Is email as effective as snail mail?

I get a lot of questions from young people about sending a resume tape via email. Many are curious as to why they've sent out dozens and gotten almost no response.

The answer lies in your own email box.

Open your email inbox on any given day, and along with the messages from people you know are countless pieces of junk advertising discount Viagra or telling you that you've won a lottery in Europe. While some email companies are better at filtering out spam than others, some junk still manages to find its way.

Now put yourself in a News Director's shoes. On any given day a ND might find a few hundred emails waiting to be read, and no one has time to read two hundred emails. Many stations also have rules governing emails and viruses... unless you know the sender, you simply hit the delete button. So if someone is sending you a resume tape attached to an email, chances are you'll never see it.

Almost all job postings ask the applicant to mail a tape. While you may think this is a stone age mentality, there are several reasons for this. Tapes and DVDs are easy to go through quickly, and when you're narrowing the field you want to be able to put the good tapes in a box to review later. At some point the GM or corporate is going to want to review those as well, and they don't want a bunch of forwarded emails to do it. And in many cases, more than one person is looking at resume tapes, and you don't want a bunch of people crowded around you, looking over your shoulder.

The News Director always has the worst computer in the newsroom, and half the time stuff sent via email won't play. The same is often true of General Managers.

The day may come when all job postings ask for tapes to be emailed, but it isn't here yet.

That said, many of those companies who will post your resume tape online do get a lot of visits from News Directors, but that's different than sending an unsolicited email. A ND can go to the site and watch a bunch of tapes. They're all formatted the same way and there's not a problem playing them.

And there's nothing wrong with having your own personal site with a bunch of packages or anchoring, just in case a ND calls you and wants to see something quick, or has looked at your first tape and wants to see more.

But just sending emails cold doesn't do the trick. If you want to make sure a News Director actually receives your tape, you've got to do it the old fashioned way and stick it in the mail.