Results tagged “story” from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters Tips Blog

Don’t repeat your resume. Instead, use your cover letter to give context to the achievements and job functions listed in your resume. Frame your accomplishments with  the journalism questions — who, what, when, where, why and how — and do it succinctly. Use paragraphs to tell the story (the context) and bullets for achievements (results). You can write about each experience with the formula: situation, action and results.

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Why would you went to employ storytelling in cover letters — or indeed in any part of your job search?

Cover letters offer job-seekers great latitude to tell stories because letters are quite compatible with the narrative form. In a cover letter, you can engage the employer, make an emotional connection, show results, and become instantly memorable by including at least one paragraph in the form of a powerful story. Not all employers read cover letters (about a third don’t), but those who read, do truly read the letter, unlike the resume, which they almost always skim.

Quintessential Careers’ article on integrating stories in cover letters details the types of stories you can tell in a cover letter and provides examples of how to tell them. The article is excerpted from the book Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling to Get a Job and Propel Your Career, releasing April 1, 2009.

Types of stories you can tell in a cover letter:

• Stories of early interest in your career path and determination to reach your career goal.
• Stories that depict your motivation, enthusiasm, and passion for the job you seek.
• Stories describing specific projects you’ve led or collaborated on, including results.
• Stories detailing problems you’ve solved for your employers.
• Stories describing other accomplishments and successes.
• Stories that reveal your personality.
• Stories describing long-term interest in, knowledge of, and admiration for the organization you’re targeting.
• Stories that describe how well you fit in with the organization’s culture, values, and mission.
• Stories — for new graduates — of how your education has prepared you for the targeted job.
• Stories that touch the heartstrings.
• Stories to back up your claims about yourself.
• Stories that tell how you are uniquely qualified for the targeted job.
• Stories that capitalize on networking contacts.
• Stories to explain unusual or potentially negative situations.
• Stories to explain a career change.
• Future stories that address employer needs and challenges and tell how you would address those issues.

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Cover letters play a vital role in the job-search process when done correctly, says the Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD. Cover letters should entice the reader, draw him/her into your story — enough so to turn the page and review your resume. Is that all, you may ask? Yes, that’s the function of a cover letter — to get your resume reviewed a little more carefully than without it, which in turn, ideally, leads to an invitation to a job interview. For the complete lowdown on cover letters, see our Cover Letter Tutorial.

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Hiring decision-makers surveyed for the book, Top Notch Executive Resumes identified this as one of their Top 30 Executive Resume Pet Peeves: Resume is too wordy, contains too much information. Strike a balance between a meaty, content-rich resume and a concise, readable document. Employers want both. Limit bullet points while still telling your full story. Cut out unnecessary words. If you’ve sliced out as much as you can and the resume still looks text-dense, look for ways to break up blocks of content. “Long sentences with deep paragraphs put me to sleep, and I have a good chance of missing something important because I don’t have time to read a novel,” said Brian Howell, CSAM, of The QWorks Group.
See all 30 peeves: executive resume peeves 1-10 in Part 1, executive resume peeves 11-20 in Part 2 and executive resume peeves 21-30 in Part 3.

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