Forget the Cover Letter: Write a Pain Letter# Piebridge - 鹊桥
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征婚广告跟求职找工作本质是一样的,列举“我有多少”,不如把重点放在“你有什么
痛苦需要解决“上。
学会换位思考,这话说说容易,做起来很难。
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Forget the Cover Letter: Write a Pain Letter, Instead
As much as we feel sorry for job-seekers (and I do, in spades) I feel sorry
for hiring managers and resume screeners, too. Can you imagine reading
letters all day that begin with “Dear Hiring Manager, I saw your job ad and
I was intrigued…?” We read about Motivated Self-Starters and Results-
Oriented Professionals and Leaders of Cross-Functional Teams until we want
to stick pins in our eyes. It’s atrocious. A stack of resumes attached to
cover letters a foot high might yield two micrograms of actual human spark,
if we’re lucky.
Let me be quick to acknowledge that it’s not a job-seeker’s fault the
stack of cover letters and resumes (See Resume, attached!) yields so little
life or individuality. Job seekers have been trained to write a cover letter
and a resume in Zombie Language, or what I call Boilerplate Corporatespeak.
It’s the language Darth Vader writes in, and every bureaucrat on the
planet. It’s the language job ads are written in, and the language policies
are written in (you know the ones: “Effective April 15th, it will no
longer be permissible to use the back entrance between the hours of eight
and six…”).
That’s a horrifying way to communicate, and as bad as it is to read that
stuff in corporate life (or to get a Zombie memo from your kid’s school) it
’s even worse to read about a person described that way. Zombie Language is
not the way to bring across a brilliant and vibrant job-seeker’s heft and
spark.
We don’t have to use that kind of language to describe ourselves. We can
put a human voice in our resumes, for one thing. And when it comes time to
write a cover letter, we can ditch the tired cover letter format and write a
Pain Letter, instead.
What’s a Pain Letter? It’s a letter that doesn’t go into the Black Hole
of Death, for one thing — it goes directly to your hiring manager. You’ll
find your hiring manager in two seconds on LinkedIn, by using the People
Search page to find the person at your target employer who’d most likely be
your boss in your new position.
Let’s say you’re a purchasing agent. In that case, your boss is likely to
be the Procurement Manager, Purchasing Manager or Materials Manager for the
company — or Director of one of those things. If it’s a small company,
your boss could be the Director or VP of Operations. You’re going to find
your prospective boss’s name without much trouble on LinkedIn. That’s
fantastic, because then you can write directly to that guy (or woman)
instead of pitching your resume into the abyss. You can get the company’s
street address from its website. A Pain Letter goes right through the mail (
yes! We still have mail delivery in the U.S.!) from you to your hiring
manager. How awesome is that?
In your Pain Letter, you’re going to congratulate your possible-new-manager
on something cool the organization is doing, and you’re going to mention
the business pain your hiring manager is likely to be up against. Then you’
re going to tie that business pain to your own background. No muss, no fuss,
no painful-to-read self-praise, and no Mad-Men-era cliches like “ability
to work well with all levels of staff.” A sample Pain Letter is below.
Note that the Pain Letter doesn’t mention the job ad (who cares? You’re
writing to talk about business pain, strictly. If you mention the job ad,
your letter & resume go straight into the Black Hole to die.) It doesn’t
say that you’re smart and savvy and had a 3.8 GPA in school. Who cares
about those things? You have a more important message to convey:
I’m out here, noticing what’s happening in the business ecosystem and who
’s doing what. My eyes are open. I’m a businessperson like you are, and I
notice that you guys are rockin’ it over there at your company. I know
something about the movie you’re living, because I lived that movie, too.
If the things I’m writing about are on your radar screen, maybe we should
talk.
It’s a new day. We can communicate like human beings (and with other human
beings, leaving the machines to communicate amongst themselves) in the human
workplace. We can write to our quite-possibly-new-bosses as though they
were people with real problems, ones that we just might be able to
understand. Some of them won’t like the fact that we colored outside the
lines in daring to reach out to them. That’s awesome, because you don’t
have time to waste (or mojo to squander) working for a person who’s
horrified by color-outside-the-lines types, anyway. The ones who get you
will call you or email you to continue the conversation. What kind of
conversation will it be? No telling, but it will be human, and that’s at
least half the battle.
SAMPLE PAIN LETTER
Declan McManus
Vice President, Marketing
Exclusive Chocolates, Inc.
4840 Whispering Pine Road
Boulder, Colorado
Dear Declan,
I was lucky enough to catch your speech at the Boulder Natural Foods Expo
last month, and delighted to learn about Exclusive’s plans for expansion
into dessert toppings. You’ve hit a chord with the chocolate-loving public,
and the Wolfgang Puck deal announced last week is a wonderful green light
from the market for Exclusive’s take on organic chocolates.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that those opportunities are taxing your
talented Marketing team as well.
When I led the new-products efforts for Angry Chocolate during its high-
growth phrase (just before the company’s acquisition by Nestle) we had at
least one major launch per month. Among other things, we were on the hook to
create a sugar-free version of Angry Choco-Mints in time for Chocoholic
Expo ’07 and serve our loyal domestic partners during two years of 25%
growth.
We prevailed – our Sugar-free Angries took Best New Product at the show –
and if Exclusive is in need of hands-on go-to-market, channel-marketing and
new-product-launch-related Marketing help, I’d love to look at ways to help
your team.
If you have time for a telephone call or email correspondence to see where
we might have an intersection of interests, I’d be delighted to learn more
and share a bit of my background with you.
