Guide to writing an effective job mail

It is likely that you are in your first job or perhaps trying for another job. Perhaps, you are looking to send your application by email. Before you do that, a couple of things to remember.




1. In today’s information age, email is both an informal and formal communication tool.

2. As a formal communication tool, you must be very careful of the content of the mail

With that out of the way, let us look at some of the things that a potential employee or a job seeker must know in order to make the right impression.

1. Include the necessary information

Make sure that you provide all the relevant and necessary information in the covering letter. They (recruiters/employers) may or may not read the entire letter the first time, but they do expect it to have the necessary information as and when they get down to reading it.

2. Avoid being casual

A common mistake young people do is to extend the informal nature of email into their workplace. Some make the mistake of writing as they speak. This may be an accepted thing when writing sms and emails to friends but it is definitely not accepted in the formal workplace. This along with using emoticons, all small letters, spelling mistakes and poor grammar can cause more damage than good.

3. Follow the guidelines

Given that it is easy to rule out a person than rule in, care should be taken at the first stage to make the right impression.

Rule 1: Remember, email may have replaced paper as a means of writing your covering letter but that does not mean the way of introducing has changed. So write as you would in a letter.

Dear Mr./Ms. Hema Ravichander,

I am writing with regard to your posting on ….

Rule 2: Make your subject line obvious---Application for whatever the post

Rule 3: This is a horror on email. Not changing the name of the person/company in the body of the email. The ctrl C, ctrl V can have terrible long-term implications.

Rule 4: If you have received a response from a potential employer/consultant, do respond in two days or within 48 hours. Do include the previous mail to set the context of your response.

Rule 5: Send emails from a respectable mail id. It is not funny to receive mails from a mail id which reads sexygil@gmail.com. Use that for your friends; for work get a serious one or at least an appropriate one.

Rule 6: Take a print out of your mail. Check for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, context of use of words, etc. Get a friend to look up on your behalf to see if all is proper including the tone of the mail. Only then send it.

Rule 7: Never send the covering letter as an attachment. In all probability it will never get opened. Resumes can be sent as attachments. Make sure that it is named in a manner it is easy to find. For instance, you can call it name_resume or name_city_resume in the event you think there could be others with similar name.

Rule 8: Scan for viruses. Make sure that your attachment is virus free.

Rule 9: Check the recruitment ad to see if the company has mentioned the format of attachment. Is it word, text or pdf. Make sure to send in the desired format.

Rule 10: Do not assume anything. Your employer may sound informal in his reply mail but that does not mean you should become informal too He might just be trying to put you at ease.

Latha Chandradeep

Published by CyberMedia Dice....