It may feel odd to back on the job market. You may be like one of many who didn’t see it coming. With unemployment at 9.4% (oops, it just ticked up again didn’t it?) you’ll find 14.5 million other folks hopping into the dwindling job pool. Your job application packet can be a big help in times like these. It can open up new horizons for you.

Unless you’re falling back on an example of a cover letter you downloaded from a big job site. Then you’re depending on the same sample as the guy who just walked out of the recruiter’s office.

Here are just a couple of 28 tactics that will separate your letter from your competitors.

1. Be boring, lose the job. Fortunately, there’s an easy antidote – include a paragraph where you show your passion. At least one paragraph in your letter that isn’t just bullets of accomplishments. Rather, something that speaks to why you’re in the business, why you’ll stay, and why you’ll grow.

This section just aches for provocative, mood-setting phrases, the the big and bold, the pretty or poetic, and the colorful. Most of your competition are too “buttoned down” even to attempt this. To bring out this part of your personality – imagine something beautiful or noble you want badly – a boat you’ve always dreamed of, or an award. Then put yourself in the place telling your spouse or loved one why you want this so badly, how it’s beyond belief that you’d ever give up on it, and what you’re willing to do to get it.

Then take that same spirit, if not those same words, and see how they apply to your next job (and write them into your example of cover letter).

2. Edit your letter ruthlessly. Most people don’t. They use a cover letter they just submitted and change a few words. Instead, compare your cover letter to the best samples you can find or the best you’ve written. Don’t settle for good. Go for compelling. What elements have you added (headline, PS, call outs, etc.) that distinguish it from a pile of like letters? How much of yourself is in it?

Block by block, decide what you can do to make your letter leaner and more muscular. Don’t edit simply to shorten. Edit to illustrate, clean, and brighten. Delete every reference that isn’t dead-on relevant. Each word in your letter must augment your cause, reinforce your story, and be critical to the recruiter (not you). If you don’t pick your cover letter over any you can find, why should the recruiter?

With the fierce competition in this job market, having 89 applications on the street does you no good at all if each of them is mediocre. There are so many candidates, just one or two of them will create great packets and beat you every time.

That leads to three axioms:

1. You can make yourself the obvious choice for the job and attract many offers, but to do it, you must be the candidate who maximizes every portion of your job packet to attract the recruiter’s attention, so

2. You must have a system that enables you to modify an example of cover letter so that it is optimized to get you calls, and

3. Your system needs to be automated so it creates cover letters very rapidly and very easily so you actually do it every time (and don’t simply intend to do it).

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

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