The right email really can land you the job of your dreams, even if it hasn’t been listed anywhere. There are people out there right now doing jobs that didn’t exist until they wrote to a company and sold themselves with a perfectly-crafted email. But how? Resume.io has come up with the essential elements of a perfect cold email:
Find the right person to send it to
When applying for an advertised role, they make it clear where you need to send it, but if there’s no advert, you need to do your own digging to find the right person to make sure your email will have the chance of making an impression. LinkedIn is your friend here, so head to their company page, view all their employees, and find a manager in the department you are interested in joining. If you can’t find an email address, try using Hunter.io.
Grab their attention with your subject line
We all get lots of unsolicited emails from people we’ve never heard of, especially at work, so if you don’t get your subject line right, all the rest of your work will be for nothing because it won’t be read. You need to keep it brief (no more than 60 characters), include an impressive fact about yourself and try to match the language to what you’ve read on their website.
Get their name right
If you’ve got past the first barrier and persuaded them to open your email, the last thing you can afford is to ruin all that work by getting their name wrong in the salutation. You need to have found the right person to contact, rather than emailing a generic address, so be sure to use their name rather than ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ and double-check that you’ve spelled it correctly.
Keep your introduction brief and to the point
Now it’s time to say who you are, but don’t lose their interest by telling them your life story. Use concise and direct paragraphs to tell them who you are, how your story connects to their values, what you’ve achieved in your career and then link them to your LinkedIn profile where they can get the rest of what they want to know about you.
Explain why you’ve contacted them
After these short paragraphs, you need to get to the point before they switch off. Explain that you’re looking for an opportunity and tell them where you see yourself fitting in at their company, so you can give them an idea of how you could be useful for them. This is also a good place to name-drop if you have a contact at the company.
Tell them what you could bring
Selling yourself means making sure they know in what ways you could make their lives easier. So list your expertise and show why you are worth hiring, then offer an example of how you could improve their service, demonstrating that you can also identify opportunities for growth.
Close with respect and gratitude
After you’ve done your bit persuading them, you need to hand the power back over to them, so don’t make the mistake of seeming pushy. Show them respect, offer flexibility and show a willingness to meet whenever suits them. Then thank them for their time, but be sure to avoid coming across as presumptive or making a demand of them.
By following these steps, your dream job could be waiting for you, even if it doesn’t exist yet, so why not give it a try?
Also published on Medium.
