Even the narrative cover letter has succumbed to employers’ insatiable hunger for bullet points, which are a nice way to break up blocks of type and make your letter easy to read. Focus-group participants responded well to a sample that included both a story and a bulleted section. It’s also possible to tell a story in bullet form, as in this example:

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In my four years as sales manager of a leading medical-supply distributor in Redwood City, I directed the sales and marketing of the company’s line of breathing apparatus. During that time:

• I led the sales team in tripling annual billings, from $3 million to nearly $11 million;
• I contributed to a five-fold increase in company profits, for $150K in 2001 to $785K for the fiscal year ending in 2005.
• I guided a 250 percent increased in the number of accounts in our group’s sales territory.
• The success I’ve had here and elsewhere in 15 years of selling is not a coincidence or attributable to luck or magic. My sales prowess results from a natural ability to analyze a marketing/selling situation and deliver an innovative program that leaves the competition behind.

Use tables as another way to tell a story in a user-friendly format. Remember Mathias Carroll’s Project Supplement Resume Addendum from Chapter 5? An alternative to using the full addendum is to extract three or four storied key projects and use them in the middle of your cover letter, as in this sample.

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Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, Quintessential Careers Press, ISBN-10: 1-934689-00-9. Find out the ways you can own the entire book.