6 tips to help you land your dream job interview with examples

If you are looking to set up job interviews, then you have come to the right place. Through years of trials and errors, I have identified a process that worked well for me and will work for you as well. 

During my entrepreneurial years (between 2014-2018), I developed a habit of writing emails to just about anybody I found intriguing, asking for advice, introductions or selling Mpower.chat’s chatbot services. Over time, I was able to hone my email writing skills to a level that I get a 100% response rate from CXOs. In most cases, these result in a meeting or at least a call.

In this blog post, I will share six tips and finally end the article with three examples of some of my best emails. I have also included some examples of how not to write a job application email. By the end of this blog post, I promise that you will know enough and have few references to craft the killer email that will get you interviews.

Tip 1: Identify the right companies

I cannot stress this enough. A little extra work upfront can go a long way. I have made mistakes in the past where I have prioritized money over other important things. While cash is an essential factor, other areas are equally important. 

I use the rule of 6 for selecting the right company. These are the parameters I care about as a marketer applying to startups:

Role: 

The bigger the challenge, the better it is for me. I like to wear multiple hats and solve ambiguous problems. Therefore, I always want to search for roles that give me space to solve problems daily. Positions that entails doing the same work every day do not cut. 

Founders:

You must evaluate the founders, just like how investors assess them. After all, you are investing in them in terms of your time and career. I assess founders from three different pillars: 

• Vision: Do the founders align on a precise yet outrageous vision?
• Equation: How have the founders figured out their roles in the company?
• Profile: Have the founders done something in the past that will help bring the vision to life?

Runway: 

The runway is another crucial factor I evaluate. Given the current expenses and employees on the payroll, how long will the company be able to sustain if they are to earn absolutely no revenue every month? Time since the last funding, amount raised, the number of employees and basic math will help you gauge the runway.

Boss: 

Micromanagement is a deal-breaker for me. I prefer my boss to be hands-off and give me the freedom to experiment and solve problems. In my experience, this is the hardest to evaluate. 

Product Market Fit: 

Do they have product-market fit? If not, is there a thought process towards finding a product-market fit.

Compensation: 

What is the compensation? How frequent are the appraisal cycles? What are the benefits apart from money? Do I get milestone-based ESOPs and Appraisal? These are some of the questions I ask.

Tip 2: Absorb

Before writing an email, spend time absorbing all the relevant information to help you craft that kickass email. I like to create a google document and spreadsheet to gather as much information as possible about the role, company, and hiring manager. The process usually takes about four to five hours. 

I first write down all the listed skills and responsibilities required. And then try to map my relevant experience against each of those line items. I have attached an example of the matrix at the bottom of this post.

Once I have gathered enough information about the role, I move on to find everything about the company, especially from a marketing lens. Crunchbase is the best place to start your research as it gives you all the information about the company. It also provides funding information and news mentions, which I find helpful for writing that fantastic email. Linkedin is another place where you can find a lot of information about the team, including how the team is structured, common connections, and the kind of people you are going to work with. I also use glassdoor to do a sanity check before crafting emails. Lastly, Similarwebs, Ahrefs, and/or Semrush are great tools to get insights about the traffic and acquisition channels. 

The next piece of the puzzle is your hiring manager or point of contact. I like to know everything about the hiring manager from social channels and Linkedin. Find out what he or she cares about and make a note of that as well. 

Tip 3: Subject line (The first impression)

Your work is half done with a kickass subject line. I would recommend being bold or quirky with the subject line. Here are some of my favorite subject lines:

1. Want to get my hands dirty for [company name]
2. Can I treat you to a cup of coffee in exchange for some insights?
3. Want to be a part of your remarkable journey
4. Happy Wednesday, David!

Tip 4: Write directly to the hiring manager

If there's a careers page, that means the startup has a dedicated HR team. Avoid writing to the HR team as they get hundreds of emails every day, and email fatigue is highest in the HR department. Besides, the HR team will not understand the nuances of your role. Instead, write directly to the team lead, or if you are bold enough, the CEO. You can use snov.io to find the email id of just about anybody.

Pro tip: If you are unable to find the email ID using an email finder, you could find out the company's email format and do some guesswork. More often than not, companies follow either of the following formats:

1. [email protected]
2. [email protected]
3. [email protected]
4. [email protected]

Tip 5: Say no to templates

Are you familiar with the term ad fatigue? Well, fatigue is not limited to ads. Email fatigue is a real thing. We get more and more emails that are just not worth our time. Professionals have already started ditching emails to more efficient chat-based tools like Slack and Microsoft teams. 

If you are like me, then you mostly mark all emails as read if it feels remotely automated. And as a marketer, I can quickly identify an automated email as I am guilty of this heinous crime myself. 

