You’re bad at writing about yourself. Too much, too little, wrong details. You either undersell because you don’t want to seem arrogant, or you dump your entire career history because you can’t decide what matters.
Warm intro requests are the worst version of this. You need to convince someone to spend social capital on you — in under 150 words — while also making it easy for them to actually make the introduction.
Most people fail at both.
The Two Mistakes
Mistake 1: Making the forwarder do the work. You’re asking your friend Mike to introduce you to Sarah at Acme Corp. You send:
“Hey Mike, can you intro me to Sarah? I’m really interested in that PM role.”
Mike replies: “Sure, can you send me some info about yourself? What should I tell her?”
Three emails later, Mike has bits of information scattered across a thread. Now he has to stitch together your pitch and spend social capital. You’ve turned a favor into a project.
Mistake 2: Wrong information, wrong length. You include your 2014 promotion but forget the metric that actually matters. Or you write three paragraphs when three bullets would do. You can’t edit yourself because you’re too close to your own story.
The Skill
I’ve been obsessed with Claude Skills since Anthropic launched them. Skills are reusable instruction packages that activate automatically when Claude recognizes a relevant task. Write once, use everywhere.
I built a skill that solves both problems. You give it:
Your resume (upload, paste, or link)
The job description (text or URL)
Any context you want to highlight
The name of your connection (the forwarder)
It handles the editing you can’t do yourself:
Picks your strongest verified achievement and connects it to the company’s challenge
Writes three tight bullets with metrics — nothing more
Uses company names, never “you” or “your” (awkward when forwarded)
Keeps the whole thing under 150 words
Addresses the email to Mike so he can forward it to Sarah without rewriting
To install: Go to Settings → Capabilities → Skills → “Upload skill” and drop in the file. Full instructions here
If You Don’t Use Claude
Here’s a prompt you can paste into ChatGPT or any other LLM:
I need to write an email asking [FORWARDER NAME] to introduce me to someone they know at [COMPANY]. The email should be addressed to [FORWARDER NAME] but written so they can forward it directly without editing.
Structure:
- Subject: “Quick intro request - [Company] [Role]”
- Opening: Connect my strongest achievement to the company’s specific challenge (2-3 sentences)
- Three bullets showing relevant experience with metrics
- Interest statement connecting my background to their needs
- Closing: Ask for the intro + include job URL
Rules:
- Use company/product names, never “you” or “your”
- Every metric must come from my resume
- Keep total body under 150 words
- Bullets max 12 words each
Here’s my resume: [PASTE]
Here’s the job description: [PASTE]
Additional context: [WHAT YOU WANT TO EMPHASIZE]
Job URL: [LINK]