The mighty T-Letter (WAS: Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question)

["Mark Moloney" <mmoloney -at- network365 -dot- com>]

From: "Tom Murrell" <trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 3:55 PM
>>>
<plug style="shameless">If you want to stand out, and I agree that it can be
a very useful thing to accomplish, I suggest you read my article in this
month's Whirler on using a T-Letter. There's no better way I've found to
stand out and get interviews than by NOT sending a resume when inquiring on
a position.</plug>
<<<

It is an excellent article.
(http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/tletter.html)

I have a question that might tax list members' information design muscles:
how would you suggest formatting the information from a typical t-letter for
an application sent by email? I have not sent a job application by "snail
mail" since 1997, and don't even have that option for any of the jobs I am
currently applying for.

Assume that you must use plain-text email, because you don't know that the
recipient's email client can handle HTML email. That means that you can't
control the layout of the message on a recipient's screen. Specifically, you
can't control the font your message will be shown in, and although you can
insert line breaks, you can't be sure that the reader's email client won't
insert extra line breaks. This means that you can't reliably represent a
table in your message.

Then, how do you present the information from your t-letter in a format that
can be read just (or almost) as easily by a human, independent of any
machine reformatting?


/ Mark Moloney



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