“You’re Hired!” People wait all season to hear Donald Trump utter these two very precious words.
But… the drama in someone’s real life when they are looking for a job is more than intense than you’ll ever find on a in a TV reality show.
People looking for a job eat, sleep, and dream (literally) about hearing these two little words. Hearing these two precious words can change their life more than just about anything else.
I work in a job center and I’ve had clients who used visualization methods to help them get a job. It’s sometimes hard to understand how the human brain works but it seems if you visualize yourself getting job you’ll find a way to do so. Part of this visualization technique seems to revolve around focusing on hearing those two precious words.
I’ve shared this technique with many of my clients and I have seen it positively affect their attitude which of course is going to positively influence their ability to get a job. This is especially true when it comes to performing well during the interview.
However, FIRST, we have to get you some interviews don’t we?!
I often work with people who have been looking for work with no success for months. When I get them in the door they often already have a well-written and well-formatted resume and they’ve often already started the process of networking. However, as good as things look on the surface, they still don’t always get interviews.
Instead of changing the whole game plan, I often focus on making “simple” changes that can bring about a a big difference. I talk with them and look over the application and determine what we can tweak in order to help them start getting called in for the interviews.
By far, the most effective change I have found is CHANGING the cover letter.
Most people, when they come into my office, already have a cover letter and they’ve already learned that it needs to look and sound professional and it needs to be formatted neatly. Most already understand the importance of brevity and not restating what’s on the resume.
However, what most of them DON’T realize is the importance of making their cover letter completely unique and unlike any of the other candidates’ cover letters! Usually they’ve used some kind of template and modified it to create a cover letter that, while professional, is actually rather dull. It literally bores the hiring manager because it looks and sounds like all the others in the stack of applications. The “template” style cover letter, even when it has all the elements most talked about, will never inspire the hiring manager to pick up the phone and call the applicant in for an interview.
Given how busy hiring managers tend to be and also the fact that they get so many more applications now for every job opening, if you just include a “professional” cover letter that isn’t totally unique and full of some pizazz, your chances of actually getting noticed by the hiring manager is close to zero.
