Hi there,

I've been assigned the task of attempting to bring my current recruitment management solution to a more automated state of being.

Currently, job applicants email their applications in to an email address, and several of our administrative support staff create applicant records. As reference letters come in, they are data entered to the appropriate applicant records.

My company is quite locked down.. so doing anything that would be "out there" on the web is not an option for this year.. though it could be for next year.

For now, if possible over the next two or three months.. I'd love to devise a way to automate, or more realistically, speed up the application and reference letter processing system.

I was thinking of getting a plugin to check the email boxes.. and then have a script prompt the user to ask whether it is an application or a letter, and if it's a letter, to choose the applicant, and then move on to the next email..

This sounds rather manual though.

One big concern is that the pool of the reference letter writers is comprised of renowned scientists.. so we can't force them to jump through any hoops and need to stay flexible to their wanting to send a letter via email attachment.

If there is a 3rd party solution we might purchase or incorporate that would make the application and letter gathering more fluid, could you please let me know ?

Any advice would be appreciated.. please send me a private message if you'd like to talk about possible consulting scenarios.

thanks :)

Go to my site and download Little Helper. It will run in demo mode for 60 days so you can play with it.

http://www.lichen-software.com

What you want to look at, and play with, is the Email Parsing feature. Basically, what it is doing is saying if you can have an email delivered with a certain set of headings built into the body of the letter, you can copy that email, paste it into a field and have all of the information automatically parsed in to the contacts database.

This is probably the type of feature that you want to implement as it basically automates what you are doing now.

You could get more sophistacted with some plugins and actually have the database downloading the emails, check for attachments etc. But playing with this will give you some ideas.

If there are any questions or you need a run through on the program, don't hesitate to contact me either through the formum or directly at:

[email protected]

Dave McQueen