An e-mail message can make or break your job search with a specific organization or person. Doing it well is required and assumed. Doing it poorly is the kiss of death.

Related Articles: E-Mail Basics for Job Search Don't Blow Your Cover: Safe E-mail and Blogging Keeping Your Resume Out of the Spam Filters Smart E-mail Etiquette

Do's

Focus on what's important to the recipient.
A job search is personal sales, so think and write like a good sales person!

Hint: Don't use many "I" sentences in your messages -

Bad: "I saw your job posting on CareerBuilder, and I want to apply for the job. I think that your company would be a great place to work, and I have attached my resume for your consideration." Ouch! Four "I's in one paragraph!

Good: "My 2 years of successful experience in online customer support with a Website processing 250 orders a day, my strong interpersonal skills, and my education fit the requirements of the Website customer support opening you have posted on CareerBuilder."

Organize your message like a newspaper article - top down.
Briefly summarize the most important points in the first paragraph of your message, as in "Good" above. Just like a newspaper article's "lead" paragraph, the first paragraph of your e-mail should grab your recipient's attention so that the rest of the message (including your resume!) is read.

Provide the supporting information in the paragraphs below the first one.

Saving your most important point for the last paragraph only works if someone reads that far, and most people won't unless the first paragraph has grabbed their attention.

Use short paragraphs.
An e-mail message needs plenty of white space to be easy to read. Long fat paragraphs of dense text (a.k.a. "wall of words") are daunting to the reader, and not likely to be read carefully. Break up the big paragraphs into smaller ones.

Summarize and highlight important points with bulleted lists (replace the bullets in "rich text" with asterisks in "plain text") and other conventions to help your reader see the most important points easily.

Keep the message short...
particularly your first message to someone. Long messages are intimidating. If someone is in a hurry, a long message is less likely to be read or read completely - it may be saved for "later" but later may never come. If they are expecting a long message, it is more likely to be read.

Send from a "good" e-mail address.
Send your job search messages from a serious address, like "MJSmith567@..." With a little marketing added, "MJSmith-MBA@..." or "MJSmith-CSPro@..."

Don't use your "smartypants@..." or "thebigboozer@..." accounts for your job search. Messages from silly or dumb e-mail addresses may look like junk email (or jokes) and be deleted unread.

Have an effective subject.
Your subject really is the "headline" of your message, and it should contain enough information to catch the recipient's attention, in a positive way.

Note: These days, you also need to avoid the typical subjects used by computer viruses or junk e-mailers (like "Hi," "Important," "Information," etc.).

Send your message to the "right" addressee.
Hopefully you have a person's name and their e-mail address to use. If not, call to see what person/address is appropriate. If they've specified the recipient in their posting, ad, or instructions on their Website, follow their instructions, AND try to find another, better address to use - preferably the hiring manager or the recruiter.

Add a "signature" section at the bottom.
Add a few lines at the bottom of the message, below the closing, that are a combination of marketing and contact information.

Keep the lines short (fewer than 45 characters and spaces per line) so that it doesn't "wrap" an look ugly. Don't use the tab key; type in every character, and then save it as a *.txt file. Your e-mail software can probably add it automatically to the bottom of every message. You can delete it from the messages that don't need it, or have your e-mail software insert it when appropriate.

A signature typically looks something like this:

Keep your signature consistent with the job you are seeking.

Don'ts

Don't "blast" out the same message to many recipients at the same time.
It will look like a "form letter" type of message and be discarded. If you send the same message, at the same time, to multiple addressees at the same domain name, the e-mail filtering software may assume that your message is either junk mail or a virus and discard it. Personal messages, customized and sent to one addressee at a time, are the most effective.

Don't slip into informality.
Just because an e-mail message is not printed out on letterhead, put into an envelope, and mailed using traditional methods doesn't mean it's any less important or formal. Treat e-mail with the same kind of care you would treat traditional business correspondence - don't send your first draft, use good spelling and grammar, etc.

Cautions

We all make assumptions about e-mail that aren't really true. Here are some important things to keep in mind:

• E-mail is not a "complete" communications medium. Your recipient cannot hear your voice or see your face. Are you smiling or snarling when you write "Thanks a lot"? They can only read your words. So be careful of the words you use, and, though they can occasionally be helpful, "emoticons" (:->) are not appropriate in business e-mail. Sorry (:-|)
  
• Not every e-mail is delivered. Software monitors most e-mail systems, attempting to separate the "good" e-mail from the "junk." Sometimes a good message can look like a bad one and get deleted or filed in a folder that is seldom reviewed. This is a great excuse to call that hiring manager to see if s/he got your message!
  
• E-mail is not really private. The message you send to person A may be forwarded to persons B through Z who in turn forward it to their friends and/or associates. This can be good ("viral marketing" in Internet speak) or bad. And, according to a recent study, the majority of medium to large employers retain (and may review) e-mail messages sent by employees.
  
• E-mail messages can have an extremely long life. Anyone who receives your message may save it, either on paper or on their computer (or both). And, of course, messages are saved on individual computers and also forwarded to countless people, who may also save it. In addition, parts of the e-mail infrastructure make and keep copies as back-up in case of technical problems. Reportedly, America Online archives messages for a year.

E-Mail Golden Rule

It's best to avoid writing in an e-mail anything you wouldn't be comfortable having your parents read on the front page of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

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About the author...

Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. Susan is a two-time layoff "graduate" who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. In 1998, her company, NETability, Inc. purchased Job-Hunt.org, and Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt since then. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg.

[Originally published in the May 26, 2004, edition of Job-Hunt's free newsletter - the Online Job Search Guide.]

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