How did you get my email address?
I know about using the company email format to email people whose email address you may not have, but are still connected to through an alumni network or something of that sort. I'm wondering how you guys respond if they ask you how you got their email address?
Should you say your part of the same alumni network so you found their name and title and then that your friend works there, so you're familiar with the format? Should you say you got the format online?
How do you respond?
Is this a serious question? Who cares! Say you got it through linkedin/bloomberg/alumni network. Just go back to emphasizing that you are just looking for help and advice...and thought that person could be helpful. Its not tough to figure out an email format.
Obviously when you get it through a listing on the alumni network it's legitimate. But my alumni network has a lot of listings of people's names and positions who never bothered to fill in their email. I'm saying for those people. I just use the company format, but if they ask how I got the information, I'm not sure how to respond exactly...
Probably try and deflect and pivot the conversation to another part of the email that they responded to. If all they responded to you is how did you get my email? I probably would consider it defunct anyways. But as an example assume they respond: " Hey John, nice to see that everything at the Alma mater is still going great. I remember when I was there, I used to love watching our football team play at the stadium, or I used to hate having to deal with that grumpy old finance teacher, he was the worst. Is he still around? By the way, how did you get my e-mail?"
I doubt the person you talked to said those exact things but the point is you can use the other substance in the email to pivot the conversation like in the following.
"Joe, it was great hearing back from you, I was hoping I emailed the right guy, and that I wasn't emailing another Joe at the company who actually wasn't an alumni! That would have been embarrassing! I know exactly what you mean, that teacher really is horrible. I took him last semester and he would constantly assign us so much work, and then when it came to grading it he really had no clue what he was doing. Anyways, I am emailing you because we have similar backgrounds, and you work in a sector that really interests me and I was wondering if you could let me buy you lunch and maybe you can give some tips on how your were able to get your foot in the door."
The latter part of the email you can feel free to change however, I was just trying to illustrate how you can pivot away from the question without blatantly not answering it. This is what politicians do all day long. You touched on the emailing situation, but the information you gave barely if at all actually addresses how you got his email. Often times, people will even notice that you didn't quite answer their question, but if the rest of the email sparks their interest enough (which is should, if not then you have no shot anyways) they will likely forget about it and move on to help you or not. If they reply back and say, "Oh yeah well this is me, but you still didn't tell me how you got it..." Then that most likely indicates that they are not willing to help you regardless and are wondering if somehow OCR gave you their email and want to find a way to take it off. In this case, you can do a hail marry and just tell them that you took the initiative to find them, and then format the email address accordingly. This could work but likely wont. Because if they have already asked you twice, it's likely because they don't want you to have it.
Good Luck.
The "Internet".
Thanks, definitely agree with you that if the only thing they ask is how you got the email, it's essentially game over.
I'm amazed at how people think their email address is somehow private.
I've only got asked once.
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