Don’t Email Me At Work!

I’ve written before about my pet peeve about recruiters calling me at work. But this morning I think I may have found something that irks me more: poorly written recruiting emails in my work inbox.

This morning I received the following missive:

It is my hope that this finds you well. The reason for this message is that my firm was recently entrusted to conduct a search for an exceptional QA Manager in the (location withheld) area. Our client is very stable, offers strong benefits and is just started to assemble a new digital platform team. This QA Manager position is one of the first positions to be hired for the group and will have tremendous input to the direction of the team and product development cycle.

Your name has come up as someone knowledgeable in this area that would be able to point me to qualified QA professionals. So, I am contacting you to engage your help. If you know of qualified QA professional I would love to speak with them. My services are free for recruits and candidates.

Please feel free to forward this communication to any of you colleagues and/or to connect via Linkedin. All Inquires are confidential and (company name withheld) will never forward information without the individual’s express prior approval.

Best regards,
(name withheld)

There is so much wrong with this email that I don’t know where to begin. I’ll start with the obvious: do I really want an email like this going through the corporate email system of my current employer? I’m sure I’m not alone when I answer this question in the negative. I understand you’re trying to reach out to people any way you can to fill a position but whatever source you got my work email address from must also have my personal email address which is far more easily found and listed as my primary email address on LinkedIn.

Next is the actual language of the email. “It is my hope that this finds you well” is a very odd opening since the word “this” is vague. It should be “It is my hope that this email finds you well” or “It is my hope that this message finds you well”. (In fact, you don’t really care how well I am as long as I can help you fill a position.)

Perhaps that’s nitpicking and, when taken alone, that sentence would be acceptable. But there are other problems in the email as well. “Our client is very stable, offers strong benefits and is just started to assemble a new digital platform team.” Really? “…is just started to assemble”? It should be “starting” not “started”.

And “So, I am contacting you to engage your help.”. No comma is necessary in this sentence. I would even leave out the word “So” and start the sentence “I am contacting you..”.

How about “If you know of qualified QA professional…”? It’s either “If you know of a qualified QA professional…” or “If you know of qualified QA professionals…”.

Ok. Perhaps I’m still nitpicking. But the second paragraph is where things got interesting for me in terms of content. Apparently my name has come up as someone who may “be able to point me to qualified QA professionals”. Though I’m flattered that I’m being asked for recommendations (it shows reverence to my experience in the field) it seemed by the first paragraph that the author was actually interested in me. But no, he’s writing me to ask me if I can recommend someone else. Am I not good enough for you? What if I were interested in the position? Would you not accept my application? If you’re going to email me then pitch to me. If you’d like to cover your bases then add a line that requests recommendations should I not be interested.

To recap, when sending me a recruiting email please observe the following rules:
1 – Send the email to my personal email address and not my work email address.
2 – Pitch to me not to people I may know.
3 – Always proofread (or better still have someone else proofread) your message. The last thing any potential candidate wants to see in a recruiting email are spelling mistakes and language miscues. A pitch email is akin to a first interview. It’s your chance to make an impression. A poorly written pitch will make a bad first impression and make me less likely to want to apply for the position for which you are recruiting and more likely to rant about it in a blog post like this.

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