One item I found very useful in my search was creating the following mail folders to organize all of my e-mail and meeting requests.
1. Search – 1 – Open invitations
2. Search – 2 – Pending meetings
3. Search – 3 -Post-meeting follow-up
4. Search – 4 – Introductions made
5. Search – 5 – Introductions received
6. Search – 6 – Second Contact
7. Search – 7 – No Response/Complete
Notice that I labeled each folder using the term “Search” and a number. Simply so they would show up in one spot among my other folders and in order.
See the toolkit “Organizing E-mail Folders for your Search” tool for description of what I included in each folder.
Meetings may take several e-mails to set up, so you need a method to keep track of the status. I simply used these folders to file e-mails – so I could sort on the person, date, etc. to quickly check where I was in the process. Also, to make sure I had transferred everything from my e-mail to my calendar.
The “Open Invitations” folder was probably the busiest folder. Each time I sent out an invitation to network, I would file it here. Each week, I would check the status of whether I had received a response to my invitation. If yes, I’d delete it. If not, if the original date was over two weeks, I would hit “Reply All” and send a quick follow-up note. I would also move the follow-up note into this folder – so then I could see I had two requests outstanding. In case you’re wondering, my rule was three tries to get an invite accepted – then move on.
I sent about 100 e-mails a week during my search. So these folders came in pretty handy.
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