The Best Cover Email Ever? Let Netiquette Judge!

Below is an email which has been widely distributed on the Internet. The recipient and many others who have read it have heaped great praise upon it for its candor, humility and other attributes. Most of us, at one time or another, have felt compelled to write an email such as this.

Whether or not the person was hired or not, by Netiquette rules and statistics, there are many mistakes made in this correspondence. The point to be made here is that in spite of the desire to stand out from the crowd, messages such as this one will rarely sit well with a seasoned hiring manager or recruiter. It is tantamount to remember that a person in the hiring process is rated by their skill in presenting prospective employees. If those they select fail, the hiring people will be at risk.

From: ******

Sent: Monday, January 14, 2013 1:14PM

To: ******

Subject: Summer Internship

Dear ******

My name is ****** and I am an undergraduate finance student at ******. I met you the summer before last at Smith & Wollensky’s in New York when I was touring the east coast with my uncle, ******. I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to talk with me that night.

I am writing to inquire about a possible summer internship in your office.  Iam aware it is highly unusual for undergraduates from average universities like ****** to intern at ******, but nevertheless I was hoping you might make an exception.  I am extremely interested in investment banking and would love nothing more than to learn under your tutelage. I have no qualms about fetching coffee, shining shoes or picking up laundry, and will work for next to nothing. In all honesty, I just want to be around professionals in the industry and gain as much knowledge as I can.

I won’t waste your time inflating my credentials, throwing around exaggerated job titles, or feeding you a line of crapp (sic) about how my past experiences and skill set align perfectly for an investment banking internship.  The truth is I have no unbelievably special skills or genius eccentricities, but I do have a near perfect GPA and will work hard for you.  I’ve interned for Merrill Lynch in the Wealth Management Division and taken an investment banking class at ******, for whatever that is worth.

I am currently awaiting admission results for ****** Masters of Science in Accountancy program, which I would begin this fall if admitted. I am also planning on attending law school after my master’s program, which we spoke about in New York. I apologize for the blunt nature of my letter, but I hope you seriously consider taking me under your wing this summer. I have attached my resume for your review. Feel free to call me at ****** or email at ******. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

******.
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In addition to this blog, I maintain a radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.

I am the president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a “best of breed” reseller of products for communications, email, network management software, security products and professional services.  Also, I am the president of Netiquette IQ. We are currently developing an email IQ rating system, Netiquette IQ, which promotes the fundamentals outlined in my book.

Over the past twenty-five years, I have enjoyed a dynamic and successful career and have attained an extensive background in IT and electronic communications by selling and marketing within the information technology marketplace.Anyone who would like to review the book and have it posted on my blog or website, please contact me paul@netiquetteiq.com.

If you have not already done so, please view the trailer for my book below. 

Download an Apple iPad Reference card (no cost)

Earlier today, I found this iPad guide and I wanted to pass it alog to my readers. Look for a new blog post this evening.

Apple iPad

http://bit.ly/1iw7DJA

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In addition to this blog, I maintain a radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.

I am the president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a “best of breed” reseller of products for communications, email, network management software, security products and professional services.  Also, I am the president of Netiquette IQ. We are currently developing an email IQ rating system, Netiquette IQ, which promotes the fundamentals outlined in my book.

Over the past twenty-five years, I have enjoyed a dynamic and successful career and have attained an extensive background in IT and electronic communications by selling and marketing within the information technology marketplace.Anyone who would like to review the book and have it posted on my blog or website, please contact me paul@netiquetteiq.com.

If you have not already done so, please view the trailer for my book below.

Good Netiquette Principals Help Make Sure Your Emails Contain Good Logic

Plato

Good Netiquette is most often characterized with less verbose and more effective word usage. Nevertheless, even the simplest statements, paragraphs, or sentences can and should have not only good basics but also good logic, reasoning, and arguments. Even with perfect grammar, tone, content, and structure, poor logic or fallacies can significantly undermine the intent and content of even the simplest of emails.

        The study of logic dates back to ancient Greece and has always been an integral part of reasoning and providing arguments or theories. There are some basic rules of logic that should always be applied to communication. The following identify some of these and provide some brief examples of how each can be misused:

1.   False dilemma—This argument states that a solution must be one of two choices: Either we support the war, or we are unpatriotic.

2.   Ad hominem—Using a personal part or belief of a person to prove an argument: Because English is not his first language, he cannot write good emails.

3.   Straw man (argumentum ad logicum)—This statement generalizes a viewpoint and then belittles it by extending it beyond its original premise: The president vetoed the oil companies’ exemptions; therefore, he is against large corporations.

4.   Red herring (ad misericordiam)—This attempts to evoke pity to aid in a request: This job should be given to me because I have not worked in two years.

5.   Slippery slope (non sequitur)—This fallacy assumes one action or condition will lead to a different condition: If I am not hired for this position, your customers will buy from someone else.

6.   Repetitive argument (argumentum ad nauseam)—This is an assertion made over and over to try to prove a point: As I have told you in my last three emails, you should give my staff a raise to increase productivity.

