n8n Reference Check Automation: OpenAI, Airtable, Gmail & Discord

Automate reference checks end-to-end with n8n

This n8n workflow automates reference check outreach using Webhooks, OpenAI, Airtable, Gmail, and Discord—drafting personalized emails to referees, tracking responses in Airtable, summarizing feedback for hiring managers, and sending daily reminders for outstanding requests.

What this workflow does

• Receives new-hire intake via webhook and normalizes candidate and manager details.
• Validates required candidate fields; if missing, it posts an alert to Discord and emails a rejection notice via Gmail.
• Creates one reference request per referee by splitting the intake, generating a unique request ID, and using OpenAI to draft a personalized reference request email.
• Tracks requests in Airtable by creating “requested” records in an Airtable ReferenceCheck table, then sends the email to each referee via Gmail and confirms the send in Discord.
• Processes referee feedback via a second webhook, validates the request ID, updates the matching Airtable record to “received,” and stores rating, recommendation, and feedback.
• Posts progress updates to Discord after each response until all referees have replied.
• Summarizes completed feedback for hiring managers using OpenAI, emails the concise summary to the hiring manager via Gmail, and posts a completion notice in Discord.
• Runs daily on a schedule to find Airtable requests still in “requested” status for over two days and sends reminder alerts.

Use cases

• Streamline recruiting workflows for startups and mid-market SaaS teams.
• Reduce manual follow-ups by auto-reminding referees after two days.
• Standardize reference request wording with OpenAI while keeping individualized outreach.

Technical details

• Integrations/nodes: webhook, if, set, code, OpenAI, Airtable, Gmail, Discord.
• Data flow: Airtable ReferenceCheck records move from “requested” to “received,” keyed by request ID.