It’s about building a great living around what you love to do most. Once you’ve been touched by it, you’ll never be the same. This book is your way in, your ticket to the world of the career renegade.

Jonathan Fields, mega-firm lawyer turned successful lifestyle entrepreneur, blogger and writer shows you how to turn your passion–whether it’s cooking or teaching or playing video games–into a better payday and a richly satisfying life.

Join the movement now…and take back your livelihood and life!

Cover Letter Magic: Trade Secrets of Professional Resume Writers by Wendy S. Enelow, Louise Kursmark
		This new second edition includes more than 150 winning cover letters for every profession and situation. Readers get great tips from before and after