Network messaging: 5 steps to an effective message
During a job search, you’re going to be reaching out to people in your professional network. Those people may be warm, lukewarm or cold contacts. There are a variety of reasons for wanting to send a message - primarily, it’s a step to ask for help to find and secure a job that aligns with your broader career goals. You’ll likely be doing this via text, email, Bloomberg or - increasingly - LinkedIn message.
So, what are the five core elements that will get favourable results?
No.1. Explain who you are
There are three components to this:
Give the recipient your name - perhaps at the front end of the message
Follow with some sort of description of yourself - ‘I am a VP in FIG M&A at Morgan Stanley’, etc. This will give the recipient some context and will, hopefully, establish your credibility
Clarify your relationship to them. This could be something like ‘we used to work together at Merrill Lynch’ or ‘we are both friends of Joe Schmo’. You are creating some sort of link to them.
No. 2. Tell them what you want
Having established a great introduction, they’ll now be wondering what it is that you want - so let them know:
‘The reason I am contacting you is abc’. ‘
‘I am reaching out to you because….’.
‘I would like to ask for your help with…’.
Now they understand what you want, you can now move onto the next and possibly most important step.
No.3. Explain what’s in it for them - what do you offer?
I’m somewhat conflating two ideas here, but I think that they work together. On the one hand, you want to trigger their motivation. They may want to help you because helping others feels good and it’s the right thing to do. They may also want to bring talent to their firm to help make it more successful, or they may want to help their network friends who may be looking for good people. There are any number of reasons that might motivate action.
On the other hand, the person needs to understand the value that you bring to the table. So explain your Value Proposition. Tell them about the sorts of problems that you solve.
No.4. Show that you’ve done your homework.
This may come up earlier in your message and you want to show that you’re contacting them based on the research you’ve done. You’re not randomly sending out spammy messages. You chose that person for a reason: ‘I saw your LinkedIn Profile and noticed …’ or‘ I read about the recent IPO of your company and …’. You get the gist.
No.5. Call to action. Having got this far, there’s one more step. You must let the person know what to do next. It needs to be specific, actionable and respectful of their time. If you say something vague at this point, they’ll have to use up precious time and energy to work out the right solution. So, help them and be very clear:
‘Could you introduce me to…’
‘Please let me know who the right person to speak to about this is and may I use your name when I contact them?’
Some closing thoughts
Three final things.
First, the tone of your message - how friendly or formal you are - will depend on the nature of your relationship with the person you’re contacting.
Second, being polite and using please and thank you is, I would say, mandatory.
Finally, on the understanding that your message is likely to be scanned in a matter of seconds - keep it brief and make it eye-catching.
If you’d like some further advice on how to utilise your network effectively in a job search, get in touch. You can click here to book a no-strings-attached, 15 minute coaching call.