You: The Brand | Part Five - Cover Letters

Gentle readers, no one likes to write a cover letter. No one.

And here's why: It's hard. It's hard to get all that awesome about you squished into a couple of short paragraphs, all the while also saying how amazing the company you're reaching out to is.

As part of this series on branding yourself (you can read the first post here), your MatchGirl wants to take you back to basics. Sure it's great to have yourself up-to-date on every social network and it's amazing if you work in a creative industry and can make a website or resume that gets you some press or attention. But all that means little if you can't do the work and if you don't cover the basics.

Just like when you are re-building your resume (though, really, you should have done that by now), you need to be very specific in your cover letter. A one size fits all approach does not work here.

Some tips to get you going:

1. Pull the key words out of the job description. These key words will become the basis for your letter.
2. What are the main areas of expertise the job posting lists? How do these fit with what you've accomplished. Use the top ones to form the meat of your letter.
3. What is the company up to? If the company name is on the posting, do a little legwork and find out what's great about the company - what you are interested in and think about how that applies to the job for which you're applying. 
4. Keep it short. You're not writing a novel , or even an essay, here. Three or four short paragraphs will do it. You need to whet their appetite for finding out more about you.

Writing a killer cover takes time. And the time is worth it. The more you write, the more you tweak them to fit each different application, the easier they will come. And, as always, like anything in your job hunt, there is no shame in asking a pal in the industry to take a look at it for you. That's what friends are for!

What are some of your best cover letter tips?

Cover Letters: A Checklist

Your MatchGirl, gentle readers, finds herself, as she's written here before, from time to time in the postion to review cover letters and resumes. And while she knows how stressful job hunting is, and while she knows how tedious it is to write specific cover letter after specific cover letter...  it needs to be done.

Gentle readers, the cover letter is the first thing a hiring manager (or the person vetting the resumes) sees.

Here's a checklist to help you avoid some common mistakes:

• Did you address the letter to the right person?
• Did you spell their name right?

• Did you make sure to mention the right company?

• Did you specify the job title/posting your going for?

• Did you reference passions, skills and career goals pertinent to the job at hand?

Sure, these seem pretty simple, but you'd be amazed at how many people don't take a moment to pat attention to the detail that their cover letter really needs.

Cover letter posts are always good here at Unemployed Brooklyn. What are some tips you'd like to share? Feel free to leave them in the comments. 

Storytelling

Gentle readers, when your MatchGirl was unemployed and looking for a new job. Looking to turn her life into a new direction, she had to learn to tell her own story.

And when you are building your personal brand, you need to figure out the best way to tell you story.

Your MatchGirl lectures you here all the time about the best way for you to tell your story. She talks about the two-minute job interview. She talks about how you can sell yourself with a soundbite. And she shares the stories that others are telling - to inspire you to action.

If you're looking for a new job, if you're a freelancer - you need to be able to tell your story and tell it well. You need to practice sharing it. You need to be able to let others know the key points about you.

People are short on time. They are short on attention. So you need to hold on to it.

And, hey ... everyone likes a good story.

Pitch Yourself With a Soundbite

It's all about the headline, isn't it, gentle readers? As our connected society spends more and more time online, it's all about conveying your message, complicated as it may be, in the least amount of characters.

If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense.
And, no, your MatchGirl's not just talking about Twitter.

Think about newspapers, tabloids and those trashy magazines you just can't help but pick up when you're waiting in the checkout line. Why do you pick those up? Why are you drawn to flip through them. It's the headline, of course.

The same goes for our digital world. The Tweets that are most clicked on draw the reader in - they make them want to click the link. Your MatchGirl experiments with this all the time. She will send out the same link several times a day, with a different "teaser" or headline to draw you in. And while I'm still figuring out that formula, it's a great experiment to see what tweets are opened versus how much time is spent on those posts. (If I find a perfect formula, I'll be sure to let you know.)

Now, let's get to the soundbite.
Think about what you know about the Republican presidential candidates.
Think about what you know about the demands of Occupy Wall Street or even the Tea Party Movement.
Or, to be frank, anything that's happening in the news right now.
For the most part, unless you've done some research and due diligence, what you know about this stuff has come to you in soundbites - quick and pithy, 30 seconds or less.

People are the same way.
What you know now about your friends, it's all on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn. It's the soundbites they are choosing for themselves - it's the face they put out to the world. It's the few moments of the best of them that makes you want to read further into their lives.

And the same is true in your job search. We've talked here about the 2-minute interview and we'll keep talking about it. Practicing your pitch - whether your trying to sell yourself or your product - is the best way to get your story out there. People's attention spans are short, and no it's not due to social networks or Mtv, it's because people are, most of the time, really busy trying to figure out what will be best for them. Not you. It's because they have their own agenda. It's because while they're talking to you, in the back of their minds, they are making a grocery list, or going through their agenda for the next day... even if they are paying attention (OK. Not always, but a lot of the time).

So, practice your soundbite. Think about the 30 seconds of your elevator pitch that you want people to remember most. This is your moment to shine. And most of the time, you don't get much more than that. Just a moment.

Use Social Media To Your Job Search Advantage

Gentle readers, if your MatchGirl knew half of what she knows now when she was unemployed ... or ... if she was unemployed just a teensy bit later (seriously, so many Hire Me Martha copycats out there right now!), she might not have been unemployed for so very long.

Of course, without spending time amongst the long term unemployed, your MatchGirl might not have become so committed to this little tome.

Putting yourself out there on social networks is all the rage these days (goodness knows your MatchGirl practically lives on them!), so why not make it work for you?

