Using email in the most effective and personal way is a significant job hunting skill. You haven’t had any sort of face to face interaction; but you’re also dealing with the lowest chances of success. We want to get you further up the ladder where you will eventually speak one-on-one with the hiring manager; the person who is making the decisions.
It does however, provide an opportunity for a succinct personal overview in a multimedia format – you can have the text email as well as attachments. You can make the attachments your resume, your LinkedIn profile, or a deal sheet, for examples. But you lose a good deal of control because you don’t know who sees this and you do not know what they’re going to do with this information. You’ve also give up follow-up control. They have your profile with no ability for you to actually have a ‘call to action’.
A comforting as sending an email is, if you’re trying to actually get a career that is meaningful to you, we question whether or not sending an email is always an appropriate strategy. Granted, it is a good high-volume pathway. With the ability to send many emails, changing various elements of the email, in a very short period of time. It’s also impersonal and you have no control over its ultimate exposure.
Your email needs to be perfect. They need to be void of spelling mistakes and have perfect grammar. And it needs to have a call to action. You need to be able to end the email with a “To Do”. If you just send it to them with no call to action, then you have very little chance of materializing a next step.
We advise making sure that the email material has been sent to the right person at the firm, not just the first person. Even though your friend, who used to work with you years ago said, “Hey, send me an email and I’ll make sure I get it to Jimmy”, our suggestion would be to spend the extra time in the introductory email to your friend asking for a little more color on who Jimmy is, what he is all about – are they email people, are they telephone call people, can I get their telephone to try and follow-up. “I don’t want to encumber you, now or later on to ask you about any follow-up because you might get busy, so it would be good to be able to follow-up with Jimmy directly afterwards.” Therefore, you have taken the control back in the process.
For more information like this, consider joining the Executive Career Academy, powered by Vlaad and Company. This program runs over three days and fully explores best-practice themes, methods, and initiatives to use when transitioning into a superior career stream, re-entering the market, or simply finding a better career.
