Professionalism is key when writing to potential clients or employers

Earlier this year, I read an interesting article by Chris Kirubi, one of Kenya’s renowned business moguls. The article titled ‘your grammar will cost you’ reminds young people of how critical it is to watch their language and grammar when writing to potential employers. We happen to live in a world where social media has made it possible to easily acquaint with strangers in such a way that we feel that we know people in person when in reality we don’t. Professional social sites like Linked-in allow us to interact with potential bosses in a close yet far-off platform. Consequently, life has taken a somewhat ‘casual approach’ where we can  occasionally fail to use an ‘official tone’ in writing or talking and still get away with it. 

While it is okay to be informal depending on who we are addressing, I still think like a citizen in an ‘old-fashioned’ society if you may call it. This is a society where you are expected to never use a casual tone when writing/ talking to a professional whom you are yet to meet or get to know better. The rule is to be professional unless dealing with your family and/or inner circle of friends. 

That said, I am disturbed when a young person I barely know, except for the fact that we share a mutual connection on social media, sends me a casual message on linked-In. The message starts by addressing me as ‘hello madam’. I am probably making a big deal out of this as often we address letters or emails to anonymous recipients as 'madam/sir'. We should however be aware that most of the time, a non-personalized email/letter doesn't draw as much attention as the converse. In his autobiography ‘losing my virginity’, Sir Richard Branson talks about personalizing of letters during early career life. If you haven’t read it, it would be a book worth your time. 

Back to my subject, I never took the time to read an inbox whose sender paid no attention to exercise the least amount of courtesy which is addressing me by my name. The reason is because in Linked-In, people are always keen to use their official names on  their profiles. Secondly, the writer did not briefly explain why he/she was writing to me. The next sentence right after the salutation was a request for my email address in order to send me information about what ‘they’ do. Of course, I might be interested to know more about what your organization/ firm does. But there has to be a smart way of drawing my attention as a potential client before requesting for my email address. These are simple courtesies that every young person needs to learn if we are to survive in an increasingly revolutionary yet conventional professional environment. 

Therefore, the next time you are about to click that send button and 'inbox' an acquaintance through a professional social media platform, please take a few minutes and edit your message. A simple mistake can cost you!