Follow up: Use recruitment templates carefully

By: Julie McCoy October 14th, 2009

For all of the time and trees e-mail saves, it can also be ripe for mistakes. I certainly have been guilty of sending a colleague an e-mail intended for someone else. I also know of colleagues who ended up in embarrassing situations because they “Replied All” by accident or forgot to BCC recipients.

Not only do mistakes like these cause the sender embarrassment, but it can also cause a breach confidentiality, which coordinators should be aware of when communicating with applicants during recruitment. Ophthalmology coordinator, Mary Hitt, shared the following tip and asked that I pass it on to all Residency Manager Blog readers.

Sending mass e-mails to candidates during recruitment can land you and your program right in the middle of this embarrassing situation if you’re not careful.

If you send a mass e-mail out to candidates, be sure to blind copy all of the addresses to protect confidentiality. Otherwise, the recipients can see who else was denied an interview. Additionally, suppressing the “to-list” will ensure that recipients can only reply back to the sender, not everyone else included on the e-mail.

Hitt also reminds coordinators to add this tip into any written processes that you follow or that you leave for others who handle residency applications.

What else do you do to safeguard applicant privacy and ensure that you don’t end up in one of these sticky situations? Leave a comment in the box below.

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