When you first think about it, writing cold turkey to people you don't know at companies, you don't know about positions that you don't know exist probably seems a little ridiculous! Yet, about one in ten job-seekers gets his job this way. So unless you're willing to forgo the potential jobs available only through this source you can't afford to neglect this avenue in your search.
The concept of writing directly to companies about a possible yet unknown position has been promoted extensively since the late 1950s by Carl Boll, a well-known search consultant, and at the time it worked extremely well for executives with something to sell.
The Boll's approach (as I call it) has several elements:
1. A first paragraph designed to show the reader with your accomplishments
The idea is to bowl the reader over with your ability to do something that the person reading the letter is presumably interested in getting done.
2. Curiosity
In a Boll's letter, you reveal your accomplishments (three or four of them) without telling specifically who they were for. The idea is to entice the reader to learn more about you, or to put it another way, an attempt to get yourself an invitation to the prospective employer's office.
3. Credibility
You try to achieve this by mentioning that you graduated from Harvard Business School (or whatever school is your alma mater).
4. Addresses are Company Chief Executives
Presidents are the target of your Boll's letter on the grounds that the president knows all the executive positions within his organization that require filling; others under him might not know of openings since they might be on the verge of getting fired.
According to Tom Bartlett (a close associate of Carl Boll whom I got to know in recent years), if you wrote a Boll's style letter you probably could secure an average of three top-level interviews for every hundred letters sent out, provided that your mailing list was a good one for your particular background. While this number of interviews may not seem large, Carl and Tom quickly point out that as with every job-seeker, you only need one job!.
During the 1960s I recommended this style of letter to every job-seeker I counseled, and most reported excellent results. I would recommend this approach to you without hesitation, except for one thing. For some candidates today, it doesn't seem to work as well as other letters. Of the hundreds I personally know who've tried it in the 1970s about seven out of ten tell me they're getting no more than one interview out of one hundred letters, and often it is not the type of interview that can lead to a job offer. It's worth spending a couple of minutes trying to figure out why the Boll's letter doesn't seem to work as well for many job-seekers today, since this unique letter might still be the route for you to take if you can overcome the problems inherent in it. Why then, is the Boll's cold-turkey letter less effective for some candidates today than it was in the 1960s?
Some probable reasons are:
1. Its NOVELTY may have worn off
So many presidents have received this letter that it may have ceased to have the shock value it did in the early years. In this regard the director of manpower planning at the nation's largest food manufacturing company advised me that when a Boll's-style letter is received by the president of his firm, his secretary immediately forwards it to the personnel department for a perfunctory reply. All that effort is down the drain! The president doesn't even see your letter.
2. Many People who emulate boll's style may not have a strong enough first Paragraph.
They simply haven't achieved anything in their current or previous jobs that is startling enough to make a company president sit up and take notice. Or, if the writer has achieved dramatic results, he may not be able to relate them forcefully enough to get much attention. Not every job-seeker has this flair, as Tom Bartlett and Carl Boll would tell you.
3. A lot of Chief Executives today are cynical about coyness
A letter with no company names may arouse curiosity but it may also arouse resentment. (What's this clown trying to do? Pull the wool over my eyes? Why doesn't he present the facts?) Many who have used a Boll's letter advise me that the company president has written back, saying "Please send me a resume with further details." Curiosity isn't enough to get some executives into the "Oval Office." It might not be enough in your case.
If the Boll's letter doesn't appear to be as effective as it once was, and you're just about to reject it for yourself, keep in mind that for some job-seekers it still works extremely well! If you have an outstanding background, and can describe your contributions dramatically, you have an excellent chance of selling yourself by this technique. If you write to a company president who has not previously been inundated with the Boll's-style letter - a smaller company, perhaps - you have a good chance, too. If you have the knack for writing things in such a way as to arouse curiosity without arousing resentment, it could work well for you. If you can answer yes to all the "ifs" above, try it!
