2016 Cover Letter Trends

Microsoft published an interesting study in May documenting research on how our attention spans have changed over the past several years. In 2000 we had a 12-second attention span—which dropped to a mere eight-second attention span by 2013. We now have a one-second-shorter attention span than that of a goldfish. Let that sink in for a minute…What influence does our ever-shrinking attention span ultimately have on our job searches—and our cover letters? What are the repercussions? It means the cover letter as we know it traditionally is dead.

The Old Cover Letter:

• Makes up an entire page in length, is too long to fit on a mobile device screen without having to scroll, uses multiple paragraphs, and is text-dense.
• Has a lengthy introduction with 3-5 sentences on how they found out about the position, what they do, and their interest in the opportunity.
• It has a 2-3 paragraph body that elaborates on experience in the industry or position; may list a few experiences or accomplishments and the connection to why they want the opportunity or feel they’re a great fit.
• Closes with reiterating why they’re a good fit, restates interest, may share contact information or offer to follow up.

The New Cover Letter – Also Referred To As An E-Note, Power Note, Or Value Proposition Letter:

2016 Cover Letter Trend #1: The Shrinking Attention Span

Not only have our shrinking attention spans changed the way we consume information, but our brains are changing—and it’s affecting more than just how we use our mobile devices or consume content online. It’s changing the landscape of how we job search and demanding we communicate only the most vital information in the most concise way possible.

It’s creating a real dilemma for those who don’t consider themselves to be professional writers, or who have a hard time writing about themselves, or who find it hard to spare everything but the details. So what’s a job seeker to do? First and foremost…forget the traditional cover letter as you know it. Consider it a part of the past, and let’s move on to better strategies for job searching.

2016 Cover Letter Trend #2: Easily Readable On Mobile Devices

Cover letters—which I’ll now refer to as e-notes, power notes, or value proposition letters—must meet the demand of an increasingly mobile device-dependent audience. Your e-note, which is essentially the e-mail that your resume is attached to, should be short and fit on a single screen. Don’t expect to be able to write an incredibly concise e-note with your first draft.Go through and write your first version, and then go back and edit. Aim to use fewer than 150 words so that the entire text will be optimized to fit on a mobile screen without any scrolling.

2016 Cover Letter Trend #3: Give Them Space

When you’re writing your e-note be sure to incorporate plenty of white space. Using white space in your e-note will make the content more easily digestible by the reader. Consider the impact Twitter has had on our entire generation! We’re forced to say what we want to say in 140 characters or less—but the brilliance behind it is that Twitter had the foresight to know that their audience’s attention span was short, and they wanted to accommodate it. Whether your audience’s attention span is short, or they’re just pressed for time, use Twitter’s 140-character limit as your guide and create shorter sentences.

2016 Cover Letter Trend #4: Engage Or Fascinate Your Reader

When we teach job seekers how to write a Value Proposition Letter we advise them to always start with an interesting question or fascinating fact. For instance, my value proposition letter might start out by saying:

Are you a busy CEO with no time to write your resume?

Or it might say:

Are you a time-pressed executive being vetted for an opportunity that requires a resume yesterday?

Notice how I’m targeting my audience? Busy CEOs and time-pressed executives—while I’m also addressing their problem; they need a resume NOW—and they don’t have the time to do it themselves.

Start your e-note, power note, or value proposition letter the same way. Speak to your audience, ask a question or state an engaging fact that relates to them and their most pressing need. You always want to speak to the need.

2016 Cover Letter Trend #5: You’re The Answer

Once you’ve touched on the need or the problem they have, show them how you’re the answer! How are you the solution to your problem?

For example you could use three short bullets with provable results:

My clients enjoy results like these:

• In two weeks or less my clients are interviewing.
• Their resume response rate increases by 75%.
• 85% are employed in three months or less, obliterating the average job seeker’s search time by more than 50%.

Then you could tie the problem and how you’re the solution into your brand and what you do:

I work with busy top-level executives on tight deadlines to create interview-winning resumes within 3-5 business days.

I could change the wording to accommodate my audience, the result I want to share, the problem I need to address, the space I have, or any number of other variables. The beauty is that it’s completely customizable.