Yours,
Mike Myers
痛苦需要解决“上。
学会换位思考,这话说说容易,做起来很难。
分享一篇文章
Forget the Cover Letter: Write a Pain Letter, Instead
As much as we feel sorry for job-seekers (and I do, in spades) I feel sorry
for hiring managers and resume screeners, too. Can you imagine reading
letters all day that begin with “Dear Hiring Manager, I saw your job ad and
I was intrigued…?” We read about Motivated Self-Starters and Results-
Oriented Professionals and Leaders of Cross-Functional Teams until we want
to stick pins in our eyes. It’s atrocious. A stack of resumes attached to
cover letters a foot high might yield two micrograms of actual human spark,
if we’re lucky.
Let me be quick to acknowledge that it’s not a job-seeker’s fault the
stack of cover letters and resumes (See Resume, attached!) yields so little
life or individuality. Job seekers have been trained to write a cover letter
and a resume in Zombie Language, or what I call Boilerplate Corporatespeak.
It’s the language Darth Vader writes in, and every bureaucrat on the
planet. It’s the language job ads are written in, and the language policies
are written in (you know the ones: “Effective April 15th, it will no
longer be permissible to use the back entrance between the hours of eight
and six…”).
That’s a horrifying way to communicate, and as bad as it is to read that
stuff in corporate life (or to get a Zombie memo from your kid’s school) it
’s even worse to read about a person described that way. Zombie Language is
not the way to bring across a brilliant and vibrant job-seeker’s heft and
spark.
We don’t have to use that kind of language to describe ourselves. We can
put a human voice in our resumes, for one thing. And when it comes time to
write a cover letter, we can ditch the tired cover letter format and write a
Pain Letter, instead.
What’s a Pain Letter? It’s a letter that doesn’t go into the Black Hole
of Death, for one thing — it goes directly to your hiring manager. You’ll
find your hiring manager in two seconds on LinkedIn, by using the People
Search page to find the person at your target employer who’d most likely be
your boss in your new position.
Let’s say you’re a purchasing agent. In that case, your boss is likely to
be the Procurement Manager, Purchasing Manager or Materials Manager for the
company — or Director of one of those things. If it’s a small company,
your boss could be the Director or VP of Operations. You’re going to find
your prospective boss’s name without much trouble on LinkedIn. That’s
fantastic, because then you can write directly to that guy (or woman)
instead of pitching your resume into the abyss. You can get the company’s
street address from its website. A Pain Letter goes right through the mail (
yes! We still have mail delivery in the U.S.!) from you to your hiring
manager. How awesome is that?
In your Pain Letter, you’re going to congratulate your possible-new-manager
on something cool the organization is doing, and you’re going to mention
the business pain your hiring manager is likely to be up against. Then you’
re going to tie that business pain to your own background. No muss, no fuss,
no painful-to-read self-praise, and no Mad-Men-era cliches like “ability
to work well with all levels of staff.” A sample Pain Letter is below.
Note that the Pain Letter doesn’t mention the job ad (who cares? You’re
writing to talk about business pain, strictly. If you mention the job ad,
your letter & resume go straight into the Black Hole to die.) It doesn’t
say that you’re smart and savvy and had a 3.8 GPA in school. Who cares
about those things? You have a more important message to convey:
I’m out here, noticing what’s happening in the business ecosystem and who
’s doing what. My eyes are open. I’m a businessperson like you are, and I
notice that you guys are rockin’ it over there at your company. I know
something about the movie you’re living, because I lived that movie, too.
If the things I’m writing about are on your radar screen, maybe we should
talk.
It’s a new day. We can communicate like human beings (and with other human
beings, leaving the machines to communicate amongst themselves) in the human
workplace. We can write to our quite-possibly-new-bosses as though they
were people with real problems, ones that we just might be able to
understand. Some of them won’t like the fact that we colored outside the
lines in daring to reach out to them. That’s awesome, because you don’t
have time to waste (or mojo to squander) working for a person who’s
horrified by color-outside-the-lines types, anyway. The ones who get you
will call you or email you to continue the conversation. What kind of
conversation will it be? No telling, but it will be human, and that’s at
least half the battle.
SAMPLE PAIN LETTER
Declan McManus
Vice President, Marketing
Exclusive Chocolates, Inc.
4840 Whispering Pine Road
Boulder, Colorado
Dear Declan,
I was lucky enough to catch your speech at the Boulder Natural Foods Expo
last month, and delighted to learn about Exclusive’s plans for expansion
into dessert toppings. You’ve hit a chord with the chocolate-loving public,
and the Wolfgang Puck deal announced last week is a wonderful green light
from the market for Exclusive’s take on organic chocolates.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that those opportunities are taxing your
talented Marketing team as well.
When I led the new-products efforts for Angry Chocolate during its high-
growth phrase (just before the company’s acquisition by Nestle) we had at
least one major launch per month. Among other things, we were on the hook to
create a sugar-free version of Angry Choco-Mints in time for Chocoholic
Expo ’07 and serve our loyal domestic partners during two years of 25%
growth.
We prevailed – our Sugar-free Angries took Best New Product at the show –
and if Exclusive is in need of hands-on go-to-market, channel-marketing and
new-product-launch-related Marketing help, I’d love to look at ways to help
your team.
If you have time for a telephone call or email correspondence to see where
we might have an intersection of interests, I’d be delighted to learn more
and share a bit of my background with you.
Yours,
Mike Myers