Am I dumb? Why can't I write networking emails

I am a rising senior applying to ER jobs, and I know that I obviously need to network to land a role. My problem is that, for some reason, I almost get writer's block when writing emails and never know what to write.

I have read dozens of posts on how to write emails so I understand the meat of it has some sort of reason the recipient should respond to me (e.g. school alum, part of a nonprofit cause I care about, I read their book, etc) but for most people, if they're not an alum of my school I have trouble finding a way to make my emails unique (and even if they are alum I feel like my emails are not very unique because 5 other people at my school are probably emailing them).

How do I get better at doing these? I end up scouring the internet to find info about the person to find a connection and spending 30-60 minutes on each email. While the obvious answer might appear to be just only reaching out to people I have an obvious connection to, I assume I need to reach out to people who work on the team I applied to, because emailing a software analyst isn't going to help me with my application to be a FIG research associate, which limits the potential for a genuine connection.

I know this skill is a very important skill in life, so I just feel so dumb for being incapable of writing a simple cold email in a reasonable amount of time. What do I do?

TLDR: I spend an hour writing each networking cold email because I have trouble figuring out how to write something that isn't generic.

Thank you in advance for your time.

2 Comments
 
Most Helpful

the time to network broadly was before you wanted a specific job posting. if there's a posting for a hardlines analyst at MS and you email the sr analyst asking to network, it's a little insincere to say it's only for networking (they know you want the job). I'd recommend just going the traditional route of, who you are what you want and why they should care.

hi im xyz, i recently applied to abc at def, this is my background, would love to talk about the role.

Shows some initiative at the very least and doesn't insult their intelligence by saying you just want to network.

 

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