This is the business English podcast episode 53 three secrets to a cover letter that wins you the job Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.
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Hello, Ed. Welcome to All Ears English. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
How are you? Good, Lindsay. How are you?
I'm very excited to be able to talk to your listeners about job search and cover letters because I really like helping people with that process.
Well, it's such an important thing, Ed, and we're glad you're here because what I see that is different about you compared with other English teachers is that you actually have worked in the business world and you're currently working in the business world.
It sounds like your specialization is marketing.
Is that right? Marketing and strategy? Yes, that's my functional specialty, which really relates to communication and selling.
Absolutely. And it sounds like you're probably able to apply those principles of selling into the interview and job search process.
Is that right? Yes. A lot of the very important principles about selling anything are especially critical in the job search process.
I love that. I think that's so important to know.
And I think a lot of people are just missing the boat on this.
Even, you know, people in the U.S., Americans and international professionals are really just missing the point when it comes to the whole job search process.
But today, let's hone in on the cover letter, Ed.
So what are people missing about the cover letter?
Like what are people not understanding and doing incorrectly?
The cover letter is really just a bridge to the resume, which gives more information.
Often people will put too much information in the cover letter so that it's very repetitive from the resume to the resume.
And then they're not getting the appeal to the audience.
The real important things with a cover letter, it's, you know, this is a bit of a specialized art, as you can expect.
Yeah. But it's written in a lot of ways in the way a newspaper article is.
It has a lead. It then goes into some more details.
And then it has a conclusion at the end.
Oh, so you have really a formula, a template for a cover letter.
Yes, I have a definite approach that I use that's been very successful for me, both in helping other students and in the times in my career when I've been out looking for a job and interviewing.
Oh, wow. I love that. I think that's really important.
I like the idea of a lead, right? You want to hook people in and get them to read the whole letter.
Yes. Yes. Let's talk about that a little more.
But first, one of the important other important things is that both the content and the visual look of the cover letter are important.
Because in the same way that any advertisement or communication is, because you want people's attention to go to the places you want it to go to.
Yes. And not be overwhelmed by just long paragraphs of copy.
Oh, my gosh. OK, so it's the content and the design, the overall visual aspect.
I mean, design is so important. I think we we don't understand sometimes how key design is to building your own kind of personal brand.
Yes, it's very true. It also communicates a good message about you.
In addition to getting them to read it, it shows that you're able to communicate, able to pick out important things, be strategic, be a good communicator, which are all things that people want in almost any job.
I love that. I love it. This is very powerful because I know that a lot of our listeners are going to be listening in today and they may be looking for a job.
They may be planning to take an exam and move abroad and then they'll be looking for that job, that dream job that they've been wanting.
And the fact is, if we know these key tips and skills and we have templates, we have a coach, someone to help us with this, that job is within our reach.
But if we don't, we're really just kind of fishing around in the dark.
Isn't that right, Ed? Yes, very much so.
Yeah. OK, then let's get more specific. Let's jump into it.
What are three very practical tips that you could offer our listeners about how to write kind of that winning cover letter to get into the interview or to get someone to read the resume?
The first one really builds on what I just said, and that's that you need to think of the letter as a tease to bridge them to your resume, and it needs a hook at the beginning.
Okay, it's a hook. Yeah, and the hook really needs to focus on the key benefit to them, likely your strongest selling point for this particular job.
Yes, exactly. So this this hook is going to change probably with every letter that you write.
It may not completely, but often will. The more you know about the company, the more you change it.
And you ought to know a lot about the company before you write the letter.
Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. And a big piece for our listeners here is not only figuring out what that hook is based on what the company needs, but it's also wording it in English.
Can you give an example of how a hook might sound in English, like how we would set that up in terms of a phrase or a sentence?
First of all, most of the hooks I see are really not hooks.
It'll start, I am writing to you to apply for the position of general sales manager for da-da-da.
I have 18 years experience doing da-da-da-da-da.
And it's very dull. Yeah, that's boring.
The sort of hook I've found that is helpful is to start out with a very short paragraph that might say something like this.
A sales manager who is recognized as the best in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
How valuable will that be to your company?
Ah, it is a hook. Okay. Because then they're wanting to know more about why did he get this award?
What is it that's really special about them, the person, he or she, that's writing the letter that might be valuable to our organization?
Okay. I like that. So the idea is to get the hook.
The purpose of the hook is to elicit questions on their end.
Yes, it's to tease them to read some more.
Cool. I love that. I love that. So the hook is the first tip and to word it correctly.
Make it a real hook. Don't make it a I mean, it's silly to open a cover letter by saying I am writing to apply for a job.
I mean, obviously you're writing to apply for a job, right?
Yes. Yeah. OK, so what would be your second tip?
And thank you for that first one. Do you have another practical tip that our listeners could kind of apply right away if they're applying for a job?
Yes. The other thing you'd like to do in the letter itself is to highlight a couple of the things out of your resume that you think are most valuable.
So you've hooked them here. You're now going to need to pay off that hook, which will probably be by talking about specific accomplishments that you've had.
The best message you can have is that you delivered results for somebody in a situation that they can understand.
Yes. Later in the process, these will each be little stories that really set up what the situation was, what you did, what results came out of it here.
But here you want to give them essentially what the results were in as concrete a way as you can.
Okay. Increase sales by 50% in your region.
It would be a perfect thing to say for a salesman, obviously, if you're able to say something like that.
So you hook them, you give them a few things that's supposed to lead them to the resume so that they then go and learn more because we're going to describe these things in more detail, not total detail because that's for the interview, but in more detail in the resume.
Okay. I love that. So again, just to remind our listeners what you said at the very beginning, the goal of the cover letter, again, is to get someone to read the resume, right, Ed?
Yes. Okay. We like that. We like that. Perfect.
Okay. So describing maybe a problem that a company had and your result, like how you were able to provide that solution, right?
Or just very specific, right? Numbers, percentages, differences.
What changed after you had worked at that company or consulted for that firm?
Yes, yes. And you want to do two, maybe, I like two better, maybe three of these.
And they're each just a sentence or two long.
Often I would format them as bullet points.
So I'd have my introductory hook paragraph.
I'd have a little bit of summary about really who I am and the things I do.
Underneath then that two of these accomplishments as bullet points.
And then we're going to wrap it up. Okay.
And so, okay, is that your third tip that we're going to lead right into now?
Well, there's actually a different third tip, but I can talk about the wrapping it up a little bit.
Sure. This is where you'd like to emphasize some point about their company that shows that you've looked into it and have done the research, really care about them.
You're not just going out and, you know, sending out generic cover letters, even though you're needing to apply to a lot of people and are putting together pieces that to make the cover letter work.
Yeah, that's huge. It's huge. I mean, as a business owner, I can say that when someone applies for a job and I see that they've been on our website, that they understand what we might need and that they let us know how they could help and how they could affect our results, our success, then I pay attention.
But you can really tell when you're reading cover letters when something is generic because it's all about them and it's nothing about the company.
And that just isn't effective. It just makes you roll your eyes.
That's exactly right. Even if they've read this far to notice that it's not there.
I mean, you need to do these other things to get them down.
You know, one of the facts about resumes that you'll often hear is the typical resume at first pass gets a six-second review.
That's all they spend to decide whether they want to go further.
That's similarly happening on the cover letter.
So you really need to grab them, give them some key points, get them to turn the page.
Yes, that's the key. I love it. I love it.
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Exclusions apply. See details online. Thank you for that, Ed.
So what would be the third tip that you could offer for our listeners?
The third tip is you need to reach the right person with your materials.
Now, ideally, they'd be in a sequence, a priority sequence like this.
Somebody you know in the company who either can directly hire you or who can pass on your materials directly. to the right person to hire you.
That's the best entree to something. Second would be someone that you can get referred to in an organization, maybe from somebody outside.
You know, I have a friend who is the national sales manager of company X, and I think they're looking for people like you.
And you ask them, will you give me a referral to them so that I can use your name?
Maybe ideally, will you call them and let them know that I'm going to be contacting them?
Yeah. So I like that better than the idea of kind of going in the front door, which is looking at the ad and then applying, you know, using the email address or the application procedure that's suggested for everyone.
Right. We want to try to go in the back door if we can and use our connections and our referrals.
Yes. Now, you may need to additionally go in the the door that they open, which is to fill out their application online.
Yeah. That doesn't mean that's the only thing you can do.
Exactly. I love it. I love it. The third priority would be the hiring manager who you can often identify from the job, you know, that it's going to be the regional manager for the Midwest region for this company.
