Instant Interviews: 101 Ways to Get the Best Job of Your Life

Chapter 8. Getting You Covered with the Better Letter

Resume cover letters are a great interviewgetter!

You just have to know the right times to use them.

Peeking Under the Covers

I'll get to the content of the better letter in a minute. But let's peek under the covers of almost all cover letters first.

When it comes to resumes, resumania reigns. Average Jobjoes research, study, draft, redraft, rewrite, cut, paste, scan, copy, diddle in dictionaries, thumb thesauruses, and otherwise quite literally drive themselves crazy with these nonsensical pieces of paper. Go to any high school or college library, any reference section of any public library, any copy center, any computer bank, any career center—almost anywhere they hide. It's as though the effort bears some relationship to the results.

Those people could actually be interviewing! With the publication of Instant Interviews that insanity can finally be clinically diagnosed and instantly treated. Good for you!

If you were here, I'd show you my battle scars. I tried to help folks when I wrote The Resume Makeover. It was the first—and is still the only—book ever written that offered a free diagnostic of the reader's resume.

My idea was that they'd read the book, follow the directions, then send us the resume for a written critique and return. We were so excited about that one. For the first time, we'd actually produce a resume book that would get someone a job other than the author. The book was an instant bestseller.

If I could show you ...