2016 Cover Letter Trend #6: Follow A Formula

Keep your e-note creation easy by following a formula. You won’t feel like you’re starting from scratch every time you write a new e-note, and before long you’ll know the formula so well that writing by it will be easier and faster.

Remember to keep each point short!

1. Start with a question or engaging statement.
2. Target the biggest need they have.
3. State how you’re the solution.
4. Prove it! Give them three bullets that prove you’re the solution.
5. Don’t forget the money. Employers want to know how you made it, saved it, or contributed to it.
6. How does this fit into your brand?
7. Call to action close.
8. Edit – Remember…150 words or fewer.

2016 Cover Letter Trend #7: Close With A Call To Action

When we write value proposition letters for our clients we always end with a great call to action. Mine might say:

Ready for results like these? Let’s chat!

Yours could say:

Ready to learn more?

Or:

Interested? Let’s talk! Call me at 1.800.991.5187.

You can customize your call to action. However, remember that the idea is: you want them to take action—whether that action is to call you, e-mail, check out your LinkedIn profile, or visit your web resume. You don’t want it to stop with your e-note; you want them to be so compelled by what you’ve said that they have to take a next step.

Keep these points in mind as you sit down to write your next cover letter, and you’ll be ten steps ahead of your competition.

Having a hard time writing your own cover letter? Let’s chat! Visit my website, call my office at 1.800.991.5187, or connect with me on LinkedIn to discuss how I help busy job seekers create interview-winning cover letters, resumes, and LinkedIn profiles that cut their job search time by 50% or more and secure interviews in two weeks or less.

3 Powerful Ways To Unlock The Hidden Job Market

The hidden job market is a rich source of job openings—statistics usually say that anywhere from 70%-80% of all jobs are never listed. Unlocking this source of jobs is a must for anyone who wants to find a job quickly without spending months in the hunt.

Here is the basic fact you must know about unlocking the hidden job market: you’re not looking for the job. You’re looking for the person with the power to give you the job. This is a big difference that most job seekerUse all three of these options. Each one gives you a much better chance of getting an interview than applying for jobs online.s miss, but it is crucial to your success.

Here are 3 ways to unlock the hidden job market:

1. Tap Your Network

Who would you rather go on a date with? Someone you ‘met’ online, or someone your friend introduced you to? Of course, you’d feel more comfortable with the friend of a friend.

Hiring is a lot like dating in that way. Hiring managers would rather speak with someone a friend knows and recommends over someone who showed up via a Monster ad. This is why networking is so important for your job search.

If you’ve built and maintained a good network, now is when it will really pay off. Let everyone know that you’re looking for a job—not only your business contacts, but your social ones, too. I know someone who got a job through a conversation with his barista, because she had another customer who told her he was looking for someone. She passed along this guy’s information, and he got the job. So when I say everyone, I mean everyone—because you never know.

2. Tap Your Online Contacts

Social media is a must for finding hidden jobs. Let all of your Facebook friends know you’re looking for a new job, and Tweet about it, too. Especially use LinkedIn. Participate in groups, make new contacts, and leverage the power of your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level connections. This gives you much more reach than your direct network, no matter how extensive it may be.

3. Contact Hiring Managers

Networking is good, but even that is not enough. If 70%-80% of all job openings are hidden, there’s no way you can find them all without one more step—contacting hiring managers.

The hiring manager at a company is the person who would be your boss, or your boss’s boss. This person is the first one who knows they’re going to be hiring someone, and if you catch them before they post it online, you immediately knock out a lot of competition for the job.

7 Questions To Ask At Your Next Job Interview

Finding the right graduate internship is important for both you and your employer. The way we match business with graduates so well at Inspiring interns is by asking both parties many questions, so we understand exactly what each needs and wants. It’s essential you ask questions too when you are being interviewed for a role. Asking your potential employer the right questions is better than any research you can do online, plus it shows your thinking style and values, which is impressive.

These are the 7 best questions to ask in a job interview to get the job:

What is the most important goal that needs to be accomplished in the first 60 days in this role?

Asking this question shows that you focus on the most essential tasks when working, and care about meeting targets – it also tells you what to focus your efforts on if you get the job.

What are some of the challenges that will face the person filling this position?

This shows that you face challenges head on, you don’t avoid them. It also tells you what challenges you will face if you get the role, which will help you perform well and achieve KPIs.

