A tip about www.reed.co.uk

LadyMissA

A few months ago https://www.reed.co.uk changed the way they sent applications to employers via their website.

In the past when you applied the employer would get an email (the same as you get as confirmation you have applied) with your cover letter in the main body of the text and your CV as an attachment. This meant you could write a pretty good cover letter and hope then the recruiter/employer would want to open the attachment and read the CV.

Now it's been changed they still get an email but now its has two attachments (CV and cover letter) and there is no way getting round this.

Anyway, I chased up a few jobs last night that I had applied for via https://www.reed.co.uk that were with actual companies, not agencies and just wrote a brief line asking if I had made the shortlist or was there any feedback they could give me on my CV.

I just got this reply from one company which I am glad for as I guess lots of applications end up in spam boxes and do not get read


'Thanks for the email.
Both your application and this email ended up in my junk folder. About 20% of the applications ended up there – it is possible that the blue screen triggers a spam alert.

We have already created a shortlist I am afraid.

I sense that you are frustrated by the lack of response from employers to applications. Having applied for jobs in the past I can understand that. I would have hoped that I would never be so cavalier.

This is the first time I have recruited this way. I am not sure I would do it again. We had over 300 CVs and in the end I could not even open all the CVs let alone reply to them. Only 25% were suitable.

One tip is that due to the volume I never opened the covering letters so put everything you want in your CV.

I wish you well

Regards'




The blue screen she talks of is an autmoated thing that is on the Reed email which I can't change but if 5% are going into her spam box and then had 300+ to read where only 25% of what she did read were suitable it makes me wonder that only if people did have the time or emails from thse sites weren't going into spam boxes (Which we as candidates can't control) a lot more of us would possibly get interviews.


Anyone got an idea if it's ok to maybe put a cover letter at the top of my CV as a standard for the https://www.reed.co.uk website or just hope for the best leaving the site to send two attachments?


I will of course thank her for her reply as it's useful to know this and like she says will probably never use this way to advertise again.

SLAYFIELD1

.... Interesting to know, although I stopped including covering letters on Reed.co.uk applications late last year after I discovered that after going to the effort of writing the covering letter and making sure that it is nicely formatted, by the time Reed have sent it to the employer it just arrives in one huge paragraph! It looks terrible and if I were the employer I wouldn't even try to read it!

LadyMissA

SLAYFIELD1 wrote: »

.... Interesting to know, although I stopped including covering letters on Reed.co.uk applications late last year after I discovered that after going to the effort of writing the covering letter and making sure that it is nicely formatted, by the time Reed have sent it to the employer it just arrives in one huge paragraph! It looks terrible and if I were the employer I wouldn't even try to read it!

Yes you have to make sure it's fomatted very well and sometimes the standard letter I have saved there gets cleared off and then I have to paste one in only to format it all again.

SLAYFIELD1

LadyMissA wrote: »

Yes you have to make sure it's fomatted very well and sometimes the standard letter I have saved there gets cleared off and then I have to paste one in only to format it all again.

.... You can format it until you're blue in the face, by the time the employer receives it it is just one huge jumble of text! Try sending an application to yourself.

LadyMissA

SLAYFIELD1 wrote: »

.... You can format it until you're blue in the face, by the time the employer receives it it is just one huge jumble of text! Try sending an application to yourself.

No it's ok as I have opened the ones I get as confirmation and it looks ok.

magenta22

Send some feedback to Reed via the website or tell someone at the branch what the recruiter told you about it. If they don't get told this they won't do anything about it to correct the problem.

Slinky

Can you not format your 'CV' document so that the first page is your letter and what follows on is your CV all in one attachment? Can you send pdf files instead of word docs?

LadyMissA

Slinky wrote: »

Can you not format your 'CV' document so that the first page is your letter and what follows on is your CV all in one attachment? Can you send pdf files instead of word docs?

No pdf files via Reed on word docs

Now I am thinking that I may put a cover letter at the front of the CV meaning I will have to do this for each job I apply for. Having said that still not 100% they will even get it in the inbox and read it

LadyMissA

magenta22 wrote: »

Send some feedback to Reed via the website or tell someone at the branch what the recruiter told you about it. If they don't get told this they won't do anything about it to correct the problem.

Yes I am sending feedback to the Reed website as its nothing to do with a branch of Reed. They probally wont change it back but it was a million times better when the cover letter was in the main body of the email sent as then the company can chose if they want to open the CV.

reed.co.uk_company_representative

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your comments on this issue.

We started sending covering letters as attachments rather than in the body of emails at the end of 2010. We made this change because some of the formatting in jobseekers covering letters was being removed when the covering letter was displayed in the email. If you entered bold text or bullet points, these wouldn't always display correctly. By attaching your covering letters as separate documents, we were able to ensure that the covering letter the recruiter saw was exactly what you'd entered.

However, after seeing this thread, it's obvious that this solution seems to have caused some other problems for you. We're now looking into alternative methods of sending covering letters to recruiters to ensure that you have the best possible chance of your CV and covering letter being seen by employers.

In response to Slinky and LadyMissA, reed.co.uk accepts CVs in word, PDF and RTF formats.

All the best,

Zoe Feltham
Product owner - reed.co.uk

LadyMissA

reed.co.uk wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your comments on this issue.

We started sending covering letters as attachments rather than in the body of emails at the end of 2010. We made this change because some of the formatting in jobseekers covering letters was being removed when the covering letter was displayed in the email. If you entered bold text or bullet points, these wouldn't always display correctly. By attaching your covering letters as separate documents, we were able to ensure that the covering letter the recruiter saw was exactly what you'd entered.

However, after seeing this thread, it's obvious that this solution seems to have caused some other problems for you. We're now looking into alternative methods of sending covering letters to recruiters to ensure that you have the best possible chance of your CV and covering letter being seen by employers.

In response to Slinky and LadyMissA, reed.co.uk accepts CVs in word, PDF and RTF formats.

All the best,

Zoe Feltham
Product owner - reed.co.uk

I am not sure it was the end of 2010 as I have been looking for work via Reed since the end of 2009 (before I was made redudant) and the two attachments have only been happening for me since November 2011. Last one on the 23rd Nov 2011 was just the cover letter in the main body of the email and gave the employer a chance to read it and then decide if they wanted to click the link to see my CV then on the 25th November 2011 I got emails with two attachments where neither cover or CV may be read.

Why not merge the CV and cover into one attachement

Still doesn't help when applications end up in the spam box really either. Very frustrating for everyone as one of the 20% could have been a better candidate and they will never know.