Set up candidate communication via email – Personio

Learn how to communicate with candidates via Personio, using your company email address.

Note
You will need the support of your internal IT department to configure the SMTP settings.

Communication process with candidates

When you set up your candidate communication in Personio, you can:

Transfer all applications sent to your company email address to Personio. To do so, set up your email redirection (step one).
Send emails from Personio with your company email address appearing as the sender. To do so, set up your custom email address (step two). You also have to configure your Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) (step three). If you are using Microsoft or Google, set up our integration.

After you have configured your SMTP settings, the communication with candidates works as follows:

A candidate sends an application to your company's recruiting email address.
With the redirection, the application arrives in your unassigned messages in Personio. If a candidate's profile already exists, it will be visible there.
You can now manage the application and all communication within Personio.

The screenshot below provides an overview of the process:

The following five steps will help you ensure that email communications from Personio run smoothly.

Step one: set up a redirection to receive candidate emails in Personio

By default, Personio uses a built-in mail service belonging to Mailjet. All candidate communication via Personio runs under this email address. It looks like this: customersaccount-jobs@m-personio.de.

With the redirection, all applications sent to your company email address are transferred to Personio. Follow the steps below to set it up:

Navigate to Settings > Recruiting > General > Recruiting email settings.
Copy the Company recruiting email address.
In your company's email server, set up an email redirection. Make sure that the original header of the email is also transmitted. You should also store a copy on your company email server. If you are unsure about the required settings, contact your IT department.
In Personio, go to Sender name and define who the sender of the email is. It can be the employee sending the email, or your company name.

Step two: set up the sender's custom email address

If you want your company recruiting email address to appear as the sender, follow these steps:

Navigate to Settings > Recruiting.
In the tab General, go to Recruiting email settings and click on Edit.
Under Use custom email address? select Yes.
Enter your company recruiting email address in the field Custom email address.

Step three: set up the connection to your email provider

To send messages from your company email address via Personio, you need to set up a connection. If you are using Google or Microsoft, set up our integration.

Alternatively, you will have to configure SMTP. To do so, follow these steps:

Go to Settings > Recruiting > General > Recruiting email settings and click on Edit.
Under Use custom email address? select Yes.
Open the SMTP settings and click Start setup.
Enter the information required (see table below for more details). Click Setup. The username you enter must be the same as your custom email address. Read more detailed technical information on SMTP settings for different providers.

Find more information about each of the input fields in the table below:

Host	Enter your email provider's hostname. The hostname is a unique identifier.
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.
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) 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. The address entered must be the same as the user-defined email address. It must have permission to send emails via that address.
Password	The password required is the same one you use to log in to the email associated with the account.

Step four: test the connection

You can now test the connection. To do this, click on Test connection:

If the redirection is set up correctly, the email will appear in your unassigned messages.
If your SMTP server cannot establish a connection, an error message will appear. You can forward it to your IT department to locate the error. Find more information on troubleshooting and specific settings for common email providers.

Notes
▶︎ When the redirection is set up successfully, emails are no longer sent through Mailjet. If you experience delivery problems, Personio will not be able to investigate.
▶︎ If you need to edit or update the currently selected email communication channel, you must temporarily activate another option first. For example, if you want to edit your SMTP setup, we recommend enabling the Personio email service temporarily until you make the changes to SMTP.

Step five: set up email addresses for legal entities (optional)

If you have several legal entities, you can use separate email addresses to communicate with candidates. When you create or update a job, you must select the legal entity it belongs to. This way, candidates receive the messages from the email address for this legal entity.

To store an email address for a legal entity, follow step two and step three. You must repeat these steps for each of them. If you leave a legal entity's custom email address empty, the settings made for the main company are applied by default.

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