Get a Data Science Interview Call Using Cold Emailing

Key Takeaways

do you have a rockstar one page resume with solid project portfolio and you are still not getting interview calls for a data science profile maybe you're going from one website to another hitting that apply button and you feel like your resume is going into this black hole and you don't hear any response back in this video we are going to talk about a unique technique called poll emailing which many people don't know about and even if they don't know about it they are not trying it and we have a special guest today Nick Singh Nick is an author of is the data science interview book he has a platform called Data lemur which helps you practice SQL interview questions he work with Google and Facebook before pretty solid experience and he has more than 90 000 followers on his LinkedIn who listens to his advice on cracking data science interviews so let's get started and talk about this unique technique called cool emailing all right Nick so what exactly is called emailing and why does it work cold emailing is when you reach out to a hiring manager recruiter that you don't know that you've never talked to before usually over email but this also works on Twitter or LinkedIn DMS where you pitch yourself in about 50 100 maybe 125 words and try to convince them to give you an interview or at least meet up for a networking coffee chat okay and how do you find the emails of these people who whom you want to reach out to that's a whole process but um one of the best ways is actually you can guess at smaller companies basically the name of their CEO is going to be CEO name at company name or you can guess you know first name dot last name and first case the email bounces right and you can always try multiple ones by adding the emails in the CC line so usually it's not too bad and there are other free Chrome extensions like clearbit that help you discover email addresses so overall emails are a lot more accessible than you would think and in the end if you can't find their email all the techniques we're going to talk about really work well on a LinkedIn DM or Twitter DM as well got it now do you want to talk about the success that you have had in your life uh through goal emailing yeah I actually got my last full-time job at safegraph a geospatial data startup by Cold emailing the CEO in fact I didn't know their email so I literally did first name at company name and first name dot last name a company name I literally did that and within 24 hours the CEO responded back saying hey I like your experience you know and let's set up an interview and then two weeks later I did my onsides and then two more weeks later I had started and that's actually the story of how I left Facebook for that startup called safegraph that's really amazing all right so now in the next portion of this video we are going to play the six tips that Nick uh is going to talk about in detail and he's gonna I think show some of the email templates as well so make sure you watch it carefully and at the end if you have any question Post in our comment box below this egg represents the six cold email rules you gotta follow break these rules and you'll end up with egg on your face but stick to the rules and you can be successful like me and the time I sent this cold email that landed me an interview at Airbnb or the time I sent this cold email and got my job at safegraph first up realize that the hiring managers and recruiters were code emailing are busy so just like your resume is the first rule of writing a killer cold email is to keep your email short and sweet the team over at HubSpot analyzed 40 million cold emails to figure out what's the ideal length and found that cold emails between 50 and 125 words perform the best curious what that looks like in practice pretend you're applying for this data science job at PayPal here's a Bare Bones 50 word cold email that could potentially work but this hundred word version is more my style because it explains three concrete bullet point reasons for why you're a good fit for the job now here's a longer version clocking in at 150 words where I start by relating personally to the Berkeley Alum and expand on my previous bullet points but y'all this is the upper limit keep the length of your cold emails under 150 words long or short though no one's going to read your cold email if nobody opens it that's why the second rule of cold emails is to always have a strong subject line so that we can hook them into clicking the email and learning more so don't be afraid to mention the big name companies you work for or the prestigious universities you attended in the subject line like when I was looking for full-time jobs my subject line was former Google and Microsoft intern looking for full-time positions at company X and yes this is kind of awkward because most of us aren't used to flexing like that unless you're Tech lead an ex-google x Facebook millionaire hate to say whether it's for YouTube or cold email shouting out fan gets you clicks but even without name dropping thing you can still show your clickworthy by highlighting what you studied what your GPA was your relevant portfolio project or some big achievement you don't need Fang to have a great email subject line but speaking of flexing the third cold email rule you can't break is to mention an accomplishment or two in the cold email itself you gotta show them why you're important and relevant just like with the subject line this is not the time to be shy like Rambo you got to come out guns blazing and hit him with that one two big reasons for why you deserve a response to further play up your accomplishments include an image GIF or link to your work to prove you achieved what you did so for example say you're looking for a data analyst job at instacart and made a super cool to blow dashboard screenshot and link to the damn thing and if you don't have any accomplishments or portfolio projects to share go watch my past videos on creating Kick-Ass portfolio projects and get to work so that you got something of Merit to actually reach out with because ultimately cold emailing isn't some black magic without substance in the first place cold emailing is a waste of time but if you do got substance and you combine it with the fourth rule which is to relate personally to the hiring manager recruiter you're really gonna set yourself apart just go on LinkedIn and look for similarities if both of y'all graduated from Michigan drop a gold blue in the email y'all both happen to be in Kai Omega or Alpha Phi or Sigma ligma lead with that you're transitioning from biology or Life Sciences into data and the hiring manager called emailing happened to study Public Health mentioned the coincidence I swear these extra five minutes spent personalizing the cold email have massive Roi because they show the recipient this isn't some spam email this is genuine and thoughtful Outreach plus people love helping others who are like them so emphasize the commonalities so to recap now that they open your email read the whole thing because it's short think you're kind of legit and like you personally follow the fifth quality email rule have a specific ask when I worked at Facebook I hated getting weak ass cold emails saying I'd love to set up a time to learn more about working at Facebook like bro that's what Google's for look it up and it's Facebook Facebook's teams to work together and bounce ideas off one another like what do you want me to say it's sick as hell like what do you want me to tell you so so at the end of your email you've got to be bold ask for that referral ask to start that interview process for a specific position now if you're asking for an informational interview just to start a relationship please include two well-researched specific questions in the body of the email like when I worked at geospatial analytics startup safecraft you shouldn't have hit me up with that generic how do you like working at safecraft instead you could have asked me about the bottlenecks in scaling up our data for good covid-19 initiative or ask me about the data challenges when it came to cleaning and normalizing petabytes of consumer transaction data point is be specific in your questions and your ass don't beat around the bush ain't nobody got time for that speaking of time these six cold email rule you gotta follow is to establish a timeline add urgency this isn't some open ask there's a deadline so when you ask for that informational interview mention that it should be early next week if you're far along in the recruiting process with a few other companies happily mention your timeline to speed up the process yes it's gutsy to name drop a company but it induces fomo it works for example if your dream is to work at Tesla on their autopilot self-driving team but you've already got an offer from Microsoft with a deadline start your cold email with how genuine your interest in Tesla is name drop Microsoft so Tesla knows you're legit and has fomo then add some urgency to your specific ass to start the interview process the best part is you don't even need an offer in hand to make this tactic work even having an on-site interview scheduled at a name brand company or competitor can sometimes be enough to induce fomo and act as social proof to get you an interview and have the process get expedited I guarantee if you don't break these six clone email rules and you master the art of the follow-up you'll become a cold email fiend and land your dream job [Music]