Examples · General
A professional email
An email to a company for your internship, and one to your tutor. What to tell the model, what to leave out, and the four things to check before you send. Then make it more formal, or shorter. No code.
Beginner · 25 min
What you need
Only the chat: no code. We tried these requests with Gemma 4 26B, the default model.
1. Ask for a draft
Open a new conversation and write what the email is for, the facts, the tone and the length. For an internship:
Write an email to the HR office of a software company. I am a second-year student at ITS INCOM, in the Programming course, and I am looking for a six-month internship from March. I know Python, SQL and Git, and for a school project I built a web app that books the rooms of our school.
Tone: polite and direct, not stiff. At most 150 words, with a subject line. My CV is attached.
Use [square brackets] for what I will fill in myself: my name, the company, the person I write to.
Do not add skills or experience that I have not listed.
Three parts of it do most of the work:
- The facts. The model knows only what you write: your course, your year, the dates, what you can do. Change them to yours.
- [Square brackets] for names. You do not paste your personal data into the chat, and you see at a glance what is left to fill in.
- “Do not add skills or experience that I have not listed.” A model likes to make you sound better than you are.
2. What came back
140 words:
Subject: Internship Inquiry: [Your Name] – Software Development
Dear [Name of HR Person or "HR Team"],
I am a second-year student in the Programming course at ITS INCOM, and I am writing to express my interest in a six-month internship at [Company Name] starting this March.
I have developed a solid foundation in Python, SQL, and Git. As part of a school project, I also successfully built a web application designed to manage and book rooms within our school. I am eager to apply these skills in a professional environment and contribute to your team's projects.
I have attached my CV for your review and would welcome the opportunity to discuss how I can contribute to [Company Name] during an interview.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Best regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Phone Number]
[Your LinkedIn Profile - Optional]
A good draft. Every run gives a slightly different one.
3. Check four things before you send
Even this draft has four things to fix:
- “I know Python” became “a solid foundation in Python”, in both of our runs, and “I built” became “I successfully built”. At the interview they will ask: keep only what you can show.
- “Starting this March”. You wrote “from March”. Read in October, “this March” could be the one that has passed: write the month and the year.
- Brackets. Fill in every one, or delete it:
[Your LinkedIn Profile - Optional]goes if you have no profile. An email that arrives with[Company Name]in it is not read to the end. - “Dear [Name of HR Person or "HR Team"]”. Look for a name on the company's website or on LinkedIn. If you find none, “Dear Hiring Team”.
4. More formal, or shorter
Carry on in the same conversation:
Make it more formal.
155 words. “Best regards” became “Yours sincerely”, “I know” became “I have acquired technical proficiency in”, and a new fact appeared: “pursuing a degree in Programming”. ITS gives a diploma, not a university degree: more formal, and wrong. Formal is right for a bank or a public office; for a software company the first draft was fine.
Now shorter: 80 words at most.
82 words with the subject and the signature, two more than we asked: count them yourself. The facts stayed, the polite phrases went, and “I know” became “I am proficient in”. A recruiter reads it in twenty seconds: for a first contact, short is good.
“Now in Italian.” works the same way: we got a formal Italian email, with «Gentile» and «Cordiali saluti». The brackets stayed in English: [Your Name], [Company Name].
What to leave out
- Personal data the company does not need yet: your date of birth, home address, tax code. If they are needed, they are in your CV.
- Your marks, unless they ask.
- Apologies: “I know I have no experience, but…”. You are a student: they know.
- Your life story, emojis, “Hi!”.
- Anything the model added that is not true.
To your tutor
Write a short email to my course tutor. I was ill from Tuesday to Thursday and I could not hand in the project report that was due on Friday. I have a doctor's certificate. I would like to hand it in next Wednesday instead.
Tone: respectful and simple, no excuses beyond the facts. At most 100 words, with a subject line. Use [square brackets] for the names.
We got 83 words, with the subject “Extension request for [Project Name] - [Your Name]”, the facts and one clear question: “Would it be possible to submit my report next Wednesday instead?”
And one sentence to fix: “I have attached a doctor's certificate to this email for your reference.” We never said it was attached, and both of our runs wrote it. Attach it, or change the sentence. The model fills the gaps with what is likely, not with what is true.
To a tutor too, leave out the diagnosis: “I was ill” and the certificate are enough.
Exercise
- Write the email for the internship you want, with your real course and skills, and the names still in brackets.
- Ask, in the same conversation: “What would a recruiter find missing, or too much, in this email? Answer in five points at most.” When we tried it, the advice was: say why this company, name the tools you built your web app with, add a link to your code on GitHub, say which side of programming you want, back end, front end or data. Take the advice that is true for you.
- Write to your tutor to ask for a meeting about your project, with two times when you are free.
- Write the internship email for a company in Zurich: “Now in German.” When we tried it, the email closed with “Mit freundlichen Grüßen”: in Switzerland it is written “Grüssen”, with ss.