Emails
The emails Vakanssi sends, from sender identity and the recruiter notification address to the four editable templates, their defaults, and the personalization tags.
On this page(6)
Vakanssi emails people at the moments that matter. Candidates get a confirmation when they apply and a decision note when you reach one, and your team gets told the moment a new application arrives. Four of these emails are templates you can reword or switch off, and this page covers all of them, plus who your emails appear to come from.
To edit anything here:
- Click Hiring in the left sidebar of the WordPress admin.
- Click Settings, then the Emails tab.
- Make your changes and click Save.
The field-by-field reference for this tab is at Settings, then Emails.
Who your emails come from
The Sender section controls the name and address candidates see when an email from you lands in their inbox:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| From name | The sender name candidates see. Leave it empty and your site’s title is used. |
| From email | The address the email is sent from. Leave it empty and your site’s admin email is used. |
| Reply-to | Where a candidate’s reply goes when they hit Reply. Useful when the From address is a no-reply one. |
Just below, one more field decides where your team is notified. Notify recruiter at is the address that receives an alert for each new application, unless that job has its own Notification email (optional) set in the job editor, which wins for that job. It defaults to your site’s admin email, so you get notifications from the start without setting anything up.
Every address field here (From email, Reply-to, Notify recruiter at) is checked strictly: if what you typed is not a valid, exact email address, Vakanssi rejects it with a notice explaining which field, and leaves the previous value in place, rather than quietly saving a mangled version of it.
Branding
The Branding card holds a Show logo in emails toggle (uses your Company logo, set under Hiring, then Settings, then General) and a Brand accent color picker.
The accent is not only for the rule under your email header. It is the one color that runs across every page a candidate sees: your careers list, a single job page, the application form and its screening questions (Screening Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license), and the interview booking page candidates use with self-booking (Scheduling Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license).
Set it once here and it matches everywhere. It defaults to Vakanssi’s own teal, and a very pale pick is automatically darkened just enough to stay readable behind white button text, so a light color never turns a button invisible.
The four templates
Each template has its own on/off switch, a Subject, and a Body. Switch off Applicant confirmation or Recruiter notification and Vakanssi simply will not send it. Rejection and Offer / hired work differently, see below.
| Template | Goes to | Sent when | On by default? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Applicant confirmation | The candidate | They apply through your form (not for an application you add by hand). | Yes |
| Rejection | The candidate | You move them to Rejected, or any other Lost stage. | Yes |
| Offer / hired | The candidate | You move them to Hired, or any other Won stage. | No. Turn it on when you want it. |
| Recruiter notification | Your team | A new application arrives. | Yes |
The Rejection and Offer / hired templates work a little differently from the other two. Their switch controls only automatic sending, so moving a candidate on the Applications screen always asks first with an Email the candidate? prompt, and Send email & move sends the email there and then even when the switch is off.
That is why Offer / hired can safely ship off by default: it never sends on its own, but you can still send it for any one candidate when you hire them. See When a move emails the candidate for the prompt itself. You are always in control of what reaches them.
Personalization tags
You do not write each email by hand. Type a merge tag, a short label in curly braces, into a subject or body, and Vakanssi swaps in the real value when the email is sent. For example, “Hi {first_name}” becomes “Hi Dana.”
| Tag | What it becomes |
|---|---|
{first_name} | The candidate’s first name. |
{last_name} | The candidate’s last name. |
{full_name} | Their first and last name together. |
{job_title} | The title of the job they applied to. |
{company} | Your company name, from the Company card under Settings, then General. Falls back to your site title. |
{stage} | The hiring stage the candidate was just moved to (their current stage, in a one-off message). Blank in the confirmation and the team notification. |
{site_name} | Your site title. |
{candidate_email} | The candidate’s email address. |
{candidate_phone} | The candidate’s phone number. |
{application_url} | A link that opens the application in your admin. Team notification only, see below. |
{source} | Where the application came from, including anything a recruiter typed there. Team notification only, see below. |
Two tags are locked to your team, not just recommended for it
Since v0.32.6, {application_url} and {source} only fill in on the Recruiter notification, the email that goes to your own team. Add either to a candidate-facing template (Confirmation, Rejection, Offer / hired) or to a one-off message and it renders blank there, since a candidate has no reason to see a link into your admin, and {source} can be free text a recruiter typed about them.
