at Wharton, a C in Fixed Income Securities carries more weight than an A in Responsibility in Business.
Key Takeaways
Cognitive bias explains why people sometimes make seemingly irrational decisions.
Affinity bias is why employers tend to hire people like themselves.
Research your target companies and try to infer their organizational biases.
Exploit these biases by reinforcing those that will bolster your hiring case.
Use affinity bias to your advantage by getting referrals from mutual acquaintances!
CHAPTER 3 Be the Holy Trinity of Deals: Your All-Important First Email
With your research at your fingertips, it's now time to reach out with that all-important first email. The first thing to realize is that the emails you send are treated like spam. So how do you grab the attention of the interviewer? The same way you started reading about the Financial Crisis of 2008 and ended up scrolling pictures of NBA Players Megan Thee Stallion Has Dated: click-bait!
Give prospective employers a reason to click through and learn more about you by creating that perfect email that will get their attention. Be different, but be succinct. Err on the side of brevity. People are busy and their return on time invested (ROTI) is critical, so value your email recipient's time as if it were more important than your own, which it is.
Make Me Give a Damn
The first thing that will catch your reader's attention is a memorable subject line that summarizes the email's key message. This leverages another cognitive bias, attentional bias, the tendency to pay attention to some things while simultaneously ignoring others. It explains a person's focus on only one or two choices, despite there also being several other possible outcomes. It's another one of those brilliant scientific acumens that translates into solid, practical advice, in this case: Nail it in a sentence! This is all the more important in this era when the average Internet user has a shorter attention span than a goldfish.1
Be the pitch, like you would in a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity. Make it short and sweet because the first and last lines of your email are likely the only ones that will be remembered. Avoid the boring, like “Applying for Position” or “Seeking Advice.” Instead, mimic the way a movie tries for a stunning logline or captivating sentence that sums up the whole shebang: “Jaws Meets Home Alone.” “Clint Eastwood in Outer Space.” “The Invisible Man Finds a Time Machine.”
Usually if the logline sucks, so does the film, so make yours a good one. Here are some subject lines that weren't necessarily great, but did catch my attention:
Looking for a Superstar Workaholic? Look No Further!
Superpowers My Resume Doesn't Reveal
Will Work for Free (or Almost Free)
My personal favorites which would get me to prowl deeper are those that make links to common acquaintances:
Our Friend, Matt Lin, Thought We Should Connect
Matt Lin's Friend Seeking Advice
Have Dirt on Matt Lin
Using a mutual friend to make the connection has the power to encourage the reader to open the email and read it out of guilt or obligation—unless, of course, Matt Lin stole your wife. Or husband. But hey, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. At least you and the recipient have the same lousy taste in friends. You can bond over that.
Watch the Trapdoors
The next step is to write the email. At this point, many job hunters experience the exact opposite of “You had me at hello!” Make the salutation respectful. If it's the initial email, I like “Dear Mr. or Ms.” because it's so retro. Hardly anyone addresses people like this anymore. It goes without saying, don't send an email without a salutation like you would a text. We aren't Gangnam Style friends on WhatsApp. Also, be professional and don't begin with “Yo” or “Hey Buddy,” or my personal anti-favorite, “Dear Mr. David A. Liu,” which clearly indicates it came from a mass email merge. Show that your email is personalized, not personal. That will appeal to the person's ego and self-love by showing them they're important.
Here's a few more Do's and Don'ts:
Do get to the point! Unless it's the latest Dan Brown novel, many of us hate to read, so don't waste our time or put us to sleep.
Don't bury the lead. This comes from a bygone era when there were things called newspapers and journalists were taught not to hide the most important part of the story. You're the story here, so don't bury the most important thing about you somewhere in the middle.
Do make it 100 percent clear right out of the gate why it's in the recipient's best interest to answer you. Here are some suggestions for opening sentences that will make your target read further:I know you have a role to fill and I'm just the person who can fill it.Here are the three reasons why I'm perfect for the job.John Wong suggested I would be the best candidate for the role you're seeking. (Personally, I love this one because, assuming your target knows John Wong, it provides social proof that you might actually be the solution.)
Don't repeat your resume unless it's something that really should be highlighted and is relevant. For instance, unless I'm the Green Bay Packers, I don't care that you won the Heisman Trophy, but I definitely want to know that you currently have an exploding offer from JP Morgan. (One caveat is we may want bragging rights for having Wall Street's Fittest Athlete. For many years, Wall Street had the Wall Street Decathlon, a 10-event competition which fuses challenges from the Olympic Decathlon and the NFL Combine. It was as stupid as it sounds and featured a bunch of washed-up, has-been college athletes looking to relive their glory days by impressing a bunch of nerds whose typical exercise is running to and from the kitchen in between stock trades to get bagels and lox. Thankfully, it has since morphed into D10, a more inclusive decathlon focused on charitable causes.)
Do attach your resume, but make sure it's one page! No one is interested in a treatise on all your achievements dating back to your pre-K years. I'm not your Dad!
If you think you're a longshot for the job, you're going to have to take chances. You might want to consider some riskier catchphrases that might hook your reader, like “If you want me, I'm yours” or “I have other options” (i.e., shit or get off the pot).
The Rule of Three
Your goal is to provide a quick way of communicating why you're perfect for your potential employer. My favorite tactic is to use three bullet points. The Rule of Three is actually a writing tip that states a trio of points is more humorous, satisfying,
