Tell me about yourself (part 1): Cover letters

March 22, 10:34 AMEntry Level Careers ExaminerHeather Huhman

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Cover letters are an incredible opportunity for internship and entry-level job seekers and should never be left out of your application. They allow you—in narrative form—to tell the employer exactly why hiring you, instead of the numerous other candidates, is a good decision.

“You can engage the employer, make an emotional connection, show results, and become instantly memorable by writing at least one paragraph in the form of a powerful story,” said Katharine Hansen, PhD, author of “Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling to Get Jobs and Propel Your Career.”

Hansen recommends the following guidelines:

1. Make it as concise. Employers are spending less time than they used to reading cover letters. Ideally, your letter should be about four paragraphs, and at least one of those should tell a story. 

2. Don’t neglect the “storyline” in the rest of the letter. 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.

3. Make your stories specific and quantify results whenever possible. The reader can more easily picture you succeeding on the job when you describe a specific situation, and employers love to see numbers that indicate results. An example of quantifying results is stating the percentage by which you increased sales and telling the story of how you did it. 

4. Make your stories compelling so they grab the reader. Stories for the sake for storytelling won’t get you far. Think about stories that will get the employer’s attention and relate to his or her organization’s needs. 

5. Avoid lengthy stories with too much detail. Some job seekers are tempted to turn cover letters into autobiographies. Telling a story doesn’t mean describing your entire life or career. 

6. Tell only the stories that are relevant to 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. That’s the concept of “transferable skills”—skills you’ve used in one sector of your life or career that are applicable and transferable to the job you seek after graduation. 

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.” 

7. Work some of the employer’s own messages and language into your story. Pick out buzzwords and phrases from the employer’s Web site or print publications about the organization. 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. 

8. Don’t overlook the story-fueling potential of job postings and want ads. 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.”

Part 2: Résumés -->