You Can Get Hired This Week !!

As a long time Broadcast Executive, Coach and Teacher, I have seen many aspects of the Job Search process change over the years. And nothing has evolved more in your job search process than the art of good cover letter writing.

The Job Search Process:

That's it in a nutshell. Nothing else matters! The HR process today is simply getting noticed enough to have a company go to the next stage and that's to contact you..

The real you comes out in your cover letter, it’s an introduction and in that simple introduction you have to make that Real You stand out. We already assume that your resume qualifies you, but with a better cover letter as your introduction, the rest just doesn’t matter. If they don’t get past the cover letter, your qualifications, as great as they may be, just won’t get the recognition they deserve.

Now don't get me wrong, resumes do need to be good, whether they are functional or chronological. But at the end of the day, they don’t get tweaked too much. Altered slightly to best fit the job at hand yes, but that is still only a minor alteration. Afterall your resume is a blueprint at best, where you’ve been, what you’ve achieved, core competencies etc. There is only so much you can tweak in that area. Your cover letter is the real challenge. It needs to be altered for every possible career opportunity. Anything less is a template cover letter!

Truth! Templates died long before you even heard of Paris Hilton .. ok ok that was a cheap shot .. but still on the money actually.

Your cover letter always needs to be tweaked exactly right for every job you apply for. These days the template cover letter is absolutely dead. They will never stand out, as everyone else is sending exactly the same thing, that’s what templates are, a sort of cookie cutter approach. And trust me, recruiters have seen thousands of letters, a stand out letter is rare and does just that, it really stands out when you write from the heart, a genuine, sincere and real person behind the words, gets noticed every time.  

Remember, the process is very simple. A recruiter reads your cover letter, when it’s interesting enough, they want to meet you and thus, a job interview is arranged. That process starts with your cover letter first!

Think of it this way, from a recruiter’s point of view. I receive 100 letters and resumes and all the resumes are about the same quality. How do I decide who to interview. Again, it’ll always come back to that amazing cover letter, that real you, they read as your introduction. Go ahead and write from the heart, you will get their attention immediately. Why, because real people stand out! And trust me, everyone else is afraid to write that way. You want an edge, that's it!

That said, this is still the area we struggle with, as we are actually selling ourselves in the cover letter, like it or not, that’s exactly what you are doing. Selling and telling! The resume doesn’t sell you, it’s a blueprint, a static page of information. They have to get through the cover letter to get to the resume. So the bottom line is prepare your resume first, you’ll need that as reference when writing a truly solid cover letter of introduction.

After your cover letter, the next obvious skill you really need to master is the art of the job interview itself. Again, that’ll come down to again, being real, and your ability to articulate and communicate any of your skills, experiences etc. Most people dread the job interview and rightly so, one needs to properly prepare. But most people don’t even get a job interview because they missed the single most important step, the cover letter!

Jim Sweeney is a fellow who has compiled an amazing track record of helping thousands of people just like you. He really knows how to put the magic into your cover letter and I never hesitate to recommend Jim to people like yourself. (just click on Jim's name for more info)

To Your Job Search Success!

Mike Perras,  MCInst.M, RPM, P.Mgr

http://www.extremelistening.com/hired.htm