I got Open AI CEO Sam Altman on the phone. Here's how.

Earlier this year, I got Open AI CEO Sam Altman on the phone.

This article explains how and explains how we use the same principles to help hundreds of Relentless candidates book thousands of interviews per year.

The purpose of a cold email is to get someone on the phone for an interview or exploratory call.

The best way to do that is to obsessively focus on providing the most amount of value to the recipient in the least amount of words possible.

In the case with Sam, I:

1. Obsessed over what Open AI's needs might be

2. Obsessed over all the possible ways I can solve for their needs

3. Obsessed over the best way to communicate how I can solve for their needs

For 1, I knew that Open AI like any company has the desire to sell its products and services to entities that can afford it. Given the size of Open AI, these needs to be entities with a lot of capital.

For 2, I knew that I could use anything from my background (in marketing or sales or talent strategy) or my connections.

For 3, I knew that I had to be concise and communicate a clear connection between 1 and 2 as quickly as possible.

Here's the email I ended up sending:

Notice that I thoughtfully frame things in the most compelling way possible.

I reference the size of the entity linking out to the news article I pulled it from, that we're speaking to the entity's leadership (which I contacted with a similar message), and end with a concise simple question to speak for 5 minutes.

I hopped on a call with Sam a few weeks later, but that's a story for another day.

For now, here's concrete examples of how we use the same approach to book candidates interviews.

For example, here's a screenshot from a candidate who emailed us saying the hiring manager "received more than 500 resumes" and "noticed [the candidate], due to [Relentless's] emails"

Here's the email we used for them and then auto-sent at scale to hundreds of hiring managers, personalizing each message to each hiring manager:

Screenshot of the email used

Screenshot of the list pulled from our database of 700 people we contacted over the course of the job search

Notice how we personalized multiple parts of the email including the first name, role title, and company name and used a witty email, calling the person a hero for helping.

Here's another candidate who emailed us saying they landed something thanks to Relentless where "5,000 people" had applied for the same role.

Here's the email we used for them and then auto-sent at scale to hundreds of other hiring managers.

Notice how we personalized multiple parts of the email including the first name, role title, and company name again. Additionally, we also framed this recruiter as the coolest possible recruiter on the planet by referencing how they recruited Amazon early engineers. The candidate wasn't thinking of framing their experience like this pre-Relentless.

They asked (and you might be asking) is: “Is this smart? Does it make sense to use something from so many years ago? Isn't it irrelevant? What if the hiring manager asks about it and gets annoyed that something so long ago was being used?”

The answer is your job as a candidate is to use the best possible message that you can without being dishonest. It doesn't matter if you're referencing something which happened 10 years ago.

Usually, people won't bring up your pitch when you hop on the phone with them (let alone look at your resume).

So, write the boldest, craziest, most compelling (and honest) message possible, then send that out to hiring managers.

1. If you’re interested in hearing more about the Amazon candidate’s experience with us, check out their video testimonial here. You can also check out 30+ testimonials and the LinkedIn backgrounds of candidates we’ve run searches for by heading to our site’s success stories section.
2. If you want to see an internal guide we've never publicly shared before that our paid customers use when launching their search with Relentless, reply here with "yes"
3. If you want to run your search with Relentless, head to our site to apply here.

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