Megan Riksen (00:04):

Hello and welcome to the Work LIke Laker podcast. I'm Megan Riksen. And today I'm joined once again by Grace Pushman. Hi Grace. Hi Megan. All right. So today we are tackling everyone's favorite topic, which is email Grace. You've got to tell me how much you love email.

Grace Pushman (00:38):

You know, when I open up my inbox and I see 40 new emails, I just shed a tear of joy because that's what, that's what we're in this for, not the students, but the emails. Yeah, just pure joy through email.

Megan Riksen (00:52):

Hopefully you all can sense our sarcastic tone. But obviously email is a useful tool it's necessary for communicating with others, both the people that we need to interact with such as classmates or coworkers. But also it's a great tool when trying to reach out to individuals who you may be connecting with about a future internship opportunity or talking to an alum about their experience and, and trying to, you know, get some networking done. So that professional context of writing emails to employers is kind of the framework we're using today to talk about writing emails. And we want to cover some of the top mistakes that we see students and alums make in their email writing so that you can ensure that you aren't making them and to do this, we consulted two of our employer partners to get their take on this subject. So throughout this episode, we'll be sharing some tips and examples from Katie Deisler , who is an associate university recruiter at Gartner and from Wendy Brummel, who is the director of corporate accounting at Meijer. So why don't we jump right in? We can start with some of Katie's advice that she shared. So Grace, would you like to share the first common mistake that she sees?

Grace Pushman (02:10):

Yeah. So Katie's first piece of advice or what not to do is to use too informal of a format. So often when we are using emails, we're going to have to adjust it based on who we're sending an email to. So like if you're shooting a quick email to your friend, family member, you're probably not going to put dear so-and-so, you know, but when you are writing to an employer, you do want to make it more of a formal format, more like a letter. So you do want to have some kind of greeting in there, whether it's, you know, dear might be, if that feels a little too antiquated for you you could also put hello, good morning and then put their title. So if, if you know them, maybe you put their first name. If you don't, maybe you say Mr. Or Mrs, or doctor whoever. But having an agreement in there, don't just start off with the body of the message you're sending. And then have some sort of salutation sign off. You know, my personal favorite is best. That's what I say best comma. And then I put my full name, grace Pushman,usome people will put, you know, sincerely, thank you as a good one, you know, you can do again. I think everyone has their own opinions on what feels good or what feels authentic to who you are that still sounds, you know, still professional. Right? Cause I think what happens is, you know, if you're sending the email to an employer as if you're sending it to your friend, it's not going to come across the way you want it because you know, you don't talk to people the same in your everyday life. Like you're going to talk to your best friend differently than you're going to talk to your professor. And that should also be the same for email. So keep that in mind. Uand then the second tip kind of goes with that because it's really about tone. And so with tone, you want to make sure that it's not too abrupt, that it's not too informal. And we have some examples of both of these. So one is, Hey, well my internship get canceled and wanted to talk about the job opportunity. So first of all, this example, the person did not have a proper greeting. Hey, is not really a greeting that you're going to give to an employer. I remember I used to get teased by like, uncle's like, Hey, is for horses. You know, it's kind of, it's not a very professional greeting to give to someone. Uso first of all, don't start with, Hey, and then, you know, the, the tone of this one too, I think is a little bit abrupt. Will my internship get canceled and wanted to talk tomorrow about the job opportunity. There's not even a question in there. They weren't there. Wasn't a, Hey, do you have any time where we might speak about this job opportunity? Uthere's no, thank you. There's no pleasantries, you know, they are human beings, so you don't want to just make it seem super transactional, ask them how their day is going first, you know, then maybe fall into the things that you wanted to send the email about. But again, I think both tone and format for this one was an issue. And then, you know, signing, you want to sign off as well with best or thank you. Uand then, so another couple of examples of tone is, Hey, I was talking to Dr. So-And-So and he told me to put his name down for a recommendation for an internship.

