How Can I Get A Hiring Manager's Attention?

Anybody who's job-hunting in 2015 has to embrace the idea that a job search is a sales and marketing project. 

You are driving the bus in your job search and in your career. That's why you can't rest your job-search hopes on anonymous, automated recruiting portals.

You have a better chance of winning the lottery than of getting a job that way.

The recruiting process in nearly every medium-sized and large employer is so broken that you can't conduct a successful job search by following the rules set out for you by employers in their job ads. It's a hopeless prospect. 

Companies run job ads, but they don't realize their job ads are like mirages in the desert. As a job-seeker approaches, the job opening recedes into the distance. Employers publish job ads, but then they put job-seekers through trial after trial before they can even get a live interview.

It's like a restaurant publishing an ad that says "Free appetizer and free drinks with your entree all weekend at Harry's Grill! To get to our restaurant, just cross Main Street at First Avenue against the light and wearing a blindfold.

"If you make it into the restaurant in one piece, your appetizer and drinks are on us!"

Little by little employers are waking up to the reality that talented job-seekers won't stand for the abuse they get as cogs in the automated-recruiting machine.

Applicant tracking systems rely on nineteen-eighties technology that has not kept up with the technological or cultural changes going on around us.

Automated recruiting is a mess. That's okay! You can get your next job a different way.

You can get a hiring manager's attention by designing a strategy just to reach him or her with your highly relevant and customized message. This is what salespeople do.

They identify their sales prospect and then zero in on him or her. They ask themselves "What kind of Business Pain is my prospect living with? Maybe my product or service could help!" 

Job-seekers can do the same thing. They can zero in on a hiring manager who might need their help -- whether that hiring manager has published a job ad or not!

This is the opposite from the typical boring one-size-fits-all cover letter that begins "I saw your job ad and I was intrigued. I bring a long history of yada yada yada...."

Hiring managers couldn't care less what you've done until you give them a good reason to care. 

You can make an educated guess about your hiring manager's Business Pain.

We call it a Pain Hypothesis. You can share your Pain Hypothesis and your own short-but-triumphant story of having solved that sort of pain (called a Dragon-Slaying Story) in a powerful and personal Pain Letter written just for one person. 

You can send a Pain Letter directly to your hiring manager's desk and skip the automated recruiting portal altogether.

A Pain Letter is like a cover letter in some ways -- it's a letter - but different in most. A Pain Letter is a short letter, usually less than a half-page long. It's easy to read. It's written just for one reader -- your hiring manager. 

Writing Pain Letters and sending them directly to hiring managers at their desks is a different approach from the standard, passive job-search routine.

Some people grab onto this new approach the first time they hear about it. Other folks take some time to get used to the idea of taking control of their job search.

Every day people write to us and tell us that they learned about Pain Letters and Human-Voiced Resumes a long time ago, but needed time to get comfortable with them:

Liz, I am in awe! I read about Pain Letters in 2013 but I never had the nerve to write or send one until this week. Don't ask me what changed in me. I was fed up with the non-responsiveness of the regular recruiting process.

I sent out two Pain Letters and I have two interviews scheduled for next week. I feel stupid for waiting so long but at least I finally stepped out of my comfort zone and I'm reaping the benefits. Thanks for your guidance!

Dear Human Workplace,

I got an interview through my first Pain Letter a year ago but the interview was horrible and I didn't get the job, so I went back to my old ways, filling out online job apps.

Forty-one Black Hole applications later I had gotten three no-thank-you email messages an average of seven weeks after submitting each application. I got no interviews from forty-one online applications so I tried writing Pain Letters again. Six letters, and two interviews! That's a beautiful batting average!

Dear Liz and Team,

I was really skeptical about your non-traditional job-search approach because I believe in following rules.

I kept reading your columns and it hit me that the rules I was afraid to break (rules prohibiting job-seekers from contacting managers directly) are exactly the kinds of mean-spirited, anti-human policies that good companies don't enact or don't enforce anyway.

So why was I worried about breaking those rules? I got my current job by writing a Pain Letter on Easter weekend. I've been in the job for two weeks and I'm so happy to be here. 

My manager said "That was the most insightful letter I've ever received from a person outside the firm, including every vendor we buy from.

"You really took the  time to understand what we are dealing with in our competitive space and to touch on it in your letter. I was so impressed that I had to meet you." I got the job and there wasn't even a job available!  Thank you for unshackling me and lots of other working people! 

You will get your hiring manager's attention not by trumpeting your own fabulousness  (who cares about that?) but by tuning in and writing to your possible next boss about his or her life -- not about yours. 

It's a new day in the talent marketplace! You can get your  hiring manager's attention and start a conversation about pain and solutions instead of pitching more applications and more resumes into the abyss of an automated recruiting site. 

Here are the steps to follow:

• First, create a Target Employer List for your job search.
• Next, identify your specific hiring manager inside each firm.
• Now, research each employer to figure out what your manager's biggest pain point is likely to be and to get the elements you need to construct a Pain Letter.
• Write your Pain Letter and your Human-Voiced Resume.
• Send off your Pain Letter and Human-Voiced Resume and log them so you can follow up with your hiring manager in a week or so.
• Now, go enjoy a nice gelato -- then come home and start on your next Pain Letter! 

Can't I get blacklisted by an employer who states in their job ads that applicants are not allowed to contact managers directly?

For starters, why are you responsible for reading job ads? No one sent you a registered letter at your house warning you not to contact hiring managers, right?

We have never heard of a person having any worse result from sending a Pain Letter than simply being ignored -- which is what you're experiencing now, anyway. 

I sent a Pain Letter and it didn't work. What did I do wrong?

Here are the most common Pain Letter mistakes (and their solutions)!

How can I learn how to find my hiring manager, craft a compelling Pain Letter and get a great job without jumping through ridiculous hoops?

The first thing to do is to read Liz Ryan's columns on these topics -- you can check out Liz's LinkedIn Influencer page here. Liz invented Pain Letters and the Human-Voiced Resume to help job-seekers connect with the talent-starved hiring managers who need them!

Liz was a Fortune 500 HR SVP who saw the recruiting process begin to degrade the moment automated applicant tracking systems were introduced back in the 1990s. 

If you'd like to learn the steps in a new-millennium job search with our help, join the Four-Week Virtual Course Get the Job You Deserve beginning July 11, 2015. 

In the four-week virtual course Get the Job You Deserve (or its 12-week intensive counterpart, also beginning on July 11th) you'll learn the steps in the Whole Person Job Search approach that Liz Ryan invented and that we teach at Human Workplace. Take your job search up a big step and get the job you deserve! 

Reach us with your questions here!