I don't see the email

Email has a unique set of etiquette and special rules relative to other forms of business communication. It is simultaneously the most prevalent way of sending formal business communication (whether directly in the body of the email or as attachments) as well as one of the only means of business communication left that has some form of privacy associated with whether the sender knows that the recipient read and digested the contents of the email. I mean, think about it: a face-to-face or phone conversation makes it pretty unequivocal that two people have spoken (although, given the number of arguments I’ve had across my work and personal life about things that were or were not said in a conversation suggests I live in an entirely different universe and have had countless conversations with any number of robot doubles). Even methods of informal chatting by messaging app usually have a symbol to indicate whether the recipient has opened the message and read it.

In any case, this unique venn diagram of handling important business communication crossed with a measure of privacy has led the human race to invent an entire language around whether you did or did not get the message. Let’s look at a few popular phrases and associated interpretations.

Examples:

• Email: “So sorry; it must have gone to my spam.”

• Translation: “Oh, yeah. That thing. I wasn’t going to do that ever.”

• Email: “Our emails must have crossed.”

• Translation: “I saw your email message checking on whether I’ve done the thing yet, and I most certainly have not, but I’m going to pretend like I was working on a status update to your first message.”

• Email: “As we discussed…” and “…others cc’d for general awareness.”

• Translation: “Hey, so, I need you to do the thing we talked about for real, so I’m gonna copy my boss, your boss, and anyone else I can think of to pressure you into getting the thing done by the time I need it done.”

You see my point, I hope. The nuance of who is copied, what is the sub-text, etc., are all (frequently) more important than the contents of the original message. After all, the original message is always some variation of:

• Do the thing.

• Did you do the thing?

• Here’s the thing.

• You are late on your car insurance payment but can pay by credit card right now if you click this button. Oh, and never mind that my email address is some weird string of letters and numbers.

There is also the very stealthy BCC option, which really is only for native speakers of AOL who grew up with email like it was mama’s milk, so we won’t get into that lesson on this particular post.

Let’s evaluate how this all tracks to recruiting, shall we? There are many-a-time when we tell someone on the phone to send us an updated resume so we can send it off to whatever hiring manager because they failed to do so before applying to whichever position. We even make this easy for them by sending them an email, telling them what our email address is and what the subject line is, remind them to check their junk/spam folders, etc. so they can find it. Then they just need to attach their resume file to said email and send it back to us.

Easy-peesy.

Well, in theory, as long as we take the human element out of the equation.

I sent an email recently (once I got off the phone with the person after explaining that I would be sending them said email) requesting the applicant attach his most updated resume to send back to us. A few minutes later, I got a reply.

To my original email:

RE: Resume Request

"I don't see the email."

Siiiiigh. Some days I just can't.