Instead of manually sending an email every time a candidate reaches a certain point in your process, you can configure an email activity on a pipeline stage to send automatically the moment a candidate enters it.

This article covers how automated stage emails work, what to expect when candidates move (or are added) into an automated stage, and a few rough edges worth knowing about, since this is a newly-rolled-out capability.

Where to find it: Open a job → Settings → Interview Plan → select a stage → configure an email activity → set it to trigger automatically instead of manually.

What stage automation is

• Every stage in a job's interview plan can have activities attached to it — sending an email, scheduling an interview, filling out a scorecard, and so on.

• Historically, all of these had to be triggered manually by a recruiter after a candidate reached the stage. Stage automation lets you mark specific activities — including email activities — to fire automatically as soon as a candidate enters that stage, instead of waiting for someone to click a button.

Setting up an automated email

• On a stage's email activity, you can toggle it to trigger automatically rather than manually.

• Automated email activities fire in the order they're configured on the stage — if a stage has multiple email activities lined up, they go out in sequence rather than all at once, so you can pace a short series of touchpoints (for example, an initial note followed by a few days of follow-ups) off of a single stage entry.

What happens when a candidate enters an automated stage

• Moving an existing candidate into a stage that has automation shows a confirmation: a "Move to stage with automation?" prompt with the choice to cancel, move without triggering the automation, or move and let it fire. This gives you a deliberate opt-out for that specific candidate if you don't want the automated email to go out.

Automated emails are sent from Kula's system address

Unlike an ad-hoc email you send yourself (which goes out from your connected mailbox, showing your name in "From"), automated stage emails are sent as system emails rather than from an individual user's mailbox. Don't expect an automated email to show your personal "From" name the way a one-off email would.

What's not automated yet

A few related requests come up often but aren't part of stage automation today:

• Sending a candidate-facing email when they're paused or put on hold isn't automated — there's no built-in trigger for pause/hold status changes yet.

• Emails triggered by interview scheduling itself (for example, sending something a set number of hours before or after an interview is booked) are a separate, distinct trigger type from stage entry, and are still in development, not yet generally available.

• Internal notifications to a non-candidate-facing recipient (like alerting an onboarding point of contact when a hired candidate reaches an onboarding stage) aren't currently supported by stage automation — it's built for candidate-facing (and system) activities tied to the stage itself.

• Surveys sent as part of a stage have historically needed to be triggered manually, separate from the email automation described here — if you're relying on a survey activity, don't assume it fires automatically the same way an email activity does without checking.

Good to know

• This is a recently-rolled-out feature and it's still being actively refined. Several real bugs affecting automated stage emails have been found and fixed within the past few weeks — if something about automation behaves unexpectedly, it's worth checking with support before assuming your configuration is wrong.

• Automated emails are system-sent, not sent from your personal mailbox — don't expect your name to appear as the sender the way it would on an ad-hoc email.

• Auto-rejection rules have had a real, recently-fixed bug where the "send email" toggle silently stopped persisting after saving — if an auto-rejection rule you configured seems to have stopped sending its email despite being saved (even multiple times), that was a known issue; re-check the toggle is still on after any edit.

• A stage can silently move candidates and trigger activities without an obvious "automation" badge showing in Settings → Interview Plan for every rule type — if you see unexpected stage movement or emails going out and can't find an automation configured on that stage, it may be a related but different kind of rule (such as an AI-score-based progression rule) rather than the email automation described here. Worth flagging to support if you can't locate the source.

• Multiple automated activities on one stage used to only fire the first one in some cases — this has been fixed, but if you have several activities chained on a stage, it's worth confirming all of them actually fired for a test candidate.

FAQ

• How do I make an email send automatically when a candidate reaches a certain stage? Open the job, go to Settings → Interview Plan, select the stage, and set its email activity to trigger automatically instead of manually.

• If I manually move a candidate into an automated stage, can I stop the email from going out just that once? Yes — moving into a stage with automation shows a confirmation prompt where you can choose to move without triggering the automation.

• I bulk-imported candidates directly into a stage that has automation — will they all get emailed? Automated activities can fire on candidates added or imported directly into an automated stage, not just ones moved there manually. If you're not sure whether a confirmation step will appear for your import, test with a small batch first.

• Why doesn't the automated email show my name as the sender? Automated stage emails are sent as system emails rather than from an individual's connected mailbox, so they won't carry your personal "From" name the way an ad-hoc email would.

• Can I get an automated email sent when a candidate is paused or put on hold? Not currently — there's no built-in automation trigger for pause/hold status changes today.

• Can I automate sending a survey to candidates at a certain stage the same way I can automate an email? Surveys have historically required a manual trigger, separate from stage email automation — don't assume a survey activity fires automatically without checking.

Need help?

If you have questions or need assistance, reach out to us at support@kula.ai or use the in-app chat.