Donna
Siegel

Make Your Resume Cover Letters Work For You

Many people who are very successful when selling for their employers are less skilled when it comes to selling themselves -- particularly in the area of written tools such as their resumes and resume cover letters. Here is how to Make Your Resume Cover Letters Work For You.

The Process Of Hiring

Before we can talk about the characteristics of an effective resume cover letter, we need to spend a few minutes understanding the hiring process most companies use and where the cover letter fits in.

The hiring manager, in this case a sales manager, determines another sales person is needed to adequately sell all of the prospects for the company’s product or service. The human resources department is called in to create an ad and monitor the hiring process. The goals of the human resource department are to find the best candidate for the job and to minimize the amount of time required by the sales manager. Human resources will make the decisions at the early stages of the hiring process.

An ad is run in the local Sunday paper where it is most likely to be seen by potential candidates; and the company waits for responses. You see the ad and send in your cover letter and resume; but so do other people, many with good qualifications for the same position. On average, a company will receive between 40 and 100 resumes for a single position.

The task at this stage is to sort through the stack of resumes and cover letters to find the most suitable candidates who will be contacted. It’s likely if a company wants to find a single sales person, human resources might select a dozen resumes for further contact. Of that dozen, 3 to 5 candidates will likely be asked to come in for an interview. No more than 3 candidates are likely to be presented to the sales manager who will select one of these people for the position.

How Cover Letters Are Actually Used By Recruiters

Human resource departments hire people for all jobs in a company including those in sales. While many of the recruiters know something about the jobs they are seeking to fill, most of them don’t know many of the subtle differences that make one candidate a better fit than another. They have to depend on patterns of characteristics of good hires, regardless of the nature of the position.

After the HR department runs the ad, they find themselves facing a pile of responses. Somehow they have to weed through the pile and find the best candidates. How do they approach it? They start with the first cover letter and look for a reason to exclude this candidate from consideration. Then they go on to the next one, looking for the same thing. With luck, a first or second pass through the stack of cover letters and resumes will reduce the total number of candidates to less than 20, at which point they can go on to the next step of contacting people. If not, they start through the remaining pile and repeat the process, looking for more and more reasons to separate out those candidates who appear to be the least fit to their "profile of the perfect candidate for the job." Eventually they find enough reasons to exclude candidates so that the recruiters end up with just the right number of candidates.

While recruiters glance at the resumes, most of these early decisions are made by reviewing the cover letters. That means if you really want the job, you have to make your cover letter sell for you.

Designing An Effective Cover Letter For Your Resume

So how do you keep your resume in the group labeled "need to contact?" Or how do you get yours to the top? By following these 5 principles in your cover letter:

1. Demonstrate relevant background
The first fact a recruiter will look at is the relevancy of your background. If you have sold before, you are most likely to be successful in selling for this company and therefore you are more likely to be considered. After separating the resumes into two categories, sold before and not sold before, the recruiter then tries to find candidates who are the best fit. Have you sold in this industry? Have you sold this type of product or service before? Have you sold to these prospects before, even if it was a different product or service?

2. Demonstrate enthusiasm
The recruiter wants to know that this job is important to you and that you are enthusiastic about the opportunity it will give you to do what you always wanted to do. Recruiters want to know that you are serious about this job; it’s just not a temporary assignment on the way to another position you would prefer. There are many elements you can state your enthusiasm about:

• Selling
• The industry
• The type of product or service
• The types of prospects
• The method of selling

For example, you could include a statement such as "I’ve been successful in several fields, but if I look at the one that gave me the greatest satisfaction it would be sales" or "I enjoy selling to hospitals and feel that is an industry where I can make the greatest contribution."

3. Produce an error free letter
The first and second criteria give the recruiters a quick way to go through the pile of resumes and exclude the ones from candidates who will not be considered at all. Now they get down to work and look at the details of the cover letter. The next factor that is likely to be considered is the language of the letter itself. Can the candidate produce a letter that has no punctuation, spelling or grammar errors? Does the letter make sense? Since one of the major skills of selling is writing letters, this is a demonstration of that capability. Think of all the care you take in putting together a letter to a prospect and apply those same techniques here.

4. Describe one clever idea
Now comes the opportunity to stand out from the rest of the people being considered for the job. In your cover letter, give the recruiter one clever idea of how you go about increasing your success in selling and the results it has brought you in your previous jobs. This is your way of telling the recruiter that you understand what it takes to sell successfully and that you are a self-starter who can do the job creatively. For example,

"I’ve been able to increase my success in cold calling by finding out something about my prospects and their businesses before I make the call. In my opening comments, I say something that is relevant to them. That way they are more inclined to want to talk with me. It is the research that helped me win the Top Salesperson of the Year award."

"I’ve found tradeshows a great tool for identifying qualified prospects. I make sure I get all the essential information before I hand out one of our brochures and that I have permission to follow up with a phone call after the show. That way, I’ve been able to stay at 120% of my quota for the last 18 months."

5. Offer an invitation to more
Your clever idea gets the recruiter’s attention. And you probably have more than one great idea to share. So the final factor you want to add to your effective resume cover letter is a suggestion that you can share more ideas, if only they would contact you.

Are they likely to want to talk with you if you follow these five principles? You betcha! 

SeaBird Associates Inc
3011 NE 7th Drive
Boca Raton, FL 33431
Phone: 561-750-9233
E-mail: Donna Siegel

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