Two Weird Professional Emailing Habits

When you think about it, the idea of electronic mail (or email as we often call it) is a wonderful invention that has had a profoundly strange effect on the things that we do during the workday. You would think that having the ability to send a message instantaneously would reduce the amount of time that we spend sending messages. Instead, the time has increased two-hundred-fold, along with the total volume of messages that we send. Nowadays, roles in a company exist that predominantly involve sending emails every which way to everyone and everything.

And when you're out of a job, then that's what you'll usually spend most of your day doing. You scope out the companies that you'd want to work for, find their Jobs@SomeBrand.com address, and then fling your resume in that direction. Do this a 100 times, and you just might end up with about two legitimately interested prospects. And if you do that for a few months, then you'll start to notice a few wacky emailing habits that will make you question how in the world that person got hired at all.

Looks legit.

Here are my two favorites:

1) ALL CAPS

EXAMPLE EMAIL (NOT AN ACTUAL EMAIL):

 "DEAR XXXX,
IF YOU'RE NOT THE PERSON I'M LOOKING FOR, THEN I DON'T HAVE ANY TIME TO WASTE BRINGING YOU IN FOR AN INTERVIEW! TELL ME EXACTLY WHY YOU QUALIFY FOR THIS POSITION AND THEN I WILL PROCEED TO LOOK AT YOUR RESUME. UNTIL THEN, I AM UNAVAILABLE."

Surprisingly, this is a little more endemic than you'd think. They just leave their cap-locks on, and then suddenly their whole persona has transformed. It's like they've become some kind of former drill sergeant football coach who's just been trapped behind a desk, in a cage, and is occasionally thrown raw steaks. From a tonal perspective, the email's suddenly just dripping with that kind of testosterone poisoning that will send them onto a roaring 'roid rage any second now. It turns the whole message into a barely-comprehensible block of raw text and post-divorce emotional baggage! There's no immediately visible variation in any of the letters, so the words themselves become needlessly difficult to parse and re-assemble!

And on top of that, it's like they're already yelling at you. On the plus side, at least you know what you’re getting in.

2) NO PROOFING OR GRAMMAR

EXAMPLE EMAIL (NOT AN ACTUAL EMAIL):

"Thank you XXXX .Theer's no wya for me to atatchh my doucmnts and the imae gat the sam tim eso when promtin this it's important to separte the ad by letting people kno wonce they ad their information they will recive for fee and then oce they by the produc twith the link. If thsi is too cnfusing to poeple than we do not promtee."

What.


The casual office email etiquette is one thing. The complete disregard for any kind of proofing or clarity is another. It could be just an emergency, but regardless of the circumstance you might just find one of these in your inbox. And when it arrives, it will make you look twice. Yes, somehow there are employers out there who will respond to emails like this - as if they don't have an extra two seconds to even look at the thing - let alone correct it. Some voices in the Start-Up world have actually advocated for this as a way of communicating with investors and clients. The going logic, of course, is that misspelling a few words here and there creates the implication that you're too busy running from pitch to pitch to proof your emails. That, in turn, makes you look sought after. And while there is some definite truth to that, I've found that going too far beyond some misplaced lower-cases can seriously undermine your credibility as a thinking adult.

If the mistakes are poor enough, then the reader will have absolutely no clue what the email is trying to say, or worse - what the details of the task are. I've even had someone on the other end of a job application berate me with another erroneous email for apparently not following his Not-English instructions exactly. Curiously, this seems to be an issue that's almost exclusively American. The International Companies that I've communicated with make a point of carefully following all the associated rules of grammar and structure. That last thought isn't terribly relevant, but it is interesting.

So, if you're one of those people who's out looking for that source of revenue, you can rest easy. If you know the basics of spelling, grammar, and online etiquette; you just might be more qualified than you think.

At least, in the realm of emails.

 

Addendum On The Issue Of Embarrassment

After publishing my previous piece on embarrassing networking stories, I feel like I may have left the conclusion a little too open-ended. I should clarify that.

While time will ultimately heal all embarrassments, this rule does come with a caveat. Yes, even the most humongous faux pas at a large-scale networking event will eventually evaporate from the memories of strangers. However, confidence to the point of arrogance can do permanent damage if you don't know where to stop.

My point and case is this post-networking email exchange, which comes to us directly from the Chris Jones Blog. If you're in a place where you can't be seen cringing, I suggest you relocate before reading it.

Too long; didn't read? Here's a visual representation.

Ouch.

In spite of all the warnings, this man's ego pushed him further and further down the rabbit hole until he just crashed head-first into a solid granite floor of total failure. All it took was a highly concentrated dose of self-delusion and vanity to burn that connection to ground.

So why share this story? Simply, it provides the perfect counterpoint to the issue of saying "hi." Yes, you should work up the courage to introduce yourself to total strangers. However, you should also understand and appreciate why that initial fear is there in the first place.

It's trying to protect you. It's your social immune system - that part of your brain that forces you to consider your words and actions before proceeding into unknown territory. Much like your biological immune system, it can overreact. It might go a little too far and tell you that the slightest mistake will result in irreparable humiliation. However, it might have also kept this gentleman from digging a grave for himself.

If there's a lesson to be had here, it's this: instead of thinking of social immune system as a voice in your head, think of it as a member of your internal Board of Directors. It doesn't run the whole show, and it certainly doesn't always know what it's doing, but it has an opinion with an appropriate time and place. You should never let you it control you, but you should always be mindful of its concerns. They might save you one day.