5 exercises — connection requests, conference follow-ups, job inquiries, and cold email subject lines for engineers.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
You want to connect with a senior engineer whose open-source library you use. Which LinkedIn message is most effective?
An effective cold connection request is specific, gives value to the recipient, and states why you want to connect. Option B names the exact library, gives a concrete use case (six months of use), mentions a specific technical decision it enabled (saved re-architecture), and states a genuine reason to connect (follow their work). The recipient learns that their work had a real impact — this makes accepting the request feel worthwhile. Options A and C are LinkedIn default messages or generic. Option D has no specific information — "your profile looks interesting" says nothing.
2 / 5
Complete this networking message to a conference speaker: "I _____ (attend) your talk on distributed tracing at QCon last week. Your approach to sampling rate trade-offs _____ (change) how I _____ (think) about observability costs. I _____ (be/grateful) to connect."
Attended (past simple) — the conference was a completed event in the past. Has changed (present perfect) — the change happened in the past but has a current result: your thinking is different now as a result of the talk. Think (present simple) — a current ongoing cognitive state. Would be grateful — polite conditional for a request, softer than "I am grateful to connect" (which would imply the connection already exists). Option B uses "was attending" (continuous) which implies you were interrupted mid-talk, and "am grateful" which sounds like the connection is already a done deal.
3 / 5
You want to ask a connection if their company is hiring. Which message follows professional norms?
Job inquiries through a connection work best when you demonstrate genuine interest in their specific work, show domain fit, and make a scoped, easy-to-answer ask. Option B: acknowledges a specific recent technical achievement (the cache layer), shows sustained engagement (following the blog for a year), connects their work to your own expertise, makes a specific ask (infrastructure team roles), and offers something in return (CV ready). Option A is abrupt and leads with urgency. Option C asks the connection to do investigative work on your behalf. Option D treats the connection as a routing mechanism, skipping the relationship entirely.
4 / 5
Which subject line or opening is most effective for a cold networking email (not LinkedIn)?
A cold email subject line must give the recipient a reason to open it. Option B references a specific piece of work they produced (the InfoQ article), signals that the sender read it seriously enough to have a specific question (compilation pipeline), and provides context for why the sender is reaching out. This gives the recipient something they care about — a question about their own published work. Option A is generic and sounds like spam. Option C says nothing about who you are or why they should care. Option D is a statement of how you found their email — interesting as context but terrible as an opener since it creates privacy concerns.
5 / 5
Choose the best phrasing for a follow-up after meeting at a conference: "It _____ (be) great _____ (meet) you at PyCon. I _____ (enjoy) our conversation about async IO patterns — I _____ (look) into the library you _____ (mention)."
It was great meeting you — past simple + gerund ("meeting") is the standard English phrase for this context: "It was great + verb-ing". Enjoyed (past simple) — the conversation is a completed past event. Have been looking (present perfect continuous) — shows you started looking into the library after the conference and are still in the process. This signals ongoing, genuine follow-through. Mentioned (past simple) — refers to what was said during the conversation. Option B uses "to meet" (infinitive after "great") which is less natural here — the gerund is the idiomatic choice. "Am looking" (option D) would also work but present perfect continuous shows more concrete progress.