Toolkit Addition

Managing Mail: Eudora Pro

Organize your mail. When you're at a point where you get 100s of emails a day, you risk overlooking important pieces and people. You also stand to spend more time sorting your mail than reading it.

Most of the major email programs (Eudora Pro, Microsoft Outlook, Netscape Communicator, and Claris Mailer) let you create filing systems and filter mail. Both are essential tools for the busy recruiter for two reasons. First, filtering saves you the time of manually sorting your mail. Second, organizing and filtering together, let you know where to find any particular piece with ease.

In Eudora Pro:

To Create a Filing System:
• Create Mailboxes and Folders
• Click on Mailbox in the tool bar.
• Click on New
  • For a mailbox, just type in a name
  • For a folder, which you can then organize into mailboxes, type in a name and check the make it a folder box.

To Move Messages

• Drag the message to the mailbox you want to place it in
• Or, click on Transfer in the tool bar; click the name of the mailbox where you want the message filed.

To Create Filters

• Select Tools; click on Filters
• In the filter window, click on New
  • Decide whether to filter incoming and/or outgoing mail or whether you want to manually filter
  • Define the criteria (more below)
  • Define what's to be done when filtered (transfer, delete, forward, etc.)

To Create Filter Criteria

• Use the Header field to define which header items to search. This includes to, from, reply-to, etc.
• Use the Match Type to set how Eudora will undertake the matching
• Use the Conjunction Box to link two terms. This lets you require two types of matches for filtering, or just one match, or either a match of one term or another.
• Decide what action you want taken. Filters can transfer the mail to the appropriate mailbox, assign priorities and labels, send the message back, or even send an auto reply.

Filters are useful if you get lots of mail from the same discussion list, the same person, or about the same subject. For instance:

You've posted several jobs but have only one email address. Don't despair. Ask email candidates to put the job title or number in the subject line. Then create a filter. Click on Tools, click Filters, click New. In the Match section, under header, choose Subject. Then choose Contains and type in the appropriate subject line. Move down to Action. Choose Transfer To and then click on the name of mailbox you've already set up for that particular position. Do this for each job.

Filters save an enormous amount of time because they file your stuff, before you read it.

Then, too, if you get lots of spam, you can filter that out. We use a number of different ways to do it. One of the easiest is to merely transfer to trash any subject line that has $$$ in it.

Search Tips

Search Tip: Title Search

Creative Searching by Title

Stop. Put aside the tools you've learned. Think creatively.

Try a search for "title:personnel" at Alta Vista. On the first page alone, you'll see personnel listings from TNS Laboratory, John Blume Earthquake Engineering Center, and MIT as well as executive personnel changes at IBM.

Some come complete with links to home pages or email addresses.

Or consider a search for "title:phone directory AND computer". Alta Vista returns links to the Nursing Staff Directory at the University of Pittsburgh, a chemical engineering phone directory from Carnegie Mellon, and the Genetic Resources Core Facility and Associated Labs phone directory.

A search for "title:contractor*" through Alta Vista brings a veritable host of independent workers associated with NASA-with names, addresses, and phone numbers.

Looking for "title:people AND tech" provides loads of links to individuals at the Technology Department of The Central Laboratory of the Research Councils in the UK. It also returns a page called Microwave Distributors Company - Key People.

You get the idea.

Creative thinking isn't always easy. It requires that you look at something from a fresh perspective. Think of the common words that describe what you're looking for. Write them down. Then list any similar words next to them. Use a thesaurus if you want. Then, try word association or something else that might trigger new ideas.

The point is there are millions of pages on the Web. But, not all are indexed high in the search engines. Not all are designed so that spiders find them and catalogue them in logical ways. So, think differently.

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