I came across this post on my LinkedIn feed recently and had a pretty strong reaction to it. The advice on how to properly frame a cold email to get the recipient's attention is never-ending. Many folks who are inundated with such requests take it upon themselves to write up a list of do's and don'ts as a an act of community service to put these hapless cold-emailers out of their misery. Now this particular post goes a step further. The author expects to be treated like a royalty almost - the person contacting her (an overzealous 21 year old) needs to have put in 10x the time into understanding what would make the author want to reply to her request for a 30 minute chat which may or may not yield any results.
When the recipient sees the effort and the results meet the bar of her expectations, she might respond. There are many such overzealous folks around and if they were to now all follow the playbook, this lady will get hundreds of such requests and need to raise the bar some more. I get the point that the person being asked for time has limited time in their lives and to that end filter criteria are needed - this woman is describing hers.
It made me think of the time when she and people like her would be in their 80s and 90s, no longer in a position where they can help advance someone's career. They too will come to the age of irrelevance. They will spend their days alone or with seniors like them with an assortment of end of life challenges. It would be their turn to ask someone, anyone for thirty minutes of their time to break up the endless monotony of just being. I had to wonder when people write such things if they ever play their lives forward to that point where they have become irrelevant to the world. I am surrounded by a several elderly people in my life and am able to see how the story ends and believe that perspective is very powerful.
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