my cold email response rate is abysmal

looking for some advice on how to cold-email. i usually use something along the lines of:

Dear X,

I hope you are well. My name is banananobo and I am a school sophomore studying finance. I found your info on LinkedIn and wanted to reach out, as I'd love to learn more about your work at bank. [add things in common if we have them].

I know you're busy, but would you happen to have any time in the coming weeks for a 15 minute call? I'd be more than happy to schedule a time that works best for you, and would really appreciate the opportunity. In case it's helpful to provide more context on my background, I've also attached my resume for your reference.

Thank you so much and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

banananobo

my response rate is around 5%, even after following up 2-3 times, and even though i'm emailing alums and am from a target. at this rate, i'm running out of people to talk to, not because there's not enough but because nobody replies to me. what am i doing wrong?

 

Try below. 

Dear Mr. Goldstein,

I hope you are doing well. My name is banananobo and I am a sophomore studying finance at Harvard. I was looking at Harvard alumni in finance and wanted to learn more about career opportunities at Goldman Sachs for a finance graduate.

I was curious if you had a few minutes to connect in the next week.

Thank You! 

Sincerely,

 

"studying finance at Harvard"

Yeah the funniest thing about this is that finance is not an undergraduate major at Harvard.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Maybe your resume/gpa isn't very good. It's a little long but you should probably be getting a 20% response rate as long as you're not emailing well outside of recruiting season. Also make sure whatever you're putting down as a similarity isn't weird.

 

1) make it shorter, use something like anontrader's email format. Notice how theirs is more confident/polished and yours is more passive, long winded. You can switch out "career opportunities" to "learn more about your experiences at Goldman" if you think the former is too forward. but at the end of the day they know why you're reaching out.

2) still attach resume

3) response rate should be 5-10% for non-alums and 90%+ for alums. At least that was my experience as a non-target. I would imagine a target would get better response rate from non-alums than me

 

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