Day: November 9, 2013

Time is precious – save it with cover letters and elevator pitches

Posted on November 9, 2013 Updated on November 9, 2013

Dear Reader,

After a long hard week, the weekend is a precious and beautiful thing. It’s a cup of extra coffee on Saturday, a few more hours in your jammies and a call home to find out the nothing that means everything. It’s time that never seems to linger as long as we are willing to stay. It’s a sunset that sets too quickly and before you know it you’re back to five minute conversations and text message business encounters.

Increasingly, we never have time for everything – especially in the business and education world. We prioritize and make time for what is important to us, eliminating useless noise and specializing our media to one or two familiar channels.

Time is also the reason you will probably never get the job you want. This is because you will never develop a cover letter or elevator pitch. But should you make the time? Yes, and here are three reasons why:

#1 They don’t have time to hear/read your whole resume. Those directors you really want to impress don’t have more than 30 seconds to glance at you. It may be your only chance. Are you prepared to communicate in an elevator who you are and how you are relevant to them before you get to the next floor? Can you write a cover letter that communicates what you are all about and why you fit in just a 30 second glance?

#2 You want to be the best candidate. So your coworkers and friends don’t take the time. Have you ever stopped to consider the limitations you put on yourself because no one around you does certain things? How often do you miss on standing out as a strong candidate? If you want to stay on the same pay scale as your coworker or friend, then only do the minimum that they do.

#3 You are really not that special. You don’t deserve hours of people’s time to tell your story. You have to make yourself special in different ways to different people. For elevator speeches, you need to be able to adapt your message in the blink of an eye based on the audience you have in front of you. (Share experiences that are most relevant to that person first.) And for cover letters, you need to personalize your letter to someone and share most relevant skills first. This takes time and it’s impressive when you can take the time to habitually communicate the most important information about you in the time you have – even on an elevator ride.

My next two blog posts will be developing the idea of the cover letter and elevator speech. What are they? Why should you care? I truly, passionately believe that your communication always says something about you. You can never NOT communicate. If you want to be remembered as the person who would be a good fit for the job that is never posted, then you need to be prepared and take the time to be that good fit.

If you don’t take the time to develop these skills, you may always wonder why you can’t deliver in an interview. You may wonder why you didn’t make a good impression on that director. You may silently struggle with why the person at that party never did send your name up to the top. Your resume may never surface above the other hundreds.

You know you’re qualified. But if you can’t communicate that you’re qualified, you won’t be given the chance to prove it. What you say about yourself does matter.

In the meantime, here is a helpful cover letter article from About.com: Top 10 Cover Letter Writing Tips

Also, here are some great example elevator speeches from the same website: Elevator Speeches

Sincerely,

Andrea