Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

Many resources are available and listed in an upcoming entry at the end of this chapter, and you can find a handy checklist here.

The principle here is similar to the language-mirroring described above. In his book, Don’t Send a Resume, Jeffrey Fox calls the best letters written in response to want ads “Boomerang letters” because they “fly the want ad words — the copy — back to the writer of the ad.” In employing what Fox calls “a compelling sales technique,” he advises letter writers to “flatter the person who wrote the ad with your response letter. Echo the author’s words and intent. Your letter should be a mirror of the ad.” Fox notes that when the recipient reads such a letter, the thought process will be: “This person seems to fit the description.” In the following example, the employer playfully wrote in the want ad that the prospective new hire should have the characteristics of 1980s TV character “MacGyver,” who was highly resourceful in dealing with sticky situations with minimal tools:

MacGyver to the rescue! Armed with my trusty toothpick and duct tape — actually my exceptional facility with hand-coded, highly maintainable HTML — I am poised to create high quality, totally usable Web pages for your clients. My three years of experience with Web-development projects make me exactly the kind of value-added employee you need in the Content Architect position you are advertising. My solid communication skills, along with total proficiency in all the areas you require, will enable me to make a significant contribution to your team.

Go to the employer’s Web site or pick up print publications about the organization. Pick out buzzwords and phrases. Play these back to the employer in your story. Employers who read language-mirroring stories conclude that the job-seeker “gets it.” Decision-makers love to see the organization’s own words reflected back to them. Both of these examples are take their inspiration from employer Web sites. In the first example, the site stated that the company was staffed by people who could, like Superman, “leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

I’m ready to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Knowing that you surround yourself with people who care passionately about their work, I’m here to tell you that I am passionate about working for Henderson Partners. My solid experience in serving the administrative needs of busy offices in fast-paced environments would enable me to make a significant contribution to the Administrative Assistant/Receptionist position you are currently advertising.

The description of The Limited at your Web site leads me to believe that your company and I share a philosophy about creativity, fashion, and customer service. That’s why I’m eager to contribute my experience in interacting with all kinds of people, combined with a genuine passion for fashion and a tremendous admiration for The Limited, in an Associate capacity, particularly with Express.

Cover-letter stories should focus on the employer’s requirements, the problems you can solve, and the results you can achieve. If the relevance isn’t immediately obvious from your story, help the reader make the connection by pointing out the skills and qualifications the story illustrates. For example:

The exceptional organizational abilities and detail orientation I deployed to set up photo shoots are directly applicable to the skills needed to plan and coordinate events. I can enhance your profitability by prospecting new business opportunities, strategizing communication initiatives, successfully managing client relationships, delivering presentations, and much more.

Telling a story in your cover letter doesn’t mean describing your entire career; that’s what your resume is for. For example, the following paragraph is too long and contains too many ideas that are not only unconnected to the job the writer seeks as a computer programmer, but disconnected from each other:

For nearly three years I have been a student computer technician for Academic Computing Services at Bucknell University. I am responsible for the repair and maintenance of all faculty, staff, and computer lab machines on campus. My duties also include the maintenance of our network and servers. Parallel with these responsibilities, I am also a lab supervisor for Academic Computing Services. I am also responsible for designing and maintaining several of Bucknell’s home pages for the World Wide Web, experience that has provided me with a detailed knowledge of the HTML programming language. In August 2007, I will complete my bachelor’s degree in philosophy. My liberal arts background has equipped me with exemplary communication skills. I have taken several math and computer science courses in my college career. My mathematics background includes trigonometry, statistics, calculus I and II, linear algebra, logic, and discrete math. I have also taken several computer science courses. In these courses, I work with Assembly, Pascal, C/C++, and several other languages. I am currently programming using C/C++ in the Windows NT and Windows XP environments.

Here’s how that rambling paragraph might be rewritten to tell a better story that relates more closely to specific skills:

• Having overseen repair and maintenance of all faculty, staff, and computer lab machines on the Bucknell University campus for nearly three years also qualifies me well for your advertised Help Desk Analyst/Programmer position. I also maintain our network and servers. My experience as a lab supervisor bolsters my management skills.
• The strong liberal-arts background I’ve attained through my upcoming bachelor’s degree in philosophy (August 2008) has equipped me with the exemplary communication skills your organization requires.
• I combine both my HTML programming skills and communication talents in designing and maintaining several Bucknell Web pages for the World Wide Web. I offer a strong math background and the diverse programming skills you need through my coursework in Assembly, Pascal, C/C++, and several other languages in the Windows NT and Windows XP environments.

Stories for the sake for storytelling won’t get you far. Be sure the stories you include in your cover letter will grab the reader.

It’s always easier for the reader to picture you succeeding on the job when you describe a specific situation, and employers are always attracted to numbers that indicate results.

Even if only one paragraph in your letter is in story form, try to integrate the story’s theme throughout your letter and tie the letter together by briefly referring back to the story in your final paragraph. See example letters starting later in this chapter.

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:

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.