a single cold email can change your life

tl;dr: sent 76 cold emails last month to founders at mental health startups (mostly pre-seed to series A). 14 replied, 3 got on a call with me, and 1 offered me a job. none of this is specific to psychology, so here's everything i did, written so you can copy it.

1. pick the person first

• go for the founder, or whoever would be your boss. at a pre-seed to series A startup they still read their own inbox
• skip the application form, careers@ and HR. i didn't fill in a single form
• can't tell who's right? email your best guess and end with "or could you pass this to [name]?" the reply that got me hired came from someone i never emailed

2. write it in this order

• subject: the role and the company, nothing else. "graduate research assistant role at [company]"
• first line: what you're writing about. "I'm writing about the Graduate Research Assistant role."
• then them: one line on what they do, then your guess at what's hard for them right now. mine was "My guess is the hard part is that clinicians are busy with clients, so literature reviews, data analysis and ethics paperwork can wait. I could take that on."
• then you: 4 proofs, one line each, as specific as you can get. "25+ studies reviewed" does a lot more than "strong research skills"
• last line: one ask. i asked for a short call
• length: 80 to 160 words. mine was 164, close enough

3. follow up twice

• first one on day 4, in the same thread, two lines
• don't write "just checking in". say again the specific thing you'd do for them. mine was "I could take the literature reviews, SPSS analysis and paperwork off your clinicians' plates"
• second one a week after that, then leave it
• 12 of my 14 replies came after a follow-up, so if you skip this you lose most of them

4. send a lot more than one

• about 4 in 5 of mine never got an answer (76 sent, 14 replies). that's normal
• the email that got me hired was the 13th i sent that week

the email itself is below, plus the follow-up. copy whatever you want from it.

what happened

so i have a masters in psychology and i was working at a clinic, seeing clients. what i actually wanted to do was research.

then i found a small practice in the UK with a research assistant role listed, remote. there was a form to fill in. i didn't fill it in, i emailed one of the psychologists there instead. i sent it at 11pm on a friday, which in hindsight is a weird time to email someone about a job.

here's the email. i've scribbled out the names.

no reply. i assumed that was that.

three days later this went out in the same thread:

and i got a reply the next day. it wasn't from the person i'd emailed, it was from the other psychologist, the one the listing actually named. she asked for my CV and a letter of intent. i sent both that same night.

then nothing for a whole week. i sent one more follow-up.

two days after that we got on a call, and by the end of it she'd offered me the role. the offer letter took a while to sort out after that, but still.

how i did all this

ok so full disclosure, i didn't do this alone. i used an AI agent called backdoor. you text it your linkedin and it finds companies that fit you, figures out who to email there, and writes a first draft using your own experience.

it didn't run my job search for me though, and i don't want it to sound like it did. i picked which ones to send. i edited this draft twice before sending it, which took about five minutes. nothing goes out unless i say send, and it goes from my own gmail so the replies come to me. the day 4 follow-up it sent on its own, which i'd probably have forgotten to do. the CV, the second follow-up and the call were all me.

you can absolutely do all of this by hand, everything i did is written above. chatgpt or claude will help you with a draft too. i went with backdoor because this is the only thing it does, and finding the right person to email is the slow part.

it's free to start if you want to try it, link's at the bottom.