Monday, July 11, 2011

Is Your Cover Letter Focused On the Wrong Thing?

Working in a job center, I read a lot of cover letters. Most of them seem to focus on wrong thing and I can truthfully say that the vast majority of job applicants would help their chances a lot if they would just ask for help on their cover letter.

Now, most experts will tell you that you are making a mistake if you focus on listing your accomplishments in your cover letter, no matter how good they are. They tell you to shift this focus to what you can offer to them. I don't disagree with the latter being better than the first but I have a very different take on what you should focus on in your cover letter - and my take is based on experience helping real clients in a job center.

Here's the bottom line. Both strategies above focus on getting hired when you should instead be submitting a cover letter that will inspire those reading it to invite you in for the interview.

That bears repeating and rephrasing:

In your cover letter, you should focus on getting an interview - NOT on getting the job - and to do this you need help.

Getting called for an interview is more than 90% of the battle - and you can't get the job if you don't first get the interview for 99% of all jobs. Let your cover letter serve as your first impression that gets you noticed and liked enough for them to want to meet you in person. Your cover letter needs charisma and charm. You need to come across as a dynamic person they just have to meet.

You need marketing language to accomplish this. You need succinct marketing language that draws them in with just a few sentences. To do this, I can't recommend highly enough this software. It has worked so well for so many of my clients I know it can help you too. It will definitely give you an "unfair advantage."