Last week, we discussed your resume. Today, we cover the cover letter.

In the pursuit of job interviews, I find that the cover letter is a necessary evil. You can’t send a resume without it but if you’re not careful, it could get in the way of your resume being given the proper amount of attention. The people you send your resume to are either looking at a large quantity of other resumes or are overwhelmed with other work – everyone is super busy these days. If you don’t grab it, the reader’s attention might get diverted and never return.

Meanwhile, I have known people who have subsequently become my coaching clients, who had otherwise spent one or two hours with each job submission because they were agonizing over the cover letter. With purely good intention, people who are hungry for a new job all too often try to fit themselves into less-than-ideal job descriptions. The result of that approach is fewer good interviews and tons of time wasted on applying to and sometimes interviewing for the wrong jobs.

It’s important to keep your cover letters short and focused (and if you’re a writer, you can make references to writing samples).

I am going to help you make the process short and focused as well. Here is your inspiration for writing tips and techniques to save you tons of time and energy while generating more and better interviews faster:

1. Start with a one-line paragraph identifying who you are and how you made the connection. For example, “John Smith recommended we connect” or “I’m the one best candidate for your listing in “Ladders” for “Chief Marketing Officer”

2. Then tee up the next section with something like, “Here are the key reasons why you would find me worth meeting” or “Here’s why I am the number one most qualified candidate for this position.”

3. After you’ve framed this up, present three bullet points of your most relevant qualifications for that particular job. I recommend you simply copy and paste directly from your resume. This will save you tons of time, and also provide the advangage of your reader seeing these compelling bullet points twice - once in the cover letter and again when they go through your resume. Repetition works. Repetition educates. Repetition sells. This method creates a matching game for the reader who might think back to your cover letter when they see this evidence on your resume. We want the screeners and decision makers to find reasons to select your submission and bring you in for an interview, and the more ways we can engage them in, the reasons you are a fit and the more likely that will happen.

4. Close it with a call to action like: “I will follow up with you in three days to schedule an interview.”

Keep in short, keep it simple and you will get results. Enjoy the process.

Next week we will go a little further into how to enhance your cover letter with creativity to grab the reader's attention and truly stand out from the crowd. For now, I ask, how about you? How many MORE cover letters can you see yourself sending out this week using this new approach.