Be an expert. You can do it. You're focused. You know a lot about your chosen field. So prove it. Get yourself on Quora, search LinkedIn discussion groups and answer the questions. On Twitter, search for key words in your area of expertise and start replying to people asking questions about them.

Be a star. Get yourself a Tumblr, a Wordpress site, a Blogger account, a YouTube channel - and start talking. Make video blogs offering advice or how-tos within your field. Your MatchGirl doesn't care if your a pet groomer, a barista or a lawyer. Turn on that webcam ans start talking. Wrangle your roommate into taking video with your digital camera. It doesn't need to be perfectly shot. You just need to say the right stuff.

Don't let others tell you you're crazy. It's a tough world out there. Competition is huge for any job you apply for. Just getting your resume and cover letter seen is like climbing Everest. Why not take advantage of all you've learned farting around social networks and websites and make them work for you?

Good luck, dear readers. Your MacthGirl knows you can do it!

Turn Turn Turn: The Cycle of Long Term Unemployment

In a recent item on The Huffington Post, Alan Krueger's study results announced that the long term unemployed looked for jobs less and slept more.

Gentle readers. Your MatchGirl is no scientist. But she was among the long-term unemployed.

Krueger and Mueller offered three likely explanations for the decline in job-search durations. First, workers could have run through most of the decent jobs to apply for. Second, they could have gotten better at searching and needed less time to scan and respond to ads. And third, they could have gotten discouraged and quit looking.

And as someone who was unemployed for 18 months, your MatchGirl knows a thing about the cycle of unemployment. Someone who is among the "long term unemployed" is someone who has been without a job for six months or more. And, as many of you know, gentle readers, from your own unemployment (as that's how so many of you came across this little blog), in this economy that time is often longer.

I remember the days of unemployment existing in cycles. Some weeks would be all about the hustle, writing emails, sending resumes, working on cover letters and scouring the job boards. But other weeks would be slow and depressing. Because there would be no worthwhile, or, you know, paying, jobs to apply for and there would no one to send anything to. In those times, your MatchGirl worked on her own creative projects and her own blogs and took classes, but not everyone does that. Not everyone wants to. Not everyone can.

Job searching is a job in itself. And rarely a rewarding one. Some mornings there are loads of jobs to apply to and a ton of business cards in your pocket to reach out to. Other mornings... not so much - just the same six jobs that had been taunting you for the past three days. What are you supposed to do? Then you take a day or two (or more) off from truly looking because, though you've followed up with everyone you can, you can't even get a response to an email, let alone an offer of an interview. And who wants to be so bummed out? So you surf the web and play Words With Friends and you watch some daytime television and fall asleep early. Then you wake up one morning excited to look again and you send out some emails and ... And so the cycle goes.

Someone who has never been one of the club cannot truly and fully appreciate the nuances and difficulties of this cycle. But we can, gentle ones. We've been there. We know how the story ends.

So, forget this study. Sleep if you're tired (though not if you're depressed, that's just no good). Look for jobs. Apply for things that are worth your while. And make your own magic happen.

Good luck, dear readers. I believe in you!

Turning Tides: Resume Reading

Gentle readers, your MatchGirl found herself, last week in an odd position. She found herself being the person on the resume receiving and reading side of things. As you well know, your MatchGirl was unemployed for a year and a half, during the height of the recession, and sent out hundreds and thousands of resumes herself.

So. after having posted the position, only to one place, I sat back and waited for the resumes to roll in. And roll in they did. Hundreds. Seriously. Hundreds.

Now, you might think that if you received hundreds of resumes that you would not take the time to read them all - to look through all those cover letters and open all those MS Word attachments. But I did. I did because it's the right thing to do. I did because you never know who you will fin in the 60th or in the 150th resume. Just because someone is fast on the submit button doesn't mean they're the right fit for the job, after all.

Here are some tips, though, dear ones, for those of you still unemployed. For there were some major fails in the piles and piles of resumes and cover letters that I received.

°Formatting still matters. I don't care what the other websites say. You never know who will be reading your resume and you need to lay it out nicely, and to have the information be relevant. I promise. It's important.

°If there is a salary advertised in the post, don't send a cover letter with a salary requirement that's higher than the cap. Seriously. I cannot tell you how many cover letters I read through with salary requirements not only a bit about the advertised high end, but $10 to $15K higher. Gentle readers, you are all a lot smarter than the average bear, so this is probably a "duh" to you, but in this day and age, with the economy as it is, there is no way that you can do this. I promise there is someone who will require a salary within the advertised amount who can do the job just as well, if not better. Also, since they are less conceited, they'll probably be a lot more fun to work with.

°Use proper grammar and salutations in your cover letter, and when the person's name is listed in the job posting, address it to them! One second of research will get you so much further than copying and pasting your rote cover letter - dress it up, even just a little bit, if you want to get your foot in the door!

°Include an email address. Maybe another "duh", but we received several resumes with no email addresses included. If you want to work with/for me, why are you making my life harder?

I think that I read these cover letters and resumes with a softer eye than my colleague may have. Because unemployment, though over a year ago, was really just a minute ago in the grand scheme of my life. And I know how very frustrating it is to apply for job after job after job. And how demoralizing it is not not hear back. So I wanted to take my time and judge these cover letters and resumes with the eye of hiring the right person and reading between the lines to find them.

We start interviews this week and I'm excited and nervous to see how they go. At the end, there is only one position and we can only hire one person for it. And then I'll be the one to give the good news ... and the bad.