which makes a raw HTTP request that includes this integration's authentication.”

An advanced action that sends a raw request to BrightHire using your existing connection. You set the HTTP method, the URL and whether the step should stop on error.

When to use it
someone technical on the team needs a BrightHire call that no ready-made action covers.
Watch out
requests can only go to domains linked to BrightHire.
Searches

BrightHire searches: 2 lookups by ID

2 search steps look for data that already exists in BrightHire, so a later step can use it.

A search step looks up something that already exists and passes it to the steps that follow. You find searches at the bottom of the Action event list, under SEARCH. Three settings decide what happens when the result is not clean.

1

Find Interview

Search

In Zapier“Finds a completed interview by its BrightHire ID. Returns full details including transcript, recordings, notes, questions, and talk-time analytics.”

Looks up a completed interview by its BrightHire ID and brings back the full record: transcript, recordings, notes, questions and talk-time figures.

When to use it
right after New Completed Interview, to hand the transcript and notes to the next step.
Watch out
it needs the BrightHire ID, so it cannot start from a name or an email.
2

Find Scheduled Interview

Search

In Zapier“Finds a scheduled interview by its BrightHire ID. Returns detailed information including candidate, guide, position, and interviewers.”

Finds an upcoming interview by its BrightHire ID and returns its candidate, interview guide, position and interviewers.

When to use it
before a reminder step, to know who sits on the panel for a given slot.
Watch out
like Find Interview, it only accepts the BrightHire ID of the scheduled interview.

The three settings every search exposes

  1. Successful if no search results are found?
    Left on its default, a search that finds nothing stops the Zap and the steps that depended on it are skipped. Switched on, the Zap carries on empty-handed.
  2. Create X if it doesn't exist yet?
    This box turns a search into find-or-create. BrightHire offers no such variant for its two searches, so it does not apply here.
  3. If multiple search results are found?
    Three options when several items match: keep the first one (the default), stop the Zap, or pass all of them on together.
When it breaks

When a BrightHire Zap breaks

Zapier lists no BrightHire-specific limit. Its one linked help article is a getting-started guide, so the cases below come from how Zapier itself behaves and from the fields BrightHire requires.

Four cases are worth knowing before you publish. For anything else, the Zapier troubleshooting page is the next stop.

  • Past interviews are not picked up

    A Zap only reacts to interviews completed after you publish it. Anything already finished stays out, and moving that backlog is a separate job.

  • Missing ATS IDs

    Create Candidate, Create Position and Create Scheduled Interview all require ATS identifiers. If no earlier step carries them, the action fails.

  • A burst after a bulk change

    If a large batch of interviews completes at once, the trigger can return a pile in one go, and Zapier's flood protection may hold it back.

  • API Request and errors

    On API Request (Beta), Stop on error set to Yes halts the step when BrightHire returns an error; set to No, the Zap runs on regardless.
Need help

Need help automating BrightHire with Zapier?

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FAQ

BrightHire Zapier integration: common questions

01Is the BrightHire Zapier integration free?
Yes, for a two-step Zap. BrightHire is not a premium app, so it runs on Zapier's free plan, which includes 100 tasks a month and unlimited Zaps. The limit is the shape of the Zap: the free plan allows one trigger and one action, nothing more. Add a filter, a search such as Find Interview or a second action and it becomes a multi-step Zap, which requires a paid plan. Plan for that early if your idea involves a condition.
02How many tasks does a BrightHire Zap use?
One per successful action, and none for the trigger. A Zap that logs each completed interview in a spreadsheet uses one task per interview logged. If it first runs Find Interview and then calls another action, count each completed action separately. A failed action is not billed. Because the trigger itself is free, a week with no completed interviews costs nothing, however many Zaps are switched on and waiting for the next one.
03Does BrightHire work in real time with Zapier?
Yes for its trigger. New Completed Interview is an instant trigger: BrightHire tells Zapier as soon as an interview is completed, and the Zap starts right away whatever your plan. The 15-minute free-plan interval does not apply to it. The editor marks such a Zap with a lightning bolt. Keep in mind it is the only BrightHire trigger, so there is no instant signal when an interview is scheduled, only when one is completed.
04What does it take to connect BrightHire to Zapier?
A BrightHire account you can sign in to, with access to the interviews and candidates the Zap will touch. From the Apps page of your Zapier account, click + Add connection, search for BrightHire, confirm with Add connection, then log in to BrightHire in the new tab and grant access. If the Zap deletes or creates items owned by colleagues, your account needs write access to them as well, not just read access.
05Why does a BrightHire create action fail?
The first thing to check is a missing ATS ID. Create Candidate needs the Candidate ATS ID; Create Position needs a Position ATS ID, a title, a Department ATS ID and the department name; Create Scheduled Interview needs the interview, interviewer and candidate ATS IDs along with times, location and interviewer details. These identifiers come from your ATS, so an earlier step in the Zap has to carry them, or the action has nothing valid to send.
06What if the BrightHire operation you need is missing?
Look first at API Request (Beta). It sends a raw request to BrightHire with your existing connection, so a technical teammate can reach a call that no ready-made action covers, within the domains linked to BrightHire. If that is too technical, check whether the trigger plus a filter covers the case. Updating a candidate or an interview, for example, has no visible action, so plan around create and delete, and keep the edits in BrightHire itself.
07Zapier, Make or n8n for BrightHire?
Decide by criteria, not by brand. On Zapier, BrightHire gives you an instant trigger that works on the free plan, seven actions and two searches, but no update action. Check whether each platform offers the operations your hiring flow actually needs, count how many steps each version of the flow would take, and weigh who on the team will maintain it. Those three points settle the choice faster than any general ranking.
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