Today’s Tip: Measure Results Via a “Customized” E-mail Address

With the increase use of technology to screen candidates, a lot of corporations are sending pre-screening questions to your e-mail address. If you are like a lot of job seekers, you probably have your resume posted in a variety of places. How do you know which ones are beneficial and getting you recognized? A smart job seeker should continually measure the success of their efforts. One way, is to ask the recruiter where they saw your resume (this might not be the best use of one of your questions to the recruiter - I can think of many more impressive questions to ask them). Another way is to have a unique e-mail address for each place you post your resume (this is just laborious). I have a better solution.

The best way is to provide your e-mail address with a "custom note" attached to it telling you where it was found. So how do you accomplish this? Very easy. Let me give you an example: my e-mail address is kevincrews@hotmail.com. I want to post my resume on Monster, and know when a recruiter sends me e-mail communications that it came from Monster. So here's what I do. On my resume that I uploaded to Monster, I say that my e-mail is kevincrews+monster@hotmail.com. However, the +monster is just a comment (or note). The message will be sent to kevincrews@hotmail.com and in the To: field, I will see that it is coming to kevincrews+monster@hotmail.com. Thus, I will know that the recruiter has read the resume that I have posted on Monster (I don't need to ask the recruiter where they saw it). You can even simplify this further by not making it so obvious. I could have my Monster resume read kevincrews+m@hotmail.com (the +m will be my code for Monster).

I think this is just one more way to help you manage your job search. A well organized job seeker is just one step closer to getting that dream job.