{"id":910,"date":"2025-03-30T18:51:45","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T00:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/janajm.com?p=910"},"modified":"2025-07-22T12:39:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T18:39:20","slug":"email-success-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/email-success-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"It (mostly) happens on email."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s 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\u2019s something along the lines of \u201cyou can be good at [job title], or you can be good at email.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In my experience, the reality has been closer to \u201cyou can be good at [job title] <em>if<\/em> you can be good at email.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Some recent examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A recruiter from a FAANG company reached out to me over email about a full-time position they thought I\u2019d be a great fit for. Their message ended up in my spam folder; if I hadn\u2019t been diligent about checking it for any messages that might\u2019ve slipped through the cracks, I would\u2019ve missed out on the opportunity to interview for the role.<\/li>\n<li>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\u2019d been a part of <a href=\"https:\/\/gunkies.org\/wiki\/Xerox_PARC\">Xerox PARC<\/a>), 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.<\/li>\n<li>Almost all of our interviewees for <em><a href=\"https:\/\/womenofletters.substack.com\">Women of Letters<\/a><\/em> have been folks we initially reached out to via cold email.<\/li>\n<li>The only reason I ever heard about \u2014 much less thought to apply to \u2014 the fully funded PhD program I\u2019m currently enrolled in is because I\u2019d reached out, via cold email, to one of its professors. My email didn\u2019t include any specific questions about their work or even the program itself (which, at the time, I hadn\u2019t 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\u2019d shared, to see whether they might have any general advice on next steps. Fast-forward nearly 5 years and I\u2019ll be defending my dissertation prospectus here next month.<\/li>\n<li>The book proposal for <em><a href=\"https:\/\/janajm.com\/deep-literacy-digital-time\/\" title=\"Forthcoming from Routledge: DEEP LITERACY, DIGITAL TIME\">Deep Literacy, Digital Time<\/a><\/em> was submitted, negotiated, and accepted over email.<\/li>\n<li>I was once offered a job I hadn\u2019t applied to, from a person I didn\u2019t know, because I\u2019d been recommended for the position by another person I didn\u2019t know. What connection did <em>they<\/em> have to me or my work? Our only exchange had been a single cold email I\u2019d sent, in which I\u2019d briefly written to thank them for a presentation they\u2019d 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\u2019t, but they appreciated that I\u2019d reached out, and that was the end of our exchange. The job offer \u2014 which, again, was from an additional person I didn\u2019t know \u2014 came out of the blue, in an email, less than 6 months later.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Things are (mostly) happening on email. It\u2019s worth investing the time needed to take full advantage of this fact.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p><em>This post is 1 of 3 posts included in the March instalment of my \u201cAs [month] ends, I\u2019m thinking about\u2026\u201d series. You can read the main post <a href=\"https:\/\/janajm.com\/email-self-advocacy-mentorship\/\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Jana M. Perkins<\/strong> 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/womenofletters.substack.com\"><em>Women of Letters<\/em><\/a>, a longform interview series celebrating women\u2019s paths to professional success. Together with Miranda Dunham-Hickman, she is co-authoring <a href=\"https:\/\/janajm.com\/deep-literacy-digital-time\/\">a book<\/a> that will be published by Routledge.<\/p>\n<p>To learn more about Perkins and her latest work, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/janajm.com\">janajm.com<\/a> or follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/janajm.com\">Bluesky<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s 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\u2019s something along the lines of \u201cyou can be good at [job title], or you can be good at email.\u201d In my experience, the reality has been closer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1056,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions\/1056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}