7.   Argumentum ad antiquitatum—A statement that asserts something must be right because it has traditionally been done the same way: We have never had email complaints, so there’s no need to add disclaimers.

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In addition to this blog, I maintain a radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.

I am the president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a “best of breed” reseller of products for communications, email, network management software, security products and professional services.  Also, I am the president of Netiquette IQ. We are currently developing an email IQ rating system, Netiquette IQ, which promotes the fundamentals outlined in my book.

Over the past twenty-five years, I have enjoyed a dynamic and successful career and have attained an extensive background in IT and electronic communications by selling and marketing within the information technology marketplace.Anyone who would like to review the book and have it posted on my blog or website, please contact me paul@netiquetteiq.com.

If you have not already done so, please view the trailer for my book below. 

Netiquette and "Too Much Information" !

By its nature, email works best with messages not more a page long. Attachments are the best utilization for expanding email communications. The follow blog segment provides some basic thoughts.

     
"This report by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read."
 - Winston Churchill

Wordiness

During the course of a busy day, receiving a long and detailed email is seldom welcomed.  Worse still, the longer a correspondence is, the less likely it is to be read.  There also is a distinct possibility that even if it is read, it may not be done completely or with full attention.  

If a long email is necessary, the proper Netiquette should be followed to insure readability, the early introduction of a major topic and a brief explanation for the need to have a long message.  It may also be best to have the correspondence divided and sent separately.

One long-term negative factor of sending a long or verbose message may set a bad precedent in which the recipient will not immediately or ever read future correspondence.

 Simple steps to avoid wordiness

Certain words can contribute to make sentences less clear as well as providing more verbosity.  Among these are:

·         Kind of

·         Sort of

·         For all intents and purposes

·         In other words

·         Basically, actually

·         As previously stated

·         Generally speaking

·         In particular

·         Generally, in general

Redundant words and appositives

An appositive is defined (by reference.com) as a word or phrase to identify, amplify or rename the preceding word.  These can be unnecessarily obvious.  Samples of these appositives which add no value are shown below:

Wordy:	This is an example of an appositive which provides unnecessary identification. George Washington, the first president of the United States and a founding father . . .
Better:	George Washington, the first president . . .
Best	George Washington . . .

Redundant Pairs

Most email writers cannot avoid using redundant pairs and this is a common mistake made even in brief messages.  Some generic examples of these include:

·         past                  remembrances

·         basic                fundamentals

·         true                  facts

·         honest              truth

·         terrible             tragedy

·         final                 outcome

·         unexpected       surprise

·         past                 history

·         future               plans

·         boundary          line

There are many, many more of these and the best way to reduce their usage is to maintain good Netiquette in messages and to edit text before sending.
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In addition to this blog, I maintain a radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.

I am the president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a “best of breed” reseller of products for communications, email, network management software, security products and professional services.  Also, I am the president of Netiquette IQ. We are currently developing an email IQ rating system, Netiquette IQ, which promotes the fundamentals outlined in my book.

Over the past twenty-five years, I have enjoyed a dynamic and successful career and have attained an extensive background in IT and electronic communications by selling and marketing within the information technology marketplace.Anyone who would like to review the book and have it posted on my blog or website, please contact me paul@netiquetteiq.com.

If you have not already done so, please view the trailer for my book below. 

PRISM - The current rules for NSA Surveillance via Netiquette IQ

For those of you concerned with electronic privacy, the blog below will explain quite a bit with regard to the legality of this in the United States. Do not neglect to read the previous blog as well. The repeal of the FCC Network Neutrality ruling might prove to be far more damaging!

This illustration is from the Manchester Guardian dated June 6, 2013. It was part of a report leaked by a former NSA employee. The quoted information below is also from the newspaper.

What does Netiquette have to do with email surveillance? It might seem there is very little. However, good Netiquette assumes that any email sent does not have a strict of right of privacy regardless of Fourth Amendment guarantees of personal privacy. There are many extenuating circumstances, both in the United States and abroad which can be used to allow one's email to be read. The purpose of this series of blogs to simply to educate the reader of the exiting laws. The program is explained below.

"The Prism program allows the NSA, the world's largest surveillance organization, to obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders.

With this program, the NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications as well as perform real-time collection on targeted users.

The presentation claims Prism was introduced to overcome what the NSA regarded as shortcomings of Fisa warrants in tracking suspected foreign terrorists. It noted that the US has a "home-field advantage" due to housing much of the internet's architecture. But the presentation claimed "Fisa constraints restricted our home-field advantage" because Fisa (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)required individual warrants and confirmations that both the sender and receiver of a communication were outside the US.

"Fisa was broken because it provided privacy protections to people who were not entitled to them," the presentation claimed. "It took a Fisa court order to collect on foreigners overseas who were communicating with other foreigners overseas simply because the government was collecting off a wire in the United States. There were too many email accounts to be practical to seek Fisas for all."

The new measures introduced in the FAA redefines "electronic surveillance" to exclude anyone "reasonably believed" to be outside the USA – a technical change which reduces the bar to initiating surveillance.

The act also gives the director of national intelligence and the attorney general power to permit obtaining intelligence information, and indemnifies internet companies against any actions arising as a result of co-operating with authorities' requests.

