Helping My Niece With Her Resume Cover Letter

When my niece called me begging for resume cover letter help, I couldn't turn her down. She's my favorite niece. Well, she's my only niece too :-) I love her dearly and I'm very proud of her. Her Mom (my sister-in-law) died when she was only 12 years old. Poor girl, she was right at the brink of those difficult teen years and she really needed an nurturing older female in her life. My brother made sure we got to spend lots of time together and we became very close. She's a very smart young woman - a real go getter - but writing is not her strong suit. She drove out Friday night for the weekend armed with a generous stock of fresh bagels from one of my favorite bakeries in the city as sort of a thank you. I told her she really didn't need to bribe me and that I was happy to help her. She gave me the biggest warmest hug. At that moment, I could just feel how much she needed me and I instantly became extra motivated to help her get over this hurdle. I knew how bad she wanted a job. She had already sent out dozens of resumes and attended 3 different job fairs but not even one interview yet. Then something else was secretly tugging on my emotional strings. While I really wanted to help her land the right job, I was hoping it wouldn't be too far from her Dad and I.

Bright and early Saturday morning we began to work on her resume cover letter over coffee and bagels liberally smeared with cream cheese.

"Show me what you got so far" I said to her right off the bat. I wanted our time together to productive.

She looked a little sheepish and said, "Aunt Cyn, I'm afraid to show you.

"Why?" I said.

"I've just had a brain cramp over this resume cover letter... and you are such a good writer... you'll laugh at me."

"No I want, I promise... let me see it"

She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her back pack, "This is the best i could do Aunt Cyn and it sucks."

I quickly read over what she had and frankly it DID "suck." She REALLY DID need help with her cover letter. I knew in my heart that if she turned in what she had written the chances would be slim to none that a hiring manager would even look at her resume.

So, I said, "Baby, your writing isn't the problem... it's your approach."

"What do you mean Aunt Cyn?"

Well, I have a background in sales and marketing so to me it was obvious but my niece was a environmental science major and she just couldn't see it.

"You've got to SELL yourself in the cover letter... your letter has got be unique and creative..."

She interupted me, "But Aunt Cyn, my cover letter is a lot like several of the resume cover letter templates I found on the internet!"

"That's exactly the problem!" I shouted. "You don't want yours to look like everybody else's... you need to find a way to stand out... find a unique angle."

"This is already helping Aunt Cyn, thank you so much."

"Think about it in this way baby. Suppose you are the hiring manager and you are very busy. You've got the difficult task of going through 20, perhaps 50, even maybe 100 applications and you can only choose maybe 5 for an interview. Now, which are you going to read first - the cover letter or the resume?"

"The cover letter I guess"

"Right! Now, are you going to read every single resume carefully?"

"Probably not."

"Of course not. You are the busy hiring manager and you simply don't have time to do that. You are going to first scan all the resume cover letters and those that jump out at you... those that are actually interesting enough to read and not some bogus template letter the applicant found on the internet.. those are the ones you are going to read carefully. Resumes with a boring covering letter on top may simply get tossed."

At this point, I could see my niece's wheels starting to spin in her mind.

"Does this help?"

"Yes Aunt Cyn, it helps a lot. I've been going about this cover letter thing all wrong. I'm so glad I came to see you."

"Glad to have you here baby. I'll go fill the bird feeders and water the garden and give you a chance to work on your resume cover letter by yourself for a little while. Let's see what you can come up with on your own taking this new approach. Remember, make it unique and sale yourself. I'll come back and help you in a little bit."

ADDENDUM: If you don't feel like reading the rest of this story, click here to check out this cool software we ended up using to create a killer resume cover letter that landed my niece the job. It was developed by a professional marketer with over 2 decades of experience writing sales letters (I know, I've researched this well)... he's one of the top in his field and he's in very high demand because his sales letters convert really well. While almost everyone else focuses on crafting the perfect resume, he recognized long ago that a cover letter should not be dull and boring and overly professional. He realized that a resume cover letter should actually be written as a marketing letter with the #1 goal of getting you the interview. He realized that the cover letter was much more important than the resume. You can visit his website for more details. It will definitely help you if are applying for jobs.