Awful networking response rate (almost 100 emails no responses)

I am a student at a target with intern experience at a Big 4 and a Fortune 100 company. Also IB experience at a small middle market IB firm.  

In the past week, I have sent out 90 emails and gotten zero responses. What is wrong with my email template or strategy? 

Hi Name,


I’m a sophomore at [target school] with internship experience in finance (company x, lower middle-market IB) and tech. This summer I’ll be at company y.

I saw that you graduated from school and joined DC Advisory full-time after interning there. I’d love to hear what stood out to you about your summer experience and what ultimately made you choose to return.

Would you be available to chat for 15-20 min via phone/Zoom sometime in the next three weeks?

Best,

11 Comments
 

same situation with a lot of the kids I have been mentoring as well, just have to keep pushing out more emails as it is a numbers game at the end of the day

 

Hopefully you're only sending to analysts at this point....anyone Associate and above is spending time on MBA recruiting right now and doesn't have time to talk to analysts....I get blown up with multiple emails a day from people recruiting for analyst roles already and I don't respond to any of them because I don't have time to do MBA and analyst in the fall (no matter how good their email)

 
  1. It’s a numbers game, people are busy, just keep going

2. This is very generic email you need to be more personable.

 
Most Helpful

This email is super generic - at a target you should have no shortage of alums. I'd recommend looking for people who were in the same orgs/clubs as you, maybe same frat, etc. 

Can you find anyone who went to your high school? I don't get back to every college alum who emails me but I will always respond to high school alums 

Nitpicky, but I also think "would love to chat about what made you choose to return" is kind of poor phrasing. They chose to return because they got an offer. I'd just say you'd love to hear about their experience at DC advisory and leave it there instead of getting into whether or not they interned there (which is also just not time well spent in terms of customizing emails).

 

I had a very high response rate (~65%). All of my emails were based on a single template, but I had one sentence that I would customize by mentioning something we had in common or something I found interesting about their background (e.g. did they switch careers? Did we do the same activities in college?). I always felt my emails were pretty generic but this was seemingly good enough that there were a couple of people who explicitly complimented me on this

 

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