There’s a post about email management in the workplace that tends to get a fair amount of traction on social media each time it makes the rounds. It’s something along the lines of “you can be good at [job title], or you can be good at email.”
In my experience, the reality has been closer to “you can be good at [job title] if you can be good at email.”
I say this, in part, because many of the best and most impactful opportunities that have come my way have either originated in my inbox or have had some critical portion take place over email.
Some recent examples:
- A recruiter from a FAANG company reached out to me over email about a full-time position they thought I’d be a great fit for. Their message ended up in my spam folder; if I hadn’t been diligent about checking it for any messages that might’ve slipped through the cracks, I would’ve missed out on the opportunity to interview for the role.
- I got to spend an all-expenses-paid week at Princeton University learning about research software engineering, from experts in the field (including one who’d been a part of Xerox PARC), because I happened to notice a forwarded call for applications amid one of the dozens of similar emails that get shared to our departmental listserves every week.
- Almost all of our interviewees for Women of Letters have been folks we initially reached out to via cold email.
- The only reason I ever heard about — much less thought to apply to — the fully funded PhD program I’m currently enrolled in is because I’d reached out, via cold email, to one of its professors. My email didn’t include any specific questions about their work or even the program itself (which, at the time, I hadn’t imagined I was qualified for); I was simply at a bit of a crossroads in my career and had taken a chance on writing to them, based on a tweet they’d shared, to see whether they might have any general advice on next steps. Fast-forward nearly 5 years and I’ll be defending my dissertation prospectus here next month.
- The book proposal for Deep Literacy, Digital Time was submitted, negotiated, and accepted over email.
- I was once offered a job I hadn’t applied to, from a person I didn’t know, because I’d been recommended for the position by another person I didn’t know. What connection did they have to me or my work? Our only exchange had been a single cold email I’d sent, in which I’d briefly written to thank them for a presentation they’d given and (because of how it overlapped with my own areas of expertise) to ask if they had any openings in their lab. They didn’t, but they appreciated that I’d reached out, and that was the end of our exchange. The job offer — which, again, was from an additional person I didn’t know — came out of the blue, in an email, less than 6 months later.
Things are (mostly) happening on email. It’s worth investing the time needed to take full advantage of this fact.
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This post is 1 of 3 posts included in the March instalment of my “As [month] ends, I’m thinking about…” series. You can read the main post here.
Jana M. Perkins is a computational social scientist. An award-winning scholar, her research has been federally funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada since 2019. She is the founder of Women of Letters, a longform interview series celebrating women’s paths to professional success. Together with Miranda Dunham-Hickman, she is co-authoring a book that will be published by Routledge.
To learn more about Perkins and her latest work, visit jcontd.com or follow her on Bluesky.