{candidate_email} and {candidate_phone} are the candidate’s own details, so they are not locked the same way. They fill in on the Confirmation, the team notification, one-off messages, resends, and automated emails. The Rejection and Offer / hired emails sent on a stage move leave them blank.
You do not need a tag for your logo. Once a Company logo is set, it appears in the header of every candidate email while Show logo in emails is on (see Branding). An old template that still contains {company_logo} is safe: the token is removed before sending, so it never prints as text or adds a second logo.
Sending a one-off message
The four templates above cover the moments Vakanssi emails on its own. For everything else, “can you just tell them the interview moved to Thursday” or a quick personal note, anyone who can edit applications can write one straight from the candidate panel.
- Open a candidate’s panel and click the Activity tab.
- Click Send email.
- Write a Subject and a message, then click Send message.
It sends right away, to the candidate’s current email address. The same personalization tags work here too, and the message goes out wrapped in your branded email style, just like the templates.
It shows up in the Activity tab labeled Message, alongside every other email, so there is one timeline for everything a candidate was told. There is no on/off switch for this one, since you are choosing to send it each time.
Logging and delivery
Vakanssi keeps a record of every email it sends, templates and one-off messages alike. You can see the log for a single application in its Activity tab on the Applications screen, with the subject line each message went out with. The tab shows the 30 most recent entries.
Each row names the kind of email and its recipient, for example “Rejection email sent to dana@example.com”. On every site the names include Confirmation email, Rejection email, Offer email, Team notification, Message, Interview invite, and Interview cancellation.
Pro modules add their own Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license: Booking link, Booking notification, Assignment notice, Mention notice, Collaboration notice, Scoping alert, and Automated email. A row reads is being sent while delivery is under way, and could not be sent if your site’s mail system refused it.
Vakanssi also de-duplicates, meaning it will not send the same templated email twice on its own for the same application, so a candidate never gets two copies of the same note.
If a candidate lost a templated email, or it could not be sent, anyone who can edit applications can send it again with the Resend link next to it, on purpose overriding that de-duplication for just that one message.
Resend appears on the four templates above, on Pro automated emails, and on a Pro booking link while the candidate has not picked a time yet. One-off messages have no Resend, because only their subject is logged. Interview invites and cancellations have no Resend here either; resend a scheduled interview’s invite with Resend invite in the Interviews tab.
A candidate-facing message goes to their current email address on their profile, not necessarily the one it originally went to. A staff-facing one, a team notification for instance, keeps going to the address it was logged with.
Since v0.33.41, every email is written in your site’s language, whoever triggered it. A rejection sent by a colleague whose WordPress profile uses another language still reaches the candidate in the site’s language.
Emails triggered by a move are sent after the page responds. If a large batch, such as a bulk move, runs out of time, Vakanssi stops and records each unsent message on that candidate’s Activity timeline instead of dropping it silently. Every email also carries a plain-text version alongside the HTML, which spam filters and text-only mail apps expect.
If the Email & Notifications feature is switched off under Tools, then Features, Vakanssi sends no mail at all, and the candidate panel hides Send email and Resend.
Emails go out through your WordPress site’s normal mail system. Vakanssi has no mail server of its own, so whether a message reaches the inbox depends on how your site sends mail, not on anything here.
Most sites need an SMTP or API mailer plugin, and the From email above has to be an address at your own domain. See Email delivery for the whole picture, and Troubleshooting when one specific email did not show up.