I am sending resumes by email.  Is there a way that a sender of an
email can tell if the email was opened or whether it was just deleted
without being opened? (without asking of course) This would be nice to
know!

Hello Selma:

	Thanks for the opportunity to answer your question about delivery and
read conformation when sending email.

	The answer is yes…and it sometimes no.  People receiving email have
the option through their mail client (reader like MS Outlook, Eudora
or Pegasus) to allow or disallow reading confirmation. So if their
read settings in their email program are set to allow it then it will
work, if your email program is set to request it. If they have it set
to know; you are out of luck, I’m afraid.

So, here is how you do it in Microsoft Outlook Express Version 5.50 .

I quote from their help menu:

“To be notified when your outgoing messages are received
You can set up Outlook Express to receive a receipt for e-mail you
send. The receipt is sent when the message recipient has displayed
your message.

This is useful when you are sending time-critical information, or any
time you want confirmation that your message has been received.

To request a read receipt for individual messages, click the Tools
menu in the new message window, and then click Request Read Receipt.

To request a read receipt for all messages, click the Tools menu,
click Options, and then click the Receipts tab. Select the Request a
read receipt for all sent messages check box.

Note:

Message recipients can choose not to send read receipts, even when
they are requested. If you do not want to send receipts, click the
Tools menu, and then click Options. On the Receipts tab, select the
Returning Read Receipts option you want. “

If you have Pegasus mail:
   In the composition window, there are two checkboxes; one that
confirms receipt of the email, and another to confirm reading. Check
which one you want, and send mail normally.

Google search strategy:

outlook mail confirm reading

	I hope this helps. If you have a different mail client, please ask
for a clarification, and I will tell you how to accomplish this in
your mail software,


Thanks again,


Colin

Wow, this was a fast response.   The response was very informative and
helpful.  Thanks!!

Hello Selma,

 colin-ga  discussed the use of reading confirmation, to verify if an
email has been read. This is probably the easiest way of doing it,
however it fails when it comes down to people using webmail a/c's.
There are over 110 million hotmail a/cs for example.

Another way of doing it, slightly more complicated, is to use webbugs.
A webbug is an invisible gif, embedded into the email, using standard
html tags. The gif itself is stored on a server u have access to. When
someone opens an email that u sent, their client/browser will download
the gif from u're server. By looking at the server logs, u can
determine who opened the email, and who didn't. This is best
illustrated through the following webpage:
http://www.nthelp.com/OEtest/oe.htm

Hope this helps :-)
Rgrds,
John

Hi,


   For non-HTML compatible email clients/webmail, you could post a
link to your resume on the net. Have a unique link for each mail you
send. This may seem to be tedious, but its the only way where you can
find out whether 'all' your mails have been opened.


Cheers,
aditya2k

You don't really have to have a unique link for each e-mail, for
example I have the same situation, I am sending out resumes left, and
right, and I always include a link to my online portfolio/resume. I
have some cgi scrips in place that save the address of each visitor to
my site, and usually from that you can tell who is looking, and who
isn't. For example some one at cisco just looked at my website, I can
tell because the name of his computer looks like this:
rtp.[EDITED].cisco.com

My experience is that relying on delivery confirmations will tell you
less than 10 percent of the time whether your mail was received or
read.  For security and privacy reasons, most mail users do not give
out that information.  As John237 mentioned, web bugs can also be
used.  These probably would work 90 percent or more of the time; they
are often used by spammers and commercial mailers to see who is
reading their mail.  The main cases where they don't work is where
some sort of a firewall is used to prevent that information from being
passed on, where the recipient is using a text-only mail program,
where the recipient is using a mail program that is set not to display
graphics, or where the recipient is using an e-mail client such as
Pegasus that displays graphics that come with the mail but not
graphics that have to be fetched from the Web.

http://www.confimax.com/

-K~

You should be aware that unless a company's website invites you to
send them a resume then what you are doing is sending spam

tsk tsk

i receive about 50 unsolicited resumes a week. forcing me to tell my
email program that "no i don't want to acknowledge this losers spam"
does not put me in a good mood.

Usually, a company will specify what format you should use for a
resume.  Often, the resumes will be pre-screened by a computer that
looks for keywords or adds it to a database.  If you use a format that
merely gives a link to an external web page, your resume may be
ignored simply because it is not in the email.

Unfortunately, many companies do not reply to email with resumes
unless the company has a specific interest.  Setting your email client
to request an acknowledgement is your best bet--without that you will
not get one--but don't rely on it.

button's remark about "spam" is not likely to be your problem. 
Chances of getting a response with a legitimate resume submittal is
failry low.  And spam refers to untargetted and unsolicited email. 
Usually it's UCE.  But if you are sending a resume to a specific
company for a specific position, it's not spam by definition.  It may
be unwanted, but so would be a remark than complains to you for
something you may not be doing, yet offers no comments whatsoever
about your question :-)