Grace Pushman (05:11):

And wondering what times we can talk about an internship. So again, I think similar to the first one, there's really not a question in there. It's just, Hey, I want to talk to you about an internship to me that sounds a little bit rude, a little abrupt, you know, you want to make sure that you're putting, you know, they're potentially doing you a favor of talking to you of trying to get you this internship. So you want to make sure that that's getting across in the tone that you're said, you're that you're sending that it's, you know, I realize that you're taking time out of your day to read this email, to potentially look at my application materials, et cetera. So, you know, be appreciative and make sure that that tone is in your email. I will say, you know, one thing we're happy to do at the Career Center is you can always go over these with us as well. So that's something I do with students sometimes is just read their before they send them off. Because you do want to make sure that you are getting across the proper tone in your email,

Megan Riksen (06:04):

Right. While also not being too wordy. Right? I mean, a lot of what we're saying is yes, you need those pleasantries. You want to, you know, have these full, complete sentences, but at the same time, it still is an email. So you don't want to be writing a novel either. So I mean, it's like everything in life balance, right? Like figure out what makes sense. And yes, absolutely. We are happy to review those.

Grace Pushman (06:30):

It seems like that would be easy, but it actually can be tricky. And I think that's where students get into trouble is because they send the emails without putting enough thought into it. And so then it either is way too lengthy or it's too abrupt. And so it is striking that right balance. And sometimes you might just call up a friend and say, I'm going to read this out loud to you. Do you have any advice on how this sounds, I've done that before with my mom. I do that all the time actually.

Megan Riksen (06:54):

Yeah. Like how does this strike you? What is the tone that you're hearing when I'm reading this out loud to you? That's likely how the other person will interpret it. So, yeah. Good. All right. So the next tip from Katie, the next mistake that she sees is when the email doesn't ask for any sort of clear next step, some sort of action that you, as the writer is hoping to receive through this email, right? An email should have a purpose. Why are you writing it? It isn't just a formality, even though the email should be a little formal, but you want it to be purposeful so that it's not wasting the other person's time. So Katie says, if you're, if you're reaching out to me first, make sure your purpose is clear and she gives some examples of what that purpose might be. Are you asking for an interview? Are you hoping to have a call with her just to kind of establish a relationship? Maybe you're looking just for some advice. So kind of doing an informational interview. But she, she says that sending an email is not enough. The, the next steps, the requested action really needs to be clear. And I think this is, yeah, this is a huge mistake that I see in email writing all the time when, when students are sending their drafts to me is, yeah, what are you, what are you hoping the other person does? These are busy people you're writing to if they have the opportunity to just read that email and say, okay, yeah, nice email, moving on with the rest of their day because no action was requested. That's likely what they're going to do. So give them a reason, a purpose for why they should write you back to answer a question to follow up with, you know, maybe an interview time, whatever that may be.

Megan Riksen (08:49):

But I think that's pretty important to kind of keep the two way dialogue going or to least start kind of that back and forth conversation over email. And then the other piece of advice Katie provided was just to always send along a resume with your first email that you're sending to someone. It's going to save a lot of time for that employer because then they, they don't need to go and try to figure out what you're all about and you don't need to say that all then. And then the body of an email they're able to quickly glance at your resume, kind of get a sense of the things you've done. And then you can spend the body of the email, really speaking to the why, why are you reaching out? What are those next steps? Why are you curious about their organization? Whatever that may be. So I think that's a good one.

Grace Pushman (09:42):

Yeah, that's great too, because I think, you know, you want to just make their job as easy as possible. If you're asking something of them to put that resume there so that everything's convenient in one place for them to look at everything they need to look at, it makes it just that much less stressful when they open up an email and they can say, Oh, this is clearly what they're asking of me, which was, you know, tip number three. And then here's all the stuff I need to be able to help this person, including the resume. I think that's great.

Megan Riksen (10:09):

Absolutely great. Okay. So now we have, we're going to take a slight turn and focus specifically on thank you, emails. So these are obviously the emails, the notes you should be sending following an interview, or really any sort of networking interaction. A thank you goes a very, very long way. And Wendy has shared some of the common mistakes that she sees because she does a lot of on-campus recruiting for her company. And so gets a lot of students after their interviews sending thank you, emails. So grace, do you want to start us off with her first mistake that she sees?

