I’ve received a ton of emails about Part 1 of my three-part series — How to Get a Job: A True Story.
Amazingly, the vast majority of them have not been berating me for taking 3 weeks to post part 2. And now, without further ado, the scintillating saga continues.
How to Get a Job: A True Story (Part 2)
In Part 1, I showed you the awesome email I got from someone who wanted to work for me. Although you can read the whole email here, I’ll remind you of the highlights.
- Direct ask: I want to work for you and here’s why. Bam.
- Smart flattery: Telling me I’m “amazing” sounds lame — because a) I’m not, and b) you don’t know me. On the other hand, telling me I must be trustworthy because I have bangs is just brilliant.
- Shared interests: East Africa, ballet flats, Chai tea.
- Witty writing: If you’ve got it, flaunt it.
So, although we all dream of writing the email of our lives and having the intended recipient email back within minutes, that’s not what happened.
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Instead, it took me 27 days to write back. (I just checked).
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Why did it take me so long?
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Like most people who have online lives, I get way too much email. And, like most people who get way too much email, on a daily basis I need to more or less live in email crisis mode — wherein I write back to things that I deem “urgent” and delete or star everything else (yes, I use gmail, and so should you). (For a further explanation of how I handle email and what I deem “urgent”, see this article.)
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So, once a month or so I go on email blitzes (a term I learned from @chloes) to slam through hundreds of emails in a few hours. A couch with good back support and a dark chocolate mocha are near requirements for such feats.
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And so, there I was, slamming through hundreds of emails, when I came across this one. Truth be told — the subject line looked spammy:
I want to work for YOU!
But when I opened it, and saw it included bullet points and regular font (both signs that it was not a poor copy and paste job sent to thousands), I started reading. Like a good book, the first sentence hooked me. And so I kept reading.
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By the time I finished, I wished I had a job to give the lovely young woman. But I didn’t, and I wrote her as such.
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Verbatim, I said:
you are truly awesome and i loved this email. im sadly not hiring right but this ROCKED. could i post this on my blog if i took out some (you tell me) incriminating details? it’s like you took a class to write a pitch letter this is so awesome.
For clarification: NO I didn’t use a salutation or sign off. And NO I didn’t write with capital letters. And NO I didn’t spell check or fix the grammar. If you’re thinking right now — “Claire, Is that really how you write emails to people? Because that looks like ungrammatical chicken scratch and aren’t you, um, like an author?” — let me reassure you with these words: at least you don’t get emails from me. (Seriously).
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According to my inner circle, my emails are some of the most difficult to decipher garbled mass of letters to walk across this fine stage in recent years.
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But I digress.
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So, back to her.
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After I wrote her that aforementioned chicken scratch, she wrote me back. And if she didn’t shock me with her news, then my name isn’t Claire Diaz-Ortiz.
In her email — keep in mind that only 27 days had passed since she initially wrote me wanting to work at Twitter — she told me that she was actually already working for Twitter.
Heh?!?
Tune in next time for Part 3…(and remember, Part 1 is still here)
along with my series on How to Get a Job: A True Story? Catch up by reading Part 1 and Part 2, then read Part 3
Hi, just wanted to tell you, I enjoyed this post. It was funny.
Keep on posting!