This article provides information on the settings you need to apply to handle all candidate communication via Personio using your company's recruiting email address (e.g. jobs@yourcompany.de). To do so, you need to enter your company's SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) settings into Personio to establish the connection. Companies with several subcompanies can configure this for each subcompany's email address.
Note If you do not enter your own SMTP settings, Personio will use the SMTP server belonging to Mailjet, and all candidate communication via Personio will run under your Personio recruiting email address (e.g. customersaccount-jobs@m-personio.de).
Communication Process with Candidates
If you configure your SMTP settings correctly, the communication with your candidates should work the following way.
A candidate sends an application to your company's recruiting email address. A redirection set up in your email account ensures that the application automatically arrives in your Unassigned messages in the Personio Recruiting area, or in the candidate's profile if they have one. The candidate and all their communication can now be handled within Personio. In case you would like to also send messages from Personio with your company's recruiting email address, they have to be routed via your email server.
The following screenshot provides a better visualization of the process:
Perform the following four steps to ensure that email communications from Personio run smoothly:
Tip We suggest that you work with your internal IT department to configure the SMTP settings.
1. Set up the Redirection of Applications
To be able to manage incoming applications in Personio, you need to set up a redirection to the Company recruiting email address (from Personio) in your company's email inbox.
- Navigate to Settings > Recruiting > Recruiting.
- In the tab General, go to Recruiting email settings and click on Edit.
- Here you will find your Company recruiting email address.
If you are unsure which settings are necessary to set up the redirection in your company's email inbox, contact your company's IT department.
Tips
▶︎ Make sure that the original header of the email is also transmitted, and that a copy is stored on your company email server.
▶︎ If you are using Microsoft Office 365 check if your email server has an outbound spam filter policy and make sure external forwarding is allowed. More information.
2. Set up the Sender's Email Address
In the next step, you need to store your company's own email address, where candidates should send their applications to, in Personio. To do this, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Settings > Recruiting > Recruiting.
- In the tab General, go to Recruiting email settings and click on Edit.
- Under Use custom email address? select Yes.
- Store your company's own email address in the field Custom email address.
3. Set up the Connection to the SMTP Server
In the next step, apply the SMTP settings (for your main company) that are necessary to send outgoing messages from Personio via your company email address.
To do this, make sure you have followed the steps above, and under Use for sending emails, select Yes to open the SMTP Settings. 
Insert the necessary information to establish the connection. You can find information about each of the input fields Personio requires you to fill out in the table below:
| Host |
Enter your email provider's hostname here. The hostname is a unique identifier, for example for a server, by which it can be addressed or identified. |
| Port |
A port allows computers and servers to communicate with each other and with the internet. Using ports ensures that data packets are always assigned to the correct application. For example, emails are assigned to the port reserved for emails. Simply put, computers and servers send data in small packets. Each packet is addressed to a particular port. This allows the packet to go through the correctly numbered door and be dispatched to its destination. |
| Encryption | An encrypted connection is established so that data and emails can be securely transferred between your SMTP server and the browser. Personio supports the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security, an improved version of SSL) encryption protocols. |
| Account |
Personio uses the registered account to identify itself to your email provider's SMTP server. The account is usually a complete email address. It is important that the address entered here is a) the same as the User-defined email address or b) has permission to send emails via that address. |
| Password |
The password required here is the same one you use to log in to the email associated with the Account. |
4. Test the connection
Once you have entered and saved the SMTP settings, you can test the connection. Click on Test connection to verify whether the SMTP settings have been configured correctly. If the redirection has been set up correctly, the email will appear in your Unassigned messages. If a connection to your SMTP server could not be successfully established, an error message will be displayed that you can then forward to your internal IT department to locate the error in the settings. Find more information on Troubleshooting and specific settings for common email providers.
Note As soon as you have successfully set up the SMTP settings in Personio and the redirection from your account is active, your email communication will no longer use our email provider, Mailjet. So if you do experience any delivery problems, we will not be in a position to investigate what might be causing them.
5. Set up Email Addresses for Subcompanies (optional)
If you have set up various subcompanies within your Personio account, you can use separate email addresses to communicate with candidates for each subcompany. Define which subcompany a position belongs to in the position's Details. Candidates applying for the position then receive the messages you are sending them from the email address stored in the SMTP settings for the subcompany.
To store an email address for a subcompany, follow step 2 and step 3 from above to set up the sender's email address and the SMTP settings based on your subcompany domain.
Note If you leave a subcompany's Custom email address field empty, the settings made for the main company are applied to this subcompany.