Grace Pushman (10:47):

Yes. And I really liked this tip because I think that it's probably something a lot of us do. Which is you do not want you to copy and paste the exact same. Thank you. Note to everyone you interviewed with. So I will say one thing you know, that you're already doing right, is that you are thinking everyone you interviewed with. I think that is another mistake that isn't addressed here is that, you know, when you're interviewing, let's say there's five people on a panel who are interviewing you and you only send the thank you to perhaps the person who organized the interview. I do think it's important to try to send an individual thank you to each person who you interview with. So that's one thing this person is doing correct. However, Wendy's advice here is don't copy and paste the same message because she was saying that they do compare notes.

Grace Pushman (11:28):

And so I think that that's true because you know, when you get a thank you, it's nice. And so you probably say, Hey, Megan did, did so-and-so email your two. That's great. And they're like, yeah, they said such and such, Oh, they said that to me too. Oh, they did. And then, you know, I think that just makes you look like you're not as you didn't put as much effort into it and then also it's less personal, right? So you want to make sure that you're trying to maybe address, you know, you can probably keep a couple of things the same, but then change up a couple of sentences to address something specific you talked to with that person. So maybe if one interviewer interviewer asked you one question, or maybe you connected with them about where you're from or something like that, put in those little details to have that personalized connection with each one, even if it's just a sentence or two to differentiate. So that's, that's one piece that I thought was interesting. Cause I do think that a lot of people are guilty of, of doing that of the copy and paste.

Megan Riksen (12:21):

Yes, for sure. I think that's a pretty common mistake across, you know, kind of this whole job search thing, like copy and pasting the cover letter, sending the exact same resume to every employer. Really the name of this game is personalization and quality over quantity. So absolutely you should be sending a cover letter that doesn't look like the cover letter you sent even to a very similar company. You want, you want that to be as specific as possible. So yeah. I love extending that to the thank you note. Yes, exactly sense. And then Wendy's last tip is make sure you send the thank you note quickly, right? And we keep, I keep saying thank you note, but we mean thank you email, thank you. Letters via snail mail, nothing wrong with that. Actually, it's kind of lovely to get mail because I don't know about you grace, but I don't get much mail.

Megan Riksen (13:20):

That's like fun anymore. However, the snail mail likely will get there too late. And Wendy says that at least with her company, they often have debriefs on candidates the day after the interview. So if she gets a thank you note the same day or the next morning from a candidate, that's really meaningful because she's going to have that person at the top of her mind, then when they do their debrief about which candidates they'll be selecting to kind of move on. But if it's a few days later, right, she will likely see it, but it's not going to have any sort of an impact because they probably have already made their decisions. So email is great. I think that's my recommendation typically is send, send the email cause then, you know, it's going directly to the person, as grace was mentioning in the, in the previous tip. If you're interviewing with a panel of people, you can then send a direct email to each of those individuals with some personalization. So yep. Get on it. Right. It's totally appropriate to interview go home from that interview or step out of the zoom room where you were interviewing and right away draft that, that email up with that personalized. Thank you.

Grace Pushman (14:40):

Yeah. And I think if you want to send, because Megan's right, it is nice to get a card in the mail. I don't think anyone's gonna be mad about that. So if you wanted to send one, maybe that's what you send after you get the job. So like if do your final interview and you get the position or even if you don't, that's when maybe you can send that final one, because then you're not on a time crunch. And you know, if it takes a couple of days to get there, they at least know that you, you know, put that extra thought into it. So that might be a space for that.

Megan Riksen (15:06):

Agreed. Great. All right. I think we've covered quite a few tips today. I did want to also make sure that, that we mentioned that these mistakes, we kind of talked about them within the context of email writing, but certainly when you're reaching out to people on LinkedIn, if you're reaching out via other social media platforms, really any way that you're communicating with a future employer, these tips should really, really be utilized in these mistakes. You should try to avoid them. So anytime you're reaching out to someone for a professional purpose, keep your language professional. So anything else from you Grace or did we do all right on this?

Grace Pushman (15:45):

I think we did. All right. I think we covered it. Not all of it, but a good chunk of it.

Megan Riksen (15:49):

Awesome. Great. So that's it for today. Thanks so much to everyone for listening and we hope you tune into a future episode soon.