Sending automatic emails when a candidate changes stage
Keep candidates informed and your hiring team in the loop, without anyone remembering to send an email. This article covers setting up the Candidate Stage Emails workflow, personalising your templates, and what to check if an email doesn't arrive.
How it works
When someone moves an applicant into a pipeline stage, the workflow checks whether you've set up an email for that stage. If you have, it sends it. If you haven't, nothing happens.
You can set up as many as 15 different emails. Each one covers a stage of your choosing — or several stages at once — and each has its own subject, content and recipients.
Before you start
Have two things to hand:
Your pipeline stage names, spelled exactly as they appear in your ATS.
Your email wording, written somewhere you can copy from. The settings screen is a form, not an editor, so writing from scratch in it is slow going.
Setting up your first email
Each email lives in a numbered slot, 1 to 15. The numbers carry no meaning beyond the order they're checked in, so start with slot 1.
Open your installation's Configuration screen.
In Template 1 – pipeline stages, type the stage that should send this email, for example
Short listing.In Template 1 – send to, tick who should receive it.
In Template 1 – subject, write the subject line. Leave it blank to use the default subject.
In Template 1 – HTML, paste your email content. There's a ready-made template further down this article if you'd rather start from something.
Save, then move a test candidate into that stage to check the email arrives.
Repeat for each further email using slots 2, 3 and so on. Leave unused slots completely empty.
Covering several stages with one email
Separate the stage names with commas:
1st Interview, 2nd Interview, Final Interview
All three stages will send that same email.
Choosing who receives the email
Option | Who that is |
Applicant | The candidate who moved stage, at the address on their application |
Vacancy manager | Everyone on that vacancy's hiring team not just one person |
Admins | Everyone set up as an administrator in your Sense account |
You can tick more than one. Addresses are combined and duplicates removed, so someone who is both a hiring team member and an administrator receives one email, not two.
⚠️ Everyone is on the To line and can see each other. Don't tick Applicant alongside Vacancy manager or Admins — the candidate would see your colleagues' addresses. Keep candidate emails and internal alerts in separate slots.
Personalising with merge tags
Write a merge tag in double curly brackets and it's swapped for the real value when the email sends. Merge tags work in the subject line as well as the body.
Candidate
{{ApplicantName}} {{ApplicantFirstName}} {{ApplicantLastName}} {{ApplicantEmail}} {{ApplicantPhone}} {{ApplicantLocation}} {{ApplicantLinkedIn}}
Application
{{CurrentStage}} {{PreviousStage}} {{ApplicationStatus}} {{StartDate}} {{Comment}} {{Notes}} {{Reason}}
Hiring team
{{ActionedBy}} {{ActionedByEmail}} {{ActionedOn}} {{HiringTeam}} {{HiringManager}} {{HiringManagerEmail}}
A few things worth knowing:
Spaces inside the brackets are fine —
{{ ApplicantName }}works the same.A tag you spell wrong is left in the email exactly as typed. Seeing
{{FirstName}}in a sent email means that tag doesn't exist — check it against the list above.A tag with no value becomes blank.
Dear {{ApplicantFirstName}},on a record with no name producesDear ,— use{{ApplicantName}}where your records might be incomplete.{{ApplicantFirstName}}is everything before the first space in the candidate's name.{{HiringManager}}is the first person on the hiring team, which isn't necessarily the person leading it.
A template to start from
Copy this into Template N – HTML and replace anything in square brackets.
html
<div style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:#222222;max-width:600px;margin:0 auto;padding:24px"> <p>Dear {{ApplicantFirstName}},</p> <p>Thank you for your interest in the <strong>{{VacancyName}}</strong> role.</p> <p>[Replace this paragraph with what you want to tell the candidate at this point in the process.]</p> <p>If you have any questions, please reply to this email.</p> <p>Kind regards,<br>[Your name]<br>[Your team] | [Your organisation]</p> <p style="font-size:12px;color:#777777;border-top:1px solid #eeeeee;padding-top:12px;margin-top:20px">[Optional footer: contact details, or any wording you are required to include.]</p> </div>The HTML box is a single-line field. If your paste looks cut off, remove the line breaks and paste it as one continuous line — it works exactly the same.
For an internal alert to your hiring team, something shorter usually does the job:
html
<p><strong>{{ApplicantName}}</strong> has moved from {{PreviousStage}} to <strong>{{CurrentStage}}</strong> on {{VacancyName}}.</p> <p>Contact: {{ApplicantEmail}}<br>Moved by: {{ActionedBy}}</p> <p>[Add what you'd like the team to do next.]</p>Subject lines that pair well with these:
Your application for {{VacancyName}}Update on your application — {{VacancyName}}{{ApplicantName}} has reached {{CurrentStage}}
If an email doesn't arrive
What you see | Usual cause | What to do |
Nothing sent | The stage name doesn't match | Compare it with your pipeline, character for character |
Nothing sent | The candidate has no email address | Check the application record |
Part of a stage list is ignored | A stage name contains a comma | Commas separate the list, so that name gets split — rename the stage |
| The merge tag isn't recognised | Check it against the list above |
| The name field is empty on that record | Use |
Nothing sends after editing settings | Changes weren't saved, or need redeploying | Save, then redeploy the installation |
Every run records what happened, including why nothing was sent. If none of the above explains it, get in touch and we'll check the run log for that candidate.