Stated differently, good cover letter writing must take into consideration that the end result you seek is employer action. More specifically, you want the employer to grant you an interview, so it is important to understand those factors that will motivate an employer to do so.
To understand this important phenomenon, it is necessary to realistically address the following questions:
- How does the employer read the cover letter?
- What are the key factors the employer is looking for (and expects to find) in the cover letter?
- What are the motivational factors that will pique the employer's curiosity and create a desire to interview you?
Top sales producers have always known that the most important principle in sales success, whether selling goods or services, is selling to the needs of the buyer. What is the customer really buying? Where are the priorities? What specific needs does he or she need to satisfy? Without knowing the answers to these questions, it is easy for the salesperson to emphasize product characteristics and attributes that have absolutely no relationship to the customer's real needs, and deemphasize characteristics and attributes that are truly important. The result-no sale!
In the ideal sense, therefore, it is important to research your target companies very well to determine what it is that they are buying (i.e., looking for in a successful employment candidate). If you are conducting a general broadcast campaign covering several hundred companies, such individual company research may simply not be feasible. If, on the other hand, you are targeting a dozen or so employers for whom you would really like to work, such research is not only feasible but should be considered an "absolute must." Careful advance research, in this case, will pay huge dividends, returning your initial investment of time and effort manifold.
Even in the case of the general broadcast campaign, where you have targeted several hundred companies, there are clearly some things that you can do to focus your cover letters on the real needs of these employers. Here are some guidelines for conducting meaningful employer needs research:
- Divide your target list of employers into industry groupings.
- Using industry trade publications and key newspapers (available in most libraries), thoroughly research each industry grouping for answers to the following questions:
a. What is the general state of this industry?
b. What are the major problems faced by companies in this industry?
c. What are the barriers or roadblocks that stand in the way of solving these problems
d. What knowledge, skills, and capabilities are needed to address these problems and roadblocks?
e. What major trends and changes are being driven by companies in this industry?
f. What new knowledge, skills, and capabilities are needed to successfully drive these changes and trends?
Having conducted this research, you are now in a position to better focus your cover letter on key needs areas of interest to the majority of companies in each of your targeted industry groupings. This provides you with the opportunity to showcase your overall knowledge, skills, and capabilities in relation to those important needs areas. Such focusing substantially increases your chances for hitting the employer's bull's-eye, which will result in job interviews.
Where you can narrow your list to a dozen or so key companies, individual company research can have even greater payoff. Here, you have the opportunity to really zero in on the specific needs of the employer, and you can bring into play a number of research techniques for doing so. The research you do here can, in fact, be tailored to each individual firm; so you can substantially increase your probability of success and up by quite a bit the number of potential interview opportunities.