In short, where previously the NSA needed individual authorizations, and confirmation that all parties were outside the USA, they now need only reasonable suspicion that one of the parties was outside the country at the time of the records were collected by the NSA.

The document also shows the FBI acts as an intermediary between other agencies and the tech companies, and stresses its reliance on the participation of US internet firms, claiming "access is 100% dependent on ISP provisioning".

In the document, the NSA hails the Prism program as "one of the most valuable, unique and productive accesses for NSA".
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In addition to this blog, I maintain a radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.

I am the president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a “best of breed” reseller of products for communications, email, network management software, security products and professional services.  Also, I am the president of Netiquette IQ. We are currently developing an email IQ rating system, Netiquette IQ, which promotes the fundamentals outlined in my book.

Over the past twenty-five years, I have enjoyed a dynamic and successful career and have attained an extensive background in IT and electronic communications by selling and marketing within the information technology marketplace.Anyone who would like to review the book and have it posted on my blog or website, please contact me paul@netiquetteiq.com.

If you have not already done so, please view the trailer for my book below. 

The Network Neutrality Ruling - A Greater Threat Than Privavcy? via Netiquette IQ

As many of Netiquette IQ readers have experienced, the privacy policies for many countries have drawn huge global attention and with good reason. But what has been overlooked is the recent ruling overturning the Federal Communication Commission Network Neutrality Order. In brief, this opens the door for ISPs and carriers to funnel bandwidth and content. This could foreshadow a huge change in the Internet. Some of these details are outlined below. For all those who supprot an open Internet, you should follow these developments closely. It could well be a larger threat to the global cyber community than spying.

The Network Neutrality Ruling and Network Admin: Are You Worried?

The U.S. Court of Appeals this week struck down the FCC Network Neutrality order. What does this mean for the Internet as we know it?

By Sean Michael Kerner | Jan 15, 2014 Networking Planet

A tectonic shift in the Internet landscape is now on the horizon with the U.S. Court of Appeals decisionthat effectively strikes down network neutrality.

Verizon lodged an appeal against the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to eliminate the network neutrality order, formally known as the "Open Internet Order" (25 F.C.C.R. 17905 (2010).

Network Neutrality, as defined by Verizon in its complaint, "imposes disclosure, anti-blocking and anti-discrimination requirements on broadband providers."

The basic idea is that the network should be a fair and level playing field for everyone that uses the network.

100%

As a networking guy, I know full well that that's not how a proper enterprise network should ever be configured. We have Quality of Service (QoS) tools that monitor performance and network activity, because the reality is that the traffic that goes over any network isn't homogenous.

Different types of traffic can, and should, be handled differently on an enterprise network. Traffic or bandwidth shaping configuration is a standard option on many enterprise networks, enabling network administrators to meet QoS levels. A standard best practice on many networks is to assign a higher priority to latency-sensitive applications than to others. For example, VoIP is latency-sensitive, so most networking admins will prioritize voice traffic over, say, Facebook traffic.

As a matter of course, enterprise network admins can and do block access to certain sites that are not appropriate for business use.

Simply put, most of us work inside organizations whose networks are not neutral.

The U.S. Court Ruling is not about enterprise networks, however, and Verizon isn't arguing about imposing neutrality on enterprises, either. This is about broadband service providers being able to throttle traffic and control their own networks. From a QoS perspective, this makes perfectly good sense to me, as it aligns with typical best practices for an enterprise network.

The problem again, though, is that broadband providers have a different audience. The goal of network neutrality was to enshrine the rights of what are known as "over-the-top" content providers. For example, Netflix takes up a lot of bandwidth but is able to deliver its streaming video service thanks in part to the fact that broadband providers don't throttle or block Netflix traffic.

If the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling stands, could a broadband provider start to block or impose restrictions on Netflix? Could the broadband provider choose to block access to competitor sites?

These are real questions and real concerns that we should all be worried about. A world without broadband network neutrality is a world that would quickly devolve from the open Internet that we all know and love, to a set of siloed networks.

Yes, I understand full well that Verizon and other broadband service providers also need to have the highest Quality of Service levels, and I think that's something the original FCC order understood too. Yet without the protections that the FCC order afforded, protections ensuring that content providers and Internet users get access to the content they want without being slowed down or blocked, the Internet as we know it today simply would not exist.

A broadband service provider network isn't the same as an enterprise network. Let's hope the courts and lawmakers one day soon understand that reality.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Networking Planet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist
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In addition to this blog, I maintain a radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.

I am the president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a “best of breed” reseller of products for communications, email, network management software, security products and professional services.  Also, I am the president of Netiquette IQ. We are currently developing an email IQ rating system, Netiquette IQ, which promotes the fundamentals outlined in my book.

Over the past twenty-five years, I have enjoyed a dynamic and successful career and have attained an extensive background in IT and electronic communications by selling and marketing within the information technology marketplace.Anyone who would like to review the book and have it posted on my blog or website, please contact me paul@netiquetteiq.com.

If you have not already done so, please view the trailer for my book below.