Effective Communication Begins with a First Impression; Harvard Business Review, 8/17/10

JD Schramm, Harvard Business Review; Effective Communication Begins with a First Impression:

"In this era of double-digit unemployment, many of us are either job-hunting or helping friends and colleagues who are searching for employment. After crafting a cover letter, set it aside, do something else as a distraction, and then return to it with fresh eyes. Imagine you are the hiring manager and this has landed on your desk or in your in-box. Does the letter capture your attention from the very first moment?...

While we may only see scores of business letters in a year, we see thousands of emails. There, the first impression is obvious: the subject line...

The key to writing a powerful subject line is to do it last, right before you hit send, not before you've written the email."

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/08/effective_communciation_begins.html