This Gen Zer didn’t have business connections or an NBA pedigree—only a willingness to mop flooring and do laundry for his college basketball team. That grit not solely landed Daniel Sung a coveted internship with one of many league’s most revolutionary franchises—whereas hundreds of thousands in his technology are stuck unemployed—it additionally put him face-to-face with LA Clippers C-suite.
Whereas most interns had been content material with group “lunch and study”, the 19-year-old advertising intern determined to shoot his shot and straight cold-emailed his division’s CEO for a personal one-to-one dialog.
“I actually needed to study from her,” Sung advised Fortune. Each week, your complete cohort of interns would have weekly meet-and-greets with LA Clippers’ senior management staff—and Sung made it his private mission to nook each single one for a private catch up earlier than his internship was up.
“I truly obtained in a bit little bit of bother from HR,” he laughed. “However I knew I wanted to speak to all of our C-suite earlier than I left, as a result of when else are you going to be simply in that shut of a proximity? It’s additionally onerous to be extra weak and get actually tailor-made recommendation in any other case.”
“I used to be very strategic, in order that they may all the time see me passing them,” Sung stated.
Anytime Gillian Zucker, Halo Sports activities and Leisure CEO and president of enterprise operations for the LA Clippers would stroll on the identical flooring he was engaged on, he’d be sure to cross paths together with her—simply in order that he may trade a smile and possibly even niceties with the large boss. “I wanted her to acknowledge me,” he added. That approach she may put a face to a reputation, when he ultimately plucked up the braveness to shoot an e mail her approach.
Nevertheless it wasn’t straightforward. Zucker didn’t reply to his first e mail for over a month. So Sung doubled down on his efforts, sending a extra pressing follow-up e mail and plastering LinkedIn with posts about his internship in a bid to get seen.
“I emailed the secretary, saying I’m going to go away very quickly, however I actually want to speak to her.”
Ultimately, his persistence labored. Zucker’s chief of workers noticed one in every of Sung’s LinkedIn posts titled 5 Classes I Discovered in 5 Weeks on the LA Clippers—a put up that went viral on the platform and gained traction contained in the workplace too. “That gave me plenty of constructive consideration, and actually sparked the ears of plenty of the C suite executives,” Sung added.
Quickly after, her workplace reached out to schedule the one-on-one assembly.
Gillian Zucker’s recommendation for the Gen Zer
The night time earlier than sitting down with Zucker, Sung stayed up till 2 a.m. researching after which rehearsing the proper inquiries to ask. However when the assembly got here, nerves gave strategy to honesty.
“I advised her to be trustworthy, I don’t suppose I actually know what I wish to do in life but. I’m nonetheless 18. (I used to be 18 on the time) and I’ve so many pursuits,” he recalled. “I really like sports activities, I really like consulting, I really like advertising, however I don’t know the place all ties in. What do you suppose is one thing that I can do to essentially discover out what I wish to do?”
“After which, she requested me, ‘What would you do without cost?”
He says the questions immediately introduced him again to the time he was mopping flooring for the Vanderbilt College basketball staff; doing 40-hour weeks of unpaid work to show his ardour for the business.
“You must do work like that that basically evokes you—you must do work that you are able to do without cost,” Zucker advised him. “It actually was one of the best recommendation. She stated you must discover out your why, what you wish to do, the factor that basically drives you, and the factor that simply by being in that surroundings, you’ll be pleased and also you’ll be capable of study from it.”
Fortune has reached out to the NBA for remark.
A single e mail can change your profession
Job-seekers are all turning to out-of-the-box methods to advance their careers, from delivering donuts to Silicon Valley bosses, to waitressing at tech conferences handy out CVs. However truly, merely chilly emailing employers isn’t a foul strategy to stand out.
Similar to Sung, when Figma’s billionaire CEO Dylan Discipline was 19 years outdated and seeking to get his design device off the bottom, the millennial cofounder additionally cold-emailed his tech “heroes” to ask them out for espresso. He additionally hit up the inbox of former fellow interns and friends from LinkedIn, Flipboard, and O’Reilly Media—and it labored.
Likewise, Nespresso’s U.Okay. CEO Anna Lundstrom obtained her foot via the door of the notoriously hard-to-break luxurious business because of a cold email to an LVMH boss—he immediately provided her an internship which snowballed right into a 5 yr profession on the likes of Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Gucci.
Google govt Sameer Samat obtained his begin by plucking up the braveness to cold-email one of many largest names in his business: Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
The CMO of $7.2 billion firm Squarespace even calls cold-calling employers the “life hack to avoiding lengthy interview processes.” Years earlier than her success in tech, Kinjil Mathur spent her summers as a university scholar skimming phone books to seek out the contacts of companies and professionals in her metropolis. She would go to the corporate listings part, and began cold-calling companies inquiring about internships—stating she was even keen to do with out a paycheck.
“I used to be keen to work without cost; I used to be keen to work any hours they wanted, even on evenings and weekends. I used to be not targeted on touring,” Mathur told Fortune.
