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.

Do make it as concise as possible.

Employers are not spending as much time as they used to reading cover letters. Ideally, your letter should be about four paragraphs, and one of those should tell a story.

One more type of story you can tell in a cover letter is the future story that address employer needs and challenges and tell how you would address those issues, as in these examples:

When I interviewed Ms. Kirkwood six months ago to obtain information about a career in real estate, she mentioned that the agency would like to establish a Web presence. I’d like to combine my interest in real estate with my knowledge of Web-page design and HTML programming to help you create a Webmaster position in your office. I’ve even sketched out some preliminary ideas on what your Web page might look like, and I’d love to get together and show them to you.

Because I recently assisted in managing one of the convenience stores in your company’s chain, I am well-acquainted with how to prioritize tasks. I oversaw organization of the employee task list. While corporate headquarters provided the basic structure of the task list, I modified it to meet our store’s needs. Now, I’d like to do that for all the corporate stores. Working in “the problem store,” as you often called it, I am certainly aware of the difficulties, and I have some ideas about how to solve them.

I understand that Hanover Information Systems deals heavily in telemarketing and database outsourcing. Maintaining a database can be very expensive for a company, and outsourcing this task can sometimes be more efficient. I am confident that I can help increase the company’s productivity by creating optimal ways to maintain the databases.

While short-term job and career tenures are much more accepted than they used to be, many decision-makers are still suspicious of career-changers and want to know what motivates the change. Their mental question is: “Why should I consider this career-changing candidate over someone who has always been in this field?” Your story must answer that question by showing your enthusiasm and passion for your new career as well as your transferable skills:

At the very instant I read your ad for a Merchandising Specialist, everything clicked. The description of the job became one with my passion, and I knew the match between me and this job was perfect. I’m ready to make my contribution in an environment where excellence is a given. I accept your challenge; I know I have what it takes, can prove it, and am poised to take my mark and go.

I became a chiropractor because of my desire to help people and make a difference. I strive to do the same with my writing. As a health professional with significant health/medical writing and publishing experience, I have a wealth of skills and talents to offer in the Staff Writer position you currently have open. I am eager to put my attributes to work for you at Healthy Body magazine.

My successes have been frequent and consistent since I joined The Buenger Corporation 10 years ago when it was a $90 million company. I played a key role in the organization’s growth to $1 billion. However, I’ve progressed as far as possible. As a result, I’ve decided to take on new challenges in a growing firm like yours that could benefit from my large-corporation experience.

It’s very difficult to explain in a resume such situations as relocation, extended family-leave time, sabbaticals, illness, disability, unemployment, travel, returning to employment after business ownership, and other employment gaps. The cover letter lends itself much better to these situations, but they represent another area for careful handling. You don’t want to tell stories that raise more questions than they answer. Nor do you want to call undue attention to an issue that may not be important to the employer. Certainly, do not belabor the special-situation story:

When I took maternity leave from my high-powered consulting job with Accenture, I expected to be gone for just a few months. Little did I know that giving birth to a child with autism would not only take me out of the workforce for six years to attend to my son’s special needs, but that it would inspire a whole new career passion as a special-education teacher. Now returning to the workforce with an education degree, I want to combine the communication skills honed through my past consulting experience with the knowledge I’ve gained as the mother of a special-needs child. I’m well prepared to design and deliver instruction, meet each child’s special needs, and ensure that my students reach their full learning potential.