Cover Information of a Job Application and How to Use It

Summary
This article explains the concept of cover information in Talenture RS and how and where it can be used in the recruitment process.

1. Details
In Talenture RS Cover Information refers to the covering details related to a candidate whose job application has been received via email. This includes the following parts of the email message:

• Content of the email ‘Subject’ line
• Initial 100 characters of the message body

The cover information may typically contain following types of details:

• Position applied for
• Key details regarding the candidate such as relevant skills, current employer, availability for the position etc.
• References

When transferring resume content from email messages (e.g. via the Talenture RS Outlook Addin etc.) Talenture RS extracts the cover information and stores in the ‘Cover Info’ field for the candidate in the database.

1.1 Modifying Cover Info
Once candidate details are saved in the public database, team members having permissions to edit candidate details can modify the cover information at any time. You may need to modify the cover information in the following cases:

• You’ve screened a candidate telephonically and need to update the position applied for or any other details mentioned by the candidate earlier.
• You have received a candidate’s resume in response to a job posting on a Job Board and need to add the Job Code of the position in the cover information to enable locating it later via search.
  
  
• In case the cover info field was blank for an existing candidate and you received an updated copy of the candidate’s resume via email then the cover information would get updated in the existing candidate record.

1.2 Using Cover Info
You can use the information stored in the cover information field for quickly shortlisting candidates for Jobs, locating relevant candidates by applying search etc.

a. Use in Shortlisting
You can do better fitment of candidates for a position by first referring to the cover info field for candidates when shortlisting for Jobs: 

• Candidates are most often located from the database based on key skills, qualifications, experience etc. However candidates may have mentioned specific role preferences, relevant experience etc. in the cover information which would help in doing a more accurate match. Hence recruiters can refer to cover information details before linking candidates to Jobs to avoid screening irrelevant candidates.

b. Use in Candidate Search
You can use the Advanced Search section available in the Candidate Search Tool to apply to locate resumes uploaded via email based on keywords in the subject and message body.

• Assume you’ve posted job in a Job Board for a position of “Key Accounts Manager” done on Naukri.com. The Job Code assigned for the position is: N-1741, so candidates responses received for the job posting will have this code in the ‘Subject’ line. 

• Now in the Advanced Search section, you can specify the above job code in the ‘Cover Info Contains’ field and then apply the search. This will show you all candidates who have responded to this job posting.
  
  Note that you can also specify multiple comma-separated keywords in the ‘Cover Info Contains’ field to locate candidates matching multiple terms in the cover information.
  
  The screenshot below shows an example of using the 'Cover Info Contains' field in the Advanced Search section.

 

2. Related Resources

• New/Edit Candidate
• Advanced Candidate Search