We all do it. Even me, who complains about it all the time.
You send an email (or leave a voice mail) to someone, and are always complete, positively, bet-the-retirement-savings-and-all-the-Christmas-gifts-I’ll-ever-receive positive that the other person received it.
AND. THEY. DID. NOT. RESPOND!
Sons of…. (guns)!
And IMMEDIATELY you launch into imagining roughly 1,000 ways that the other person must hate you enough to not respond. You develop elaborate scenarios of them gleefully deleting your email or voicemail with a wry snicker.
Here’s where this gets under my skin.
#1. You send ONE email or voicemail, never hear from the person and assume they hate you.
Now, Raise your hand if you’ve NEVER deleted an email or voicemail by mistake, or been so swamped that you completely and positively intended to get back to someone, but then completely and positively forgot.
I thought so. Emails get deleted by mistake, people never see them. The interwebs isn’t the most reliable thing on the planet.
Send another one 3-4 days later to follow up. Admit that things can get “lost in the ether” and you’re not sure if they saw it, or you thought you sent this email a few days ago, but weren’t positive. Anything, but give them another shot before you completely write them off as hating you, or completely incompetent. Wait for real, honest to God proof of that.
#2. Contacting someone but only providing your email address (or phone number.)
Here’s how the scenario goes-and I’ve had this happen at least twice in the past year with clients, and many more times when I was in corporate America. It really gets under my skin.
Client prospect sends me an email asking for my phone number to talk, or wants to set up an appointment. I reply back via email-which although I normally prefer to call, is all I can do because they’ve just provided me their email address.
I don’t hear back from them, and many times I’ll send a 2nd email-again, this is all I can do, because this is all the information I have.
Then they send me another email a few days later-this time marked URGENT-requesting that I get back to them.
Again no phone number.
Are you KIDDING ME?
They have far more tools than email at their disposal to get back to me. Does the world not know that an email address in many cases (especially in the cases of a small business owner) is their URL? So if she took a sec, she could go onto my website and actually schedule a time to talk, or pull my phone number from there.
Also-ALWAYS include your phone number on ALL email correspondence you send, and say it slowly (twice) on a voicemail. Give them another method of getting ahold of you in the case that it’s not THEM, but YOU that’s causing the snafu.
Take a minute to think about how what you’re sending can be made easier for the person on the other end-with as many failsafes as possible.
Unless you’ve reached out to them at least 3 times over 2-3 weeks, and haven’t heard anything back, you can’t automatically assume they want nothing to do with you. And even then, we’ve all been overwhelmed in the midst of a project at work or personal crisis. If it’s appropriate, reach out to them a few months later to gently touch base.
Help them, help you.
Now, let’s go get some jobs!
Melanie Szlucha’s company Red Inc. Helps candidates stand out from the crowd–in a good way. Follow her on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/Red_Inc) or check out her website: http://www.reallygreatresume.com
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