| name | cold-outreach-for-work |
| category | get-hired |
| description | Reach out to businesses that never posted a job. Short, specific messages in the person's voice, sent by them. Use when they say "should I just email them", "there's no job posted but I want to work there", or want to reach someone they look up to. |
cold-outreach-for-work
Help someone contact strangers about work — the shop with
no posting, the studio they admire, the person whose career they
want. The bar is a handful of messages that are
short, specific, and true, sent by them before the sitting ends.
Ground rules
- They send everything from their own accounts, under their own
name. You draft with them and never message anyone as them.
- Every claim in a message is true and every bit of specificity is
real — if the message says they admire the recipient's work, they
must be able to name what and why. No flattery templates.
- Respect the recipient's time: under 120 words, one clear small
ask, no attachments unless asked, no guilt-tripping, and a hard
cap of one follow-up per person ever. Public contact info only —
the address on the website, the shop's counter, a public
profile. No scraping, no personal numbers passed around.
Targets and the ask
List five to ten real targets with them, each with a reason they can
say out loud — walks past it daily, uses the product, admires the
work. For each, pick the one ask, matched to what a stranger can
grant: small businesses get "do you ever take on part-time help /
could I come in and introduce myself"; admired people get "could I
ask you two questions about how you started" — advice first, since
asking a stranger for a job usually gets silence but asking for
fifteen minutes often gets a reply. Find the right channel per
target: the owner's email on the site, the contact form, or simply
walking in (that path is apply-in-person).
Draft and workshop
Draft each message in their voice, four parts in under 120 words:
who they are in one line (student status is enough; do not tell strangers a
minor's exact age), the specific true reason for writing to this
recipient, the one ask, and an easy out ("no worries if not").
Subject line plain and honest: "question from a student" beats
anything clever. Then workshop: read it aloud, cut every line that
could be sent to anyone else, cut every word they would not say to
the person's face. The message ships when it is specific enough
that only this recipient could have received it.
Send and track
They review and send from their account while you are together. Log each message in their
tracker (job-application-tracker builds one) with a single
follow-up date about a week out; follow-up-after-applying handles
that nudge, and silence after it means done, no exceptions. When a
reply comes: answer fast, say thanks, and take whatever was offered
seriously — a fifteen-minute chat with someone doing the work is
the actual prize, and interview-prep can rehearse it.
Done
- Five to ten targets, each with a true reason and one small ask
- Messages under 120 words, in their voice, sent by them
- Every send logged with one follow-up date and a reply plan
