Send Automated Recruitment Rejection Emails with Google Sheets and Gmail at End-of-Day.

Automatically reads a “Candidate Status” tab in Google Sheets every day at 18:00 Asia/Kolkata, filters rows with exact (case-sensitive) rejection statuses and sends one personalized rejection email per candidate via SMTP (Gmail). It rate-limits sends, supports DRY_RUN previews and writes a timestamp back to rejection_sent_at to avoid duplicates.

Who’s it for

• Recruiters needing consistent, respectful closure at day end.
• Teams tracking hiring outcomes in Google Sheets.
• Coordinators who prefer a scheduled, hands-off workflow with safeguards.

How it works

1. Cron (18:00 IST) triggers daily
2. Google Sheets Read → loads Candidate Status tab
3. Filter → keep rows where status REJECT_STATUS_CSV (exact match), with valid candidate_email and empty rejection_sent_at
4. DRY\RUN? If true → output preview only; if false → proceed
5. Rate limit → wait RATE_LIMIT_SECONDS (default 10s) between emails
6. SMTP (Gmail) → send personalized email per row using templates
7. Mark as sent → write current timestamp to rejection_sent_at

How to set up

• Sheet & Columns: Create “Candidate Status” tab with:
  candidate_name, candidate_email, role, status, recruiter_name, recruiter_email, company_name, interview_feedback (optional), template_variant (optional), language (optional), rejection_sent_at
• Credentials : Connect Google Sheets (OAuth) and SMTP (Gmail) in n8n (use App Password if 2FA)
• Config (Set node) :
  • SPREADSHEET_ID
  • SOURCE_SHEET = Candidate Status
  • TIMEZONE = Asia/Kolkata
  • REJECT_STATUS_CSV = e.g., Rejected
  • SMTP_FROM = e.g., [[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection)
  • SUBJECT_TEMPLATE = Regarding your application for {{role}} at {{company_name}}
  • HTML_TEMPLATE / TEXT_TEMPLATE
  • RATE_LIMIT_SECONDS = 10
  • INCLUDE_WEEKENDS = true
  • DRY_RUN = false
• Activate : Enable the workflow

Requirements

• Google Sheet with the “Candidate Status” tab and columns above.
• SMTP (Gmail) account for sending.
• n8n (cloud or self-hosted) with Google Sheets + SMTP credentials.

How to customize

• Statuses : REJECT_STATUS_CSV supports comma-separated exact values (e.g., Rejected,Not Selected)

• Templates : Edit SUBJECT_TEMPLATE, HTML_TEMPLATE, TEXT_TEMPLATE

• Variables: {{candidate_name}}, {{role}}, {{company_name}}, {{recruiter_name}}, and optional {{feedback_text}}/{{feedback_html}} from interview_feedback

• Schedule : Change Cron time from 18:00 to your preferred hour

• Rate limit : Tune RATE_LIMIT_SECONDS for SMTP policy

• Preview : Set DRY_RUN=true for a safe, no-send preview

Add-ons

• Dynamic Reply-To per recruiter_email
• Localization/Variants via language or template_variant columns
• Daily summary email: sent/skip/error counts
• Validation & logging: log invalid emails to another tab
• Gmail API : swap SMTP with Gmail nodes if preferred

Use Case Examples

• Daily round-up : 18:00 IST closure emails for all candidates marked Rejected today
• Multi-brand hiring : Switch company_name per row and personalize subject lines
• Compliance/logging : DRY\RUN each afternoon, review, then flip to live sends

Common troubleshooting

• No emails sent : Ensure status exactly matches REJECT_STATUS_CSV (case-sensitive) and candidate_email is present
• Duplicates : Verify rejection_sent_at is blank before run; workflow sets it after sending
• Blank variables : Fill candidate_name, role, company_name, recruiter_name in the sheet
• SMTP errors : Check credentials, sender permissions, and daily limits
• Timing : Confirm workflow timezone Asia/Kolkata and Cron = 18:00

Need Help?

Want us to tailor the template, add a summary report or wire up company-based variants? Contact our n8n automation engineers at WeblineIndia and we’ll plug it in.