Task: Fix Communication Channels & Skills

This is often overlooked!

Pay close attention to the items listed below.

When you are communicating with another person, you have to make their work easy.

You are having dinner and there’s a water bottle near you. You are having dinner with 3 friends. What can you do next?

• Fill your glass and pass the bottle to next person
• Fill your glass and fill others glass

Which is better?

You are asking your close friend to introduce you his contact. You have two options

1. Send an email to your friend asking him to introduce you his friend.
2. Send an email to your friend asking him to introduce you his friend. And you send a short introduction about you that your friend can just copy paste it.

Which is better?

In previous Day’s Challenge, you have written sample emails to respond to interview request.

Here’s few items to check/fix on how you communicate:

• Does your Email Id that look Professional. See samples below for John Smith
  1. john.smith@
  2. smithj@
  3. jsmith@
  4. johnsmith@
  5. [email protected]
  6. [email protected]

• Check how your From name looks in the email you send.  It should look like this:
  1. John Smith (Correct Format)
     1. Not like These
        1. john s
        2. s john
        3. john smith

• Use Google Calendar to Schedule Events, so time zone would be converted.
• Always list time zone when communicating the meetings or interviews time slots.
  1. I can’t stress the importance of this.
  2. Several students who are new to USA miss meetings with me because of this
  3. I would tell 9 PM EST. They will miss the EST and show at 12 pm EST (because they are in PST zone).
• Be accommodating.
  1. I referred a UTD guy for intern. My manager sent email asking for few time slots.
  2. He replied, “I can talk only on weekends, since I have classes and part-time job on weekdays”!! (thats was end of the interview process for him).
  3. Always give few options with Date, Day and Time Rage. Like
  4. I’m available for Phone Call during following days
     1. Monday, 8 AM to 10 AM EST, Date
     2. Tuesday 10 AM to 1 PM EST, Date
  5. By giving range, it makes it easy for them to find a slot and avoid back and forth emails.
• Include your best number to reach in the confirmation email in standard format:
  1. 123-xy-abcd
  2. Dash is must and dash is better than spaces
  3. It’s easy for them to find your number of call from mobile.
• How to Address someone?
  1. Use their last name or First name depending on their designation:
  2. Processor Smith
  3. Hello Jenna (for a recruiter)
  4. I would not use Sir or Mam

You may wonder, why I had to spend a day to talk about these things?

You will be surprised by looking at how some members from Career Lab communicate.

My general observation (not mean to offend anyone here):

• Folks with good TOEFL or IELTS scores tend to do well with writing emails.
• Folks who have worked for few years with clients are aware of these things.

Plus, practice of excessive text message formats plays a role in how you are writing emails.