You must have a cover letter. More than 80% of recruiters surveyed by the Society for HR Executives say cover letters are a necessity. A bad one is worse than none. But yours can elevate you above the crowd.

Unless you settle for the same cover letter template everyone else is using. Then you mark yourself as unimaginative.

Here are a just a couple of 28 techniques you can use to make your cover letter memorable and get you interviews:

1. Have a story to tell. They trigger something primal in people. “Two managers before me had gotten reassigned because they could never make it work. I can tell you it was intimidating.” Doesn’t that make you want to read more? Look over your cover letter and come up with one great (business) story about you that encompasses all the points you want to make. Write a version of your cover letter based only on that story. Use it to illustrate all the skills you say you have and all you can bring to the new employer. You’ll be surprised how persuasive it is. And it will let you talk in a register completely different from the one your competitors use. Then get someone you trust to edit it ruthlessly. You can’t afford to be one bit self-indulgent.

2. Crank up the variety in your cover letter, and tell your story in many different ways. You can get this done in one page and it will be crazy persuasive. Here’s what the format looks like:

1. a single bolded statement – e.g., If you financial performance without courting risk, I have a track record of providing just that.;

2. a single paragraph that explains how the claim is possible, e.g., Here’s what’s happening and why…;

3. a brief anecdote of a few sentences, e.g. Last year at our facility…;

4. a brief testimonial, e.g. When my supervisor saw the results, she said it was…; and

5. a numbered or bulleted list, e.g.

* Contact me using the information below,

* Let me know what part of your business you want to focus on,

* I’ll bring a full report on…

* Then you can decide whether…

Give it a try. Open up whatever word processing software you use and write your 5-part story. Then edit it down to one page. (If you pass a page, your diluting your story.) You’ll be amazed how influential it is.

Make those changes to your cover letter template and you’ll have a letter that will make the recruiter think twice, or three times, or just pick up the phone.

Listen, you’re facing a huge opportunity. Every job applicant you’re competing against submits the same two docs – a resume and a cover letter. And they’re all wasting one of them completely. Imagine your advantage when your letter is optimized to make the phone ring every time.

Here’s what you need to make yourself consistently the candidate to beat:

3. Make the commitment to do the small things that added together make your job packet impossible to put down.

4. Automate your process so modifying a cover letter template is so easy and so rapid that you don’t think twice about creating an optimized letter for EVERY APPLICATION (instead of using that old letter you wrote for some job that was open two months ago).

Get everything you need to write a cover letter that recruiter’s can’t put down http://coverletterhelp.info

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