Therefore, to grab your reader's attention, you must hyper-personalize your email. And by hyper personalize, I do not mean, [first_name] and [company]. Instead, you must craft your email to trigger a smile, raise an eye-brow, or produce a tad bit of dopamine in your reader's mind. 

If you google search' job application sample emails', you will get search results pointing to templates like this.

Or this

These emails are full of crimes and will leave you at the mercy of your luck. I prefer to do things to the best of my abilities and leave the rest to fate. So far, chance has worked in my favor, and it will work in your favor, too, if you follow my advice. 

Get personal in your email body. Show how your story is a perfect fit for the product or the company. Think of an event in your life that makes you care about the problem the company is trying to solve and how you resonate with how the company is trying to solve the problem. People love a good story, and you must give them one.

Tip 6: Call to action

Your email must contain a clear call to action, preferably at the end, so that the reader can finish off with the next steps in mind. 

These are three great call to actions that have worked well for me:

1. You can reach me at +91 XXXXXX4814, and I am open to discussing any potential uses of my skills at [company name].
2. I would love to know more about your vision for [company name]. I am happy to do this at the time and medium of your convenience.
3. I understand it's impossible to decide whether someone is the 'right' person for the job by reading I'm great letters (because everyone's got one), so I would suggest a three-minute phone call (and a look at my previous work)
4. I am looking forward to speaking with you regarding the [company name] team's vision and see whether I can fit into something I care about deeply.

Some real-life examples:

Valuefy:

I must confess that this one is a tedious cover letter. In my defense, this is my first ever cover letter. Through my job hunting journey, I have realized that cover letters are not all that important. I do not write cover letters anymore. However, I feel there are a few key takeaways here worth mentioning.  

Subject: Applying to the position of Product Manager/Growth Hacker

As a serial entrepreneur with over 3+ years of diverse experience of running and being part of technology startups, I am applying for the product manager/growth hacker position. 

I am a highly motivated, hands-on Product Owner, and an advocate for agile methodologies, transparency, and collaboration among customers, product managers, software developers, and stakeholders. 

From the available literature online and my interaction with folks at Valuefy, I have learned that Valuefy aims to create products and services to make investing simple yet powerful. I am sure that Valuefy's visionary products and services and my experience in consumer products and I.T. services can find common ground.

I am a firm believer in turning constraints into opportunities. My passion is to solve problems and learn continuously. Life without challenges is boring. 

I look forward to working as a part of team Valuefy and solving all the challenges thrown at me. 

Sincerely, 

Abhishek Keerankuzhiyil Geevarghese

The main takeaway from this letter for me was how I was able to organize the requirements of the role and map them to relevant experiences I have had in the past to help me excel at the position. The 'areas to improve section' will also help communicate honesty. I used this table even during my telephonic interview to say the right things at the right time.

Licious:

Hi Vivek and Abhay, 

1. Pork, octopus, grasshoppers, crickets, frogs, and whatnot. I love all meats I have put my tongue on. 

2. Ready-to-eat family business (B2B), which was set up by mom and me producing cutlets, samosas, spring rolls, and other traditional Indian snacks for star hotels and flight kitchens.

3. A technology entrepreneur with three years of experience. 

These are some of the reasons why I will be a good fit at Licious. 

Apart from these, I can cook delicious meals at Licious hangouts with Licious products. 

I would love to get my hands dirty for the company. 

You can reach me at +91 9819594814, and I am open to discussing any potential uses of my skills at Licious.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Regards/K.G

P.S. Name's K.G. Abhishek. CV's attached.

I got a call back within an hour after sending this email to set up an interview. The above is an example of how you can be bold with your email copy. 

Orai:

Hi Aasim,

I sometimes consider myself lucky to have a tad bit of hearing deficiency, which also impacted my speech. As a result, I always ended up working hard to excel in anything I pick up.

Speaking is one such area that is dear to me. As a kid, I found it hard to speak publicly because of my speech impairment. Many years of hard work and guidance later, I can now confidently talk anywhere. Of course, there's a lot of room to improve.

Defects aside, I come with 6+ years of entrepreneurial and growth marketing experience. Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to have been able to grow companies exponentially with a razor-sharp focus on metrics. I am a problem solver, and I thrive in fast-paced environments.

I am looking forward to speaking with you regarding the Orai team's vision and seeing whether I can fit into something I care about deeply.

Regards/KG

The email above is my favorite, as I was able to connect my struggles to the vision. 

That brings me to the end of this post. I am going to be doing more articles as a part of this series to help you with your job search during these trying times. Please leave a comment below about your thoughts on this blog post and what you would like me to cover next. 

Originally published on Medium.