Unemployed? Cover Letters Are Much Worse Than You Think

Cover letters hurt your job search. They hurt your job search even more when you're unemployed.

Cover letters no longer have a purpose in today's hiring process. Sure they made sense 30 years ago, when you had to get an entire box of resumes printed by your local print shop, because then it was the only way to tailor your resume.

Today, online applications have made cover letters an obsolete tradition of a pre-internet world.

In recent studies, high 90 percent of employers say cover letters hurt your chances.

Here are a few reasons cover letters are worse than you think when you're unemployed:

• Your odds of landing a job are already lower when you're unemployed ... cover letters make them even lower: When high 90% employers say that cover letters make you lose opportunities, that's an indication cover letters will reduce your chances of landing a job. When you're already battling against lower odds because you're unemployed, why would you do anything to make them worse?
• Using a cover letter conflicts with employer hiring processes: Employer hiring processes include screening out candidates by searching resumes (not cover letters) for key words. So anything on your cover letter isn't being key word searched, while duplicating resume details on a cover letter wastes recruiters' and hiring managers' time - Don't you think that would form a negative opinion of hiring someone who wastes their time?
• They distract employer attention: Recruiters and hiring managers spend an average of 15 seconds deciding if you'll get an interview (only a few seconds if you're rejected). In that short of a time, your reader can't read both documents, so why give them a choice?

So let's face it, cover letters are an obsolete tradition of a pre-internet world when Kinko's was king. And that's unlikely to form a positive employer opinion of you, unless the employer uses cutting edge technology like rotary phones and typewriters.

You've got the chance to learn how to stop doing the things that slow your unemployment job search, and instead change your search strategy to overcome employment risk, making you too good to ignore in the hiring manager's mind.

What if I could show you how to find your next job by year-end 2024 ... and show you for free?

In my next free webinar, I'll show you what to do instead of cover letters when they are requested/required in job descriptions, job applications, and when you send via email (you're not going to send a blank email with an attachment, right?).

During my next free Resume Webinar - Beating Unemployment, I'll teach you how to change your resume/interview/job search strategy to accelerate your unemployment job search. While we're at it, I'll show you how to change your resume, interview and job search strategy to one that proves success and can win jobs by year-end.

Join me for my next free Resume Webinar (enroll at https://x.resumewebinar.com/Registration for no charge) and learn how to accelerate your job search, so you can find your next job faster in 2024.

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#resume #jobs #career #unemployment