What are your company’s values?

Their answer will tell you whether this is a company that matches your values, and therefore whether you would enjoy working there or not. It may also give you an idea of whether the company just talks about their values, or actually lives by them. And of course asking this shows that you care about company values.

How would you describe your management style and company culture?

If your interviewer will become your boss, knowing his/her management style is very helpful; it tells you how to communicate and work under them. The culture the company has will affect your enjoyment of the role as much as the role itself, so it’s important to get a feel for it in the interview. Good company culture makes work life engaging, with possibilities for collaboration and growth. But working in a disempowering environment will make you want to leave the job.

Can you tell me what the team I’d be working with is like?

Sometimes a company’s culture can be less than perfect, but your team’s culture could still rock. Asking about the culture of your team tells you more specifically what kind of work environment you would be in.

Do you have any feedback for me, or hesitations to hiring me that I can address at this stage?

This question is brilliant because it’s gutsy. It shows you’re confident enough in your skills and abilities to discuss your vulnerabilities openly. It also show that you like to be coached, which is a very attractive trait to employers.

How To Make A 30-60-90-Day Plan That Gets You The Job Offer

Even if you know just how amazing a 30-60-90-Day Plan can be for your job interview, you may not know how to find the information you need to include in your plan.

A 30-60-90-Day Plan is an outline for what you will do in the first three months of your new job. The more you can tailor it to the job, the more impressive it will be to the hiring manager in the interview. A well-done plan highlights your knowledge as well as your initiative and critical thinking skills.

Your first step will probably always be the company’s corporate website. This is where you can find out about the company’s size, locations, mission, values, products and services, and more.

Next, you should try a Google search. This can help you find the latest company press releases, as well as news-worthy events.

Then, you should turn to social media.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a fantastic source for company information. First of all, the company may very well have their own LinkedIn page with different information that you’ll see on its formal corporate website—but don’t stop there.

LinkedIn is a great place to search for the people who work (or have worked) at that company. You can check out their backgrounds or status updates and get a lot of information. You may even find that you can contact some of these people to get the answers you need.

Group discussions can be another rich source of information. What are people in the industry saying about this company?Who are their competitors and what are they doing? Maybe you can start your own discussion to find out information. To access group discussions, you must be a member of the group.

Twitter

If you know the names of people who work for the company you’re interviewing with, you can follow them on Twitter for a few more clues. What are they saying about the company’s current activities or future plans? You may be able to ask questions here, too.

Facebook

Facebook is similar to LinkedIn in that you may be able to find a company Facebook page or group discussions about the company. But because Facebook itself is focused primarily on social contacts (not business ones), the information you can find here may be different and helpful.

5 Tips For Hiring (And Keeping!) Top Talent

Recruiting top talent shouldn’t be that hard, right? Not so fast there, partner. Although there are plenty of people out there looking for work, finding the RIGHT people for your company isn’t as easy as some may think. And, if you happen to find great candidates for your company, keeping them can be just as challenging.

Thankfully, new technology and recruiting techniques can help your company both hire AND retain top talent. Here are five things you should consider next time you find yourself desperately reaching for great candidates:

1. Use HR optimization software to keep organized.

Talent management can be overwhelming. Thankfully, today’s HR technology can make it easier for companies to stay organized. Human resources management software (HRMS) was developed to solve common problems an HR manager has to cope with everyday.

“Reaching optimum efficiency in HR management sometimes becomes a real challenge for a company,” said Kayne Kreitzer, Director of Sales and Operations at Lanteria, a leading developer of HR, talent, performance, and learning management software. “Whether it has 5000 employees or 50, handling all of the people-related activities involves a significant amount of work.”

According to Kreitzer, companies can easily automate up to 99% of their talent-related processes with all-in-one HR software. This not only saves time, but it also allows companies to manage talent more effectively.

2. Understand why your employees love working there.

In order to market your company effectively to top talent, you need to know what you’re selling to them! What is it about your company that employees adore? Poll your current employees and ask them what they love most about your company. You might be pleasantly surprised by their answers.

Taking time to talk with your employees can give you valuable insight about your company culture. Plus, it can give you a genuine look at your company.

3. Share these company qualities with your target candidates.

After you understand why your current employees love your company, tell the world! Once you’ve got the content, get it out into the universe. Blog about it. Share it with your followers. Encourage your employees to share it with their networks.

According to a 2014 survey, almost 30% of respondents said they’d prefer applying to a company that was honest or transparent about its culture and values. That’s why sharing honest stories about your company’s culture and values is a great opportunity to engage the talent your organization needs.

4. Make it easy for candidates to reach out to you.

If you want to streamline your recruiting process, you need to make it easy for the candidate to get in touch with you. Don’t make them dig! Showcase your contact information in everything – your LinkedIn profile, your recruiter profile, your website, and, of course, your job postings.

5. Hire the right people.

According to a new study, 95% of companies admit to recruiting the wrong people each year. In addition, the Harvard Business Review pointed out that 80% of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions.

The truth is, hiring the wrong people can severely throw off your company culture, causing a ripple effect throughout the organization. The wrong ripple can cause disastrous effects on your company. That means drama. Lots of drama. And money. Lots of that, too.

So, don’t hire just anybody. Make sure you hire people who are not only qualified for the role, but also fit in with your company culture. Otherwise, you risk setting your company up for a lot of headaches.

Supercharge Your Job Interview With A 30-60-90-Day Plan

In the past, 30-60-90-Day Plans were used only for sales job interviews, but now, job seekers in all white-collar jobs (including the medical/healthcare arena, insurance and financial fields, accounting, law, administrative assisting, sales, project management and more) are using 30-60-90-day plans in the interview to get job offers. Many report that they are getting offers within minutes of interviewing, and sometimes they are getting job offers for higher-level positions (at higher salaries) than what they actually interviewed for.

Why do 30-60-90-Day Plans make such a positive impact in your interview?

In the interview, the hiring manager is looking for you to prove four things:

1. You understand the job.
2. You can do the job.
3. You will do the job.
4. You pose no risk to his or her own continued employment with that company. (They are judged, among other things, by the quality of their hires.)

This is why interviews can feel so much like interrogations with you in the hot seat. The interviewer is trying to get to know you better, but is also looking for your fatal flaw so he or she can avoid making the mistake of hiring you. His or her job performance depends on your job performance, so making a good choice here is incredibly important.

Your 30-60-90-day plan will:

• Elevate your conversation far beyond what others (your competition) are talking about in their interviews, and alleviate the fears they naturally have about you
• Make you stand out far above others who are interviewing for the job
• Prove that you can do the job, by showing the goals you set and exactly how you will hit them
• Show how hiring you will ultimately benefit him or her, as your boss
• Help him or her ‘see’ you in the role, which puts them half way to making you the offer
• Create a discussion of your ideas to solve his or her problems, which psychologically moves them to see you as a partner, not an opponent (someone who could hurt his or her job performance)

This is why you need to bring a 30-60-90-Day Plan to your next interview.

Prepare For Bad Interview Questions

One of the guarantees I’d be willing to make with any job seeker is that you’ll be asked unusual, strange, weird, and possibly illegal questions during an interview. I’ve surveyed several audiences of job seekers over the years and, in the majority of cases, more than half the audience was asked what appeared to be an illegal, personal question. However, equally concerning – and unfair to job seekers – are the strange questions that are asked. The reasons for this appear to be several:

• Many interviewers base their questions of some “favorite question” they think makes it certain they’ll make a good hiring decision.
• Some interviewers believe that asking “clever” questions make the candidates uneasy and shake them from their “canned” answers.
• Most interviewers, particularly the hiring managers, conduct interviews infrequently.
• Despite the popularity of interviewing skills as a training topic, the majority of people conducting interviews are untrained.

The bottom line is that there is a very high likelihood you will be asked bad questions by an untrained interviewer. Based on my informal polls of audiences ranging from college students to active job seekers, it is close to certainty.

In a previous series of articles, I analyzed the “favorite” interview questions of several executives. I also provided how some of the bad questions could be answered. That is the answer to this reality. To address the problem of bad questions, you simply need to be prepared. And even though you cannot prepare for all the possible bad questions out there, you’ll discover that if you’ve practiced providing great answers to good questions, you’ll also discover that you’ve learned how to answer even some of the worst of the bad questions. Here’s one: “What color are you?”