Given this day and age of mobile access, using our mobile devices to access information and people, it is a good time to talk about the roll is plays in job search.
Obtaining the name of a key networking contact, recruiter or hiring manager is gold. Obtaining their direct email, phone number or cell number is platinum!
So how do you use these judiciously to get in front of them without overstepping?
First is to keep in mind the context of your outreach. Job search occurs within the context of business. A good guideline when deciding whether to text a hiring manager is to ask your self would you do this if you worked in the same office with them? Think about it, would you text your boss or the CEO of your company? This is appropriate only once a relationship is established and an understanding of preferred communication methods has been agreed upon.
Job seekers often feel the pressure of time and want to land a job as quickly as possible so they want things to happen fast, so texting someone to quickly get in front of them or get a response seems to be the way to do this. However what happens instead is a business etiquette misstep for the following reasons:
- Text messages are designed to be short meaning context can easily be lost.
- Text messages often have “mystery senders” if the person does not indicate who they are and assumes the recipient will recognize their phone number.
- Text messages are often written too casually and often with slang and misspellings which does not leave a good impression.
- Text message inappropriately assumes the recipient wants to communicate with you through this mean.
So the next time you are contemplating if you should just send ” a quick text”, think twice before pushing the send button and consider starting with an email.
