Writing Cold Emails to Get Referrals, Interviews, and Jobs

We've all received our fair share of terrible cold e-mails. Let's celebrate the bad, but also build a first principles mindset to write our own good cold e-mails.

We all get a few cold e-mails a day. For 99%, we just ignore and delete.

But this behavior has the unfortunate side effect of warping our own perceptions of how effective this channel can be.

The fact is: the best and most effective professionals still check their e-mail multiple times a day.

Moreover, I’ve found an inverse relationship between how senior someone is and how responsive they are to important messages.

• My CEO at Apollo, Tim Zheng? On top of everything.

• My CEO at thredUP, James Reinhart? Amazing inbox zero skills.

• My boss at Affirm, Chung-Man Tam? Always on his messages.

It’s this reality of the working world that makes cold e-mails still so effective. The people who are hiring can still be reached. As long as you write a message deemed important.

Take Evan Spiegel, CEO of a $25B company. This message worked on him:

Hey, my name’s Niraj Pant.

I understand your time is valuable. I’ll only write three bullet points.

Programming since 8th grade.

Want to intern for Snapchat this summer as a high school junior. How?

Thanks,

Niraj

He got the high schooler the internship—and later even shared the email.

Unfortunately, most cold e-mails look nothing like that. And that’s because the advice for cold emails out there is terrible or outdated.

Take Tim Ferris’s apocryphal guide, cited by many. The e-mail is too long, too old school, and doesn’t do enough personalization work:

But Tim is Tim. And everyone cites him. So this is what pollutes our inboxes for the most part.

As a result, we get deceived into thinking this channel isn’t worth our time.

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Cold Email works

But let’s break the glass:

• I used cold e-mail to get my job at Epic Games. It’s basically the most important tactic when you’re small market job searching like I was.

• I’ve helped many people over the years get jobs via Cold Emails—everyone from engineers to product managers to marketers.

This stuff just works. But if it’s not working for you? My guess is you don’t have the right process or knowledge around it.

So, this post is to help you if you’re not using cold e-mails to get jobs, or your response rate is less than 10%.

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Today’s Post

Words: 4,626 | Est. Reading Time: 21 mins

1. The key principles of a good cold message, on any platform

2. The most common mistakes people make with cold email

3. What messages work best for job searching (+ Examples)

4. The right message, on the right channel

5. Your system

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If you only have 1 minute

1. Big companies are easily penetrable by cold e-mail

As one of my friends at a FAANG company said:

A lot of people (including myself) at big name companies are happy to help out with referrals. But expect that 90% of people will ignore you. Just move on to the next person.

2: It’s not just cold e-mail

You need to target people with the right message, over the right channel at the right time. Cold outreach isn’t “spray and pray” outbound, it’s account-based marketing.

3: Automation is your enemy, but follow-ups are not

Most people think cold outreach and then they get into the automation game. Sequences aren’t the answer. But sequencing personalized follow-up messages work.

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Preamble 1: Cold Email is not just Cold Email

We’re all so used to phrase ‘cold email’ as opposed to ‘cold messaging’ or ‘cold outreach.’ So, I’ve used that phrase.

But, really, this guide will be illuminating how you can hit the right person at the right time with the right message.

It’s that level of meta-channel-optimization that is absolutely critical when job searching. And it’s why your favorite cold e-mailing guide hasn’t sufficed for the task.

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Preamble 2: Where Cold E-mails Fit In

Here’s how I’d think of your options to get an interview mapped against reach and effectiveness:

1. Applying via a Job Board like LinkedIn one click is low reach and low effectiveness

2. Applying on the Company Site is high reach—all listed jobs are there—but low effectiveness

3. DMing on Social is high effectiveness but low reach, since many aren’t active on it

4. Cold Emails are high effectiveness and high reach, since everyone has an email

That makes cold emails a very important channel to optimize as a job seeker.

So, let’s go through all the secrets I’ve learned advising over 20 people this year alone on improving their cold e-mails: