In a recent survey, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas asked executives, “What skill do entry-level job seekers lack the most?” Nearly half of respondents (45%) said that entry-level job seekers need to be better writers. According to an article about the survey in this weekend’s New York Times:
It seems that some young employees are now guilty of the technological equivalent of wearing flip-flops: they are writing company email as if they were texting cellphone messages with their thumbs.
I’ve definitely noticed a lack of proper grammar and etiquette in many emails I’ve received from college students and recent grads. Here are some tips from my book, Getting from College to Career, on emailing like a professional:
- DNUCAPE, or, Do Not Use Cute Acronyms in Professional Emails. You never know whether people are familiar with the same abbreviations that you are.
- Do use proper capitalization and punctuation. my biggest pet peeve when it comes to emails i receive from college students is that everything is in lower case and there is very little punctuation if any at all trust me its not cute its really unprofessional so please dont do it thnx. AND NOTE THAT ALL CAPS MAKES IT LOOK LIKE YOU ARE YELLING.
- Do cool it on the exclamation points! This is another big pet peeve among the older professionals I meet!! Young people email them and use way too many exclamation points!!! One or two in an email is more than enough; otherwise you look really, really young and kind of annoying!!!!
- Do not leave the subject line blank. In today’s overloaded inboxes, most people are likely to overlook or delete any message that looks like spam, so it’s smart to include a helpful subject line. In professional situations, I’m a big fan of action-oriented subject lines, such as “Networking Request from a Young Alum,” “Quick Question,” or “Internship Application Attached.” If a professional receives an email from someone she doesn’t know and there is no subject line, she’s likely to delete it.
- Do not become the boy or girl who cried, “Urgent.” Use the red “high importance” exclamation point sparingly. Sending in your résumé or asking for an informational interview is not urgent to the person receiving such an email.
- Do a quick once-over of important messages, even after you’ve spell-checked. Review the spelling of the recipient’s name, the accuracy of any important numbers you’ve mentioned, and the overall tone of the message. (Your dry sarcasm may come across as rudeness to a busy person reading your message.)