That's really the person you're likely to work for.
They're the one making the decision. And if you get to them, you're not being filtered out someplace else in the process.
Yeah. Yeah. It's so important to know who the decision maker is.
Right. In any kind of situation like this.
Yeah, absolutely. So the fourth place to go, if you can't find the hiring manager, is a top departmental or even company executive.
OK. OK. You know, the likelihood that they're going to spend a lot of time on it may not be great, but often if you can hook them, they can then say, hey.
To one of their subordinates, you really ought to look at this woman.
I think that she'd really be great for the sort of things you need because they may be looking at that sort of thing.
Because the last place you really want to go is the HR department because a lot of their responsibility is to filter things out.
Some of that is the screening process, which if you don't really understand the job, you've got a job spec, most of which are not written very well.
And they say, oh, this person doesn't check off these boxes.
Well, you know, that's not really what you want to have happen to you.
So you're probably reaching them through the online application.
But let's reach the other people in a way that's more powerful.
Yeah. And I could see why our listeners would really want someone on their team who is actually a business professional.
For example, if our listeners are applying for a job in the U.S., someone who's an American business professional because they could maybe help them navigate and understand who to contact.
Right. I mean, it's very hard when we're adding the layer of culture and language to really know how who to approach and how to work our network.
I like that idea. Yes. Yes. That's very true.
Yeah. Oh, this is so cool, Ed. So thank you.
I'm just going to summarize what you've said.
So we want to start off with our cover letters with a hook, a good solid hook to get them to read the rest of the letter.
Okay. And then we want to try to understand, we want to try to show them what was the second tip actually.
Could you remind me one more time? The second point is that you want to highlight a couple of things about your background accomplishments that are then going to be explained more fully in the resume.
But you want them to see that you've delivered results in whatever field you're in.
Results, that's the key. And your third tip was to talk to the right person.
And we have a lot of options with that, but the one we want to avoid is the HR department, ironically.
As much as you can. Yeah. As much as you can.
That's just sort of the easy generic thing to do.
Sure. The way this also relates back to the cover letter is the cover letter ought to be addressed to a specific person.
OK. Dear Mr. McMahon. OK. Not dear sirs, because you can generally by doing the research, find the name of the person.
And you want to show again that you've looked into this, that you know who they are.
It's it's it's much less likely to be a totally generic letter if it's introduced to me rather than just dear sirs or dear H.R. department or something like that.
Oh, my gosh. These are huge tips. And honestly, a lot of people, even within the United States, they don't think about this.
So I could see how this would be very, very powerful.
So, guys, I want to invite you to go on over to italki and work with Ed because it really sounds like you have years of experience in the business world.
You understand sales and selling. And that, as you said, when we were chatting before we got on the phone today, Ed –
We're selling ourselves, right? Whether we like it or not, in the business world, we need to be able to sell ourselves, our resume, our job history to get this job.
Isn't that right? That's absolutely true.
Yeah, that's right. Okay, guys. So there's a two-step process if you want to work with Ed.
Step one, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash I-T-A-L-K-I.
Register on that page. And you want to register there first to get $10 off your second lesson with Ed.
Once you've registered there, you want to go to Ed's profile on italki.
Ed, what is your profile? It's at www.italki.com slash business.english.ed.
Okay. Okay. And your profile will pull right up there.
And what are some of the names of your classes that you offer?
So you offer help in cover letters, resumes.
What else? I also offer help in general business English.
Okay, good. That's probably the second biggest area.
And just how do you communicate every day?
A lot of that is vocabulary. Yes. Just phrasing.
A lot of it's sort of the same areas we've talked about.
Presentations. Yes. A lot of selling there as well.
And then I do informal tutoring when people have particular problems at work where they might need help with emails or other things.
Excellent. So guys, if you're listening today and you're looking at 2016 to really get that jump in your career, if that's what you're dreaming about, then Ed is someone who could help you get there.
Okay. So I want to encourage you to go on over to italki, register at allearsenglish.com forward slash italki first, I-T-A-L-K-I, and then go over to Ed's profile and sign up with Ed.
Ed, I want to say thank you for coming on today.
This has been really interesting. Good, Lindsay.
It was fun for me, and I'm glad to hear that you feel like it could be helpful to your listeners.
Absolutely. Have a great day, and thank you so much.
Thank you, Lindsay. Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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