The advantages of e-mail, voice mail, and the Internet include:

• You can send messages faster to more people.
• You can gather and distribute more information.
• You can learn about more open positions and get more visibility than job hunters in the past.
• Resumes, cover letter, articles, and other materials can be transmitted instantaneously.
• Numerous people can be sent copies on one note, which creates instant, ad hoc "mini-networks".
• Prospective employers can be researched quickly and comprehensively.
• Voice mail enables job seekers to leave more comprehensive messages with networking contacts and employers.
• Voice mail allows job seekers to speak with their own voices and perhaps make brief "elevator speeches" to hiring managers.
• Confidence, authenticity, and personal style can be conveyed as you provide information, respond personally to unanswered questions, or re-emphasize personal selling points.

The disadvantages of e-mail, voice mail, and the Internet include:

• Technology-enhanced communication exchanges quality for quantity, sacrifices subtlety for speed, and substitutes indirect communication for direct human communication.  It even lets us obstruct or avoid communication altogether.
• You are at the recipients mercy - one keystroke erases your e-mail message, one finger deletes your voice mail message.
• You are not necessarily playing to a receptive audience - annoyance and hostility often permeates technological communication, perhaps because of its often forced participation.  While most of us use and need e-mail, we don't like it much.
• E-mail seems inherently presumptuous, innately pushy, and guilt producing when the recipient does not respond.
• Technological communication can't convey subtle, sophisticated content in the same way that human speech tone, timbre, posture, and gestures do.
• Even if the job seekers resume is scanned and it has the best technical credentials and the most buzzwords, at the hiring stage, human attributes take center stage - companies don't hire employees, people hire people.  Interviewers hire people they like best, who appear most authentic, and seem to embody the right values, goals, and motivation.  These are all subjective judgments.
• Words on a screen cannot convey human elements - what people respond to in both networking and interviews are human characteristics and personal impressions, not objective facts.
• Throughout the self-marketing, job search process, "fit" is best communicated face to face, or, as a poor second, voice to voice - today it as important to know how to get past communication technology as it is to know how to use it.

Using Voice Mail to Maximize Responses

Job seekers once needed to know how to befriend and outflank a secretarial gatekeeper.  Today you are lucky if you reach a voice when calling companies.  It is rare if the voice mail menu contains fewer than four tiers.

• You may improve your chances of reaching people by calling before 8:30AM or after 5PM when they are likely to be working at their desks.
• Many voice-mail systems have a dial zero for the operator option that allows you to exit the technology and speak with a person.
• Operators can tell you if the person that you want to reach is in the building, and if you politely ask for help, they may make sure your message is delivered.
• For systems without operators, if the person at the extension does not answer, dial the next number.  Many systems assign numbers by location, so that adjacent offices have sequential numbers.  If a person answers, ask for help.  Explain whom you are trying to reach and ask if he sits nearby.  If so, ask if he has any idea when the person might return.
• When leaving messages, remember that we are geared more toward minimizing risk than maximizing opportunity.  Make sure your message is clear by mentioning who you are, why you are calling, what you want from the recipient, what risks are involved in this interaction (if this is an informal networking contact, the risks should be low), suggested  next steps - if you leave a call back number, say it loudly and slowly, even twice.
• In most cases, mystery messages - "This is a very urgent message for John Jones.  It's extremely important that he return this call by 3PM today" - are counterproductive.  Even if you get a return call, the caller won't be happy.  
• Don't leave a message that sounds like a sales pitch - no pressure, hype, or exclamation points.
• Take pains to add a human touch:  be polite, friendly, concise (jot down some points before calling, but avoid making it sound scripted) but not unduly assertive.
• Leave no more than 3 messages.  If you don't hear back after 3 messages, stop calling.  Try a different approach - a note or a referral card from a colleague might work better. 

E-mails

E-mail communication tends to be informal, but that doesn't make it personal.  Your best bet is to use e-mail to get out of e-mail when communicating with employers. Rather than ping-ponging a series of interactions, suggest a personal meeting or a phone call as a next step.  Elaborating is easier face to face, when both parties can demonstrate whether they want more or less information.  In an e-mail, elaboration simply makes for a long e-mail.  Although a lengthy message may be transmitted instantaneously, it still takes time for someone to plod through it.  Time is money, even in cyberspace.

If you identify a hot employment opportunity, look for ways to inject the human touch during the interview and selection process:

• Personal notes resonate differently than quickie e-mail thank-yous. 
• Questions raised in phone calls create more opportunity for bonding and rapport building than e-mail exchanges.
• Try to communicate your unique personal traits and style the old fashioned way - face to face.
• At best, electronic communication should supplement human interaction, not substitute for it.