Job Hunters, Stop Writing Cover Letters and Start Writing “Pain Letters”  

October 4, 2017
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Young office woman feeling pain in the neck

The job search process most candidates engage in is demoralizing. Highly qualified job seekers routinely apply online to hundreds of positions online and rarely receive any feedback, aside from auto-responder messages that say “Your application has been received. We look forward to reviewing the applications and will call successful applicants within two weeks. Best wishes.”

You have been taking every conceivable avenue

If you are conducting your own job search, we do not recommend following the masses into the online black hole of resumes as your only means of finding employment. We often suggest networking through LinkedIn, at professional events, and, of course, working with a reputable staffing service like Imprimis Group. These approaches typically produce responses within weeks for many qualified candidates. But if you are doing these things and your job hunt is still a pain, it’s time for a new approach.

It’s time to start sending pain letters

“Dear hiring manager,  My job hunt has been so infuriating – OMG – I don’t think I can bear the pain of rejection any longer…”

No, not that kind of pain letter! We are talking about a focused communication to a hiring manager in which you identify a specific “pain point” they are experiencing. Then you align your expertise and experience with overcoming this type of business pain.

To be persuasive, you will have to understand the hiring manager’s role and daily concerns. Think about how they could possibly fail to deliver in their roles. Are they losing sleep at night because they can’t find a “versatile administrative assistant with experience in office management, operations, and business planning?” Probably not… No hiring manager experiences such a vague pain. The concern you have to identify is nagging, acute, and specific. There is a situation, and it must be dealt with soon. You won’t have to guess as to what that might be. Use your network to connect with people who work for that type of manager and learn the associated pain points. You could find useful information on a company’s website, or you could rely on your own experience and common sense. Look for company mergers, moves, and other significant news.

Don’t just do it for yourself…

When you write a pain letter effectively, you won’t just make your own job search easier. You will also make hiring easier for your next manager. Trust us when we tell you, hiring managers don’t love algorithm-based keyword-searching any more than you love the process on your end. It’s one of the reasons they often delegate that work to staffing services.

Hiring managers desperately want someone to jump out and say “Forget the hours of work it’s going to take tonight to find three good candidates. I’m exactly what you’re looking for.” To communicate this, your “pain letter” must have context, relevance, and meaning.

Here are the 5 simple steps to constructing your letter:

  1. Open with a “hook”: This is a device that ensures your recipient will keep reading past the opening line and paragraph, a rare feat. Consider something positive and clever  that establishes the context or reason for your communication. You might open with “I was happy to see that Excelsior Cookies just became the second bakery in DFW to make the Inc. 500. Hats off to you and the entire marketing department for building a winning brand from scratch.” Your hook should always be about your recipient and never about you.
  1. Break into your pain assertion: You’re on the ball, just like this new hire needs to be. You don’t need to be told what the problem is because you’re in the know. So you say something relevant to their current concerns, like “With a 25 percent annual growth rate, your retailers must need sophisticated levels of training and support that only someone with management experience in bakeries could know how to provide.”
  1. Build to the climax – your dragon-slaying story:  It’s no wonder you knew the challenges that lay ahead of this hiring manager; you’ve climbed the stairs, fought the guards, saved the girl and slayed the dragon before in an uncannily similar situation. Your accomplishments are meaningful for someone facing the same dilemma today.
  1. Offer to have a conversation: You’re not asking for time or consideration; instead you’re giving something of value – your own insights. Close your pain letter by offering to have a casual conversation. You might say “If increasing your knowledgeable retailer training and support is a priority, I’d be happy to chat by phone or email.”
  1. Sign it, seal it, and send it: The younger you are, the more this step will shock you. You aren’t going to email this letter or send it through the digital ether. Instead, print it, sign it (with a pen), and place it, unfolded, into an 8.5 x 11-inch envelope and mail it.  This letter is tangible and real, and there aren’t too many around to compete with it.

Once you get the hang of writing pain letters, you will find them to be less time-consuming than online applications, and much more effective. Try it for a week. Aim to send 5 letters each day, totaling 25, and let us know in two weeks if you’re getting calls, interviews, or even a job offer!