The one thing you need to include to turn an email into a meeting with your dream employer

Read any guide to writing the perfect cover letter or resume and 10 out of 10 times you’ll hear this advice.

Use bold action words.

People want to know what you’ve contributed, not what just what you’ve done. Infuse it with your achievements.

“Make sure you’ve got key words.”

Keep it short. If you can’t say it on a page, you’re talking too much.

YOU ONLY HAVE 10 SECONDS TO GRAB THE RECRUITER’S ATTENTION.

(I’ve put that in caps because you hear this piece of advice so often it feels like it’s being shouted.)

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Now all this advice is fine.

But there is a big piece that’s missing from this, and it’s something that makes all the difference in any written communication you might fire off to an employer.

It’s the piece that gets you a yes.

That piece is empathy.

In this context, empathy mainly means relevance to the person reading what you’ve written. But there are other ways it works as well.

This has become really apparent to me since I launched the Straight to Shortlist challenge in January. This is where I help people take control of their job search by approaching employers directly.

The challenge is fun and you should join us.

But more on that shortly.

So, as part of this challenge we’ve been sending out notes on LinkedIn and via email direct to employers.

We were aiming to set up meetings to build the relationships that lead to jobs.

In working through how to contact people I realised there was no point getting people in the group to copy and paste a pre-written note.

These notes felt fake.

The simple truth was that more people said yes to a meeting when the request was sincere and written to them personally each time.

So what does sincerity mean I hear you ask?

Well the group and I read our target’s LinkedIn profile and other stuff we could find out online.

We then found something that genuinely interested us about that person, and asked for advice we truly believed they could give us.

For example, we applied empathy in understanding where our potential target may have experienced a similar challenge to what the group member was experiencing. That could be coming from overseas to carve a new career in Australia, shifting from academia to consulting or working in a product management role.

While you can follow a format in making these approaches, empathy is something you cannot fake.

We operated on the assumption that more people will say yes to meetings if three things were present in an email:

• They genuinely believed we had chosen them specifically
• They believed they could offer the advice we were seeking
• They understood what the meeting was about

And bingo that worked beautifully in many instances.

The interesting thing about this is that often the language and expression was not perfect, but the sincerity was.

Here’s an example of an email that worked.

(In keeping with the Seinfeld theme I have used the words Yada Yada Yada to protect confidential details.)

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“Hi x,

I found your details on Meetup when I was seeking out connections to network with people who are passionate about excellence in Yada.

I was inspired to you look up on LinkedIn and discovered that you’re a real champion of excellence in the Yada community.

I really do love your profile and experience especially with the fact that you describe yourself as a Yada.

The way you describe your organisation’s culture and what you do, I find really inspiring.

I am exploring careers in Yada and associated roles such as Yada Yada I’d really love to seek your advice on whether this is a great choice for me.

I know you’re really busy. But would it be possible for me to buy you coffee and for us to catch up briefly at a time that suits you?

I’d value any advice you could give me.

Yours sincerely”

This note is pretty much verbatim, and I am sure plenty of wordsmiths will tell me that it’s a bit repetitive.

However it worked.

Our target said yes to a catch up at a meet up.

Empathy is also about connecting with the reader via the language they use and speaking in those terms. So for many people the tone of the above note may seem a little over the top.

However in this case it was appropriate.

Our target was not in a conservative profession.

She was a marketer of her business.

She was out there with all her blogs and status updates.

If the person we wanted to contact was in IT and not so active on LinkedIn, for example, we would not be using words like “champion of change”. The tone would would reflect how they expressed themselves.

Now before I wrap up I have three more important points on empathy.

Firstly keep your emails as short as possible.

That way you’re showing respect for that person’s time. Many people read messages on phones, nowadays so an email that’s too long appears even longer in that format and may scare the reader from starting to read it.

Secondly, the email is about the other person not you. So only include detail about yourself that makes the reader understand why this meeting is important to you. One to two lines on who you are is enough.

Finally, put yourself in their position when they first read your email.

If you’re doing this cold, with no connections in common you can expect your target will look over your LinkedIn profile and make a decision to say yes or no based on that. You need to make it easy for your target to understand who you are and what you do at a quick glance.

So why did I mention the Straight to Shortlist challenge before?

Well the content of the last email came straight from my last Straight to Shortlist Challenge, where together we directly approach employers you choose, instead of waiting for recruiters who rarely call back.

If you want to get 5 meetings with your top 5 employers in 5 weeks, check out what’s on offer and find out when we launch by clicking on the button on the image below.