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Cover Letters Are Dead -- Send A Pain Letter, Instead

This article is more than 8 years old.

Human beings are creatures of habit. If we've seen something once, we can't focus on it intently again. We think we already know all about it, so we don't pay attention. That's why busy humans ignore glorious sunsets and other amazing sights and experiences every day.

The cover letter format is over - it's done. No busy hiring manager can focus on anything you say in a cover letter,  because the cover letter format itself is so tired. If a hiring manager is reading resumes with cover letters attached to them (more likely on a screen these days than on paper) he or she cannot stay curious and engaged in the reading project for long.

When I was an HR person I could clearly see that the cover letter tradition had to go. Back then a lot of resumes were still on paper, and the cover letters with them were on paper too. I would bring cover letter/resume combos to meetings with the department managers in my company who had job openings to fill. I watched them read cover letters.

They'd read the first letter and the second one, and then skim through the rest of the letters in the pile. Who could blame them? Every cover letter is the same!

Dear Hiring Executive,

I was intrigued to see your advertisement for a [fill in the job title] at [fill in the company name]. I have a long history of blah blah and blah and a proven track record in successful completion of cross-functional projects involving multi-disciplinary yada yada yada. Thank you for your consideration of my beep bop biddem boddem waddem chu, and all the best to your team.

Sincerely,

John Cena

No one can read that boring dreck for long! I don't want you to write any more cover letters. There is a better way to get a job.

You can send a letter to your department manager - the person who will be your boss in your new job -- directly at his or her desk.

You don't need to wait until the manager posts a job ad, either.

You can write and send a Pain Letter to any manager. They could have a lot of Business Pain and a good reason to talk to you whether they have a job ad posted or not.

Business Pain is any problem that keeps a manager from achieving his or her goals on the job. If customers are leaving a company and buying from its competitors, that's Business Pain. If employees are quitting left and right, that's another kind of Business Pain.

A slow new-product-development process that gives competitors an edge is Business Pain.

There is Business Pain everywhere! When you write a hiring manager, he or she doesn't care about your degrees and your years of experience.

He or she literally cannot care until you make your background relevant to the manager figuratively writhing in pain.

There is only one way to make your message relevant to your future boss, and that is by politely advancing a Pain Hypothesis and then sharing one pithy Dragon-Slaying Story that illustrates how you solved the manager's pain in the past.

When people are in pain, the only thing they can focus on is whatever will relieve their  pain, whether it's morphine, a mom's kiss on a scraped knee or the plumber's truck arriving in front of the house to fix the stopped-up tub drain.

Hiring managers are focused on their pain and the relief they desperately seek. You've got to reach your hiring manager with a message about his or her most likely Business Pain and your own experience solving that pain.

That's what you'll write about in a Pain Letter!

Here is a sample Pain Letter.

Here are step-by-step instructions for writing a Pain Letter.