So I’m registered on the Rutgers Career Services website as a resource for students to contact if they have any questions about consulting. I typically receive one or two emails a semester from students with questions and am happy to talk to them through phone or email. However, I will not be responding to the following letter:
Mr. Rosenfeld,
I was put in touch with you through the Rutgers Alumni database. I am a recent MBA graduate of Rutgers and will be relocating to Fairfield County, CT. I have interest in the Management Consulting industry and wanted your opinion of the field, your company, the compensation, and the type of work.
Any information you can provide is useful.
[name redacted]
Rutgers MBA
Let’s pick at some of the issues with this…
- No greeting. “Hi Mr. Rosenfeld” or “Dear Mr. Rosenfeld” would be nice, I’m not a robot. While this already put me on guard, if this was the only issue, I’d still setup some time to talk.
- The first three sentences start with “I”
- There is no “thank you” anywhere in the letter
- There is no “please” in the letter
- No acknowledgment that it will take some of my time to respond to the request
- He wants to know how much I make in an introductory letter
- “I was put in touch with you through the Rutgers Alumni database” just sounds awkward and robotic. “I found you through the Rutgers Alumni database” would sound more human. As a side note, I’m still not certain this is a real person because the email’s domain address forwards to another domain, so this can just be a robot spamming for information on consulting or just trying to find live email addresses.
Now I’m not that important of a person, I think this is just basic human courtesy. I could’ve sworn MBA programs had required business writing courses. Shouldn’t some sort of persuasion class taught this guy how to add value instead of steal value?
A humble student seeking my opinion and caring about what I say makes me want to help them. I gain value by feeling good about helping nice people. This guy is all “me me me”. I don’t want to help him. But I wanted to help people who may not know better, ergo this post.