Chris Russell of CareerCloud wrote a post titled How to write a Job Search Email. This is a super important topic, and I talk about it in my presentations. People want to help us, but they can’t help us if they (a) don’t know we can use their help, and (b) don’t know what we are looking for.
The job search email helps solve both of those issues. We let people know we want their help. And we let people know how they can help us.
Let me take it to the next level, and suggest you write a job search newsletter. Instead of writing one job search email, you write a series of emails. I think this is one of the top tactics every job seeker should employ (well, except the job seekers who are in a secret job search!). I wrote about this in two posts:
How to write a job search newsletter (1 of 2): This talks about what you put in a newsletter, and how often you send it, etc.
How to write a job search newsletter (2 of 2): This talks about how to use JibberJobber to get the right contacts to send to, and how to use Email2Log to do it. What i didn’t mention, but should have, is to create a Log Entry for those you sent an email to.
Again, this is a super important tactic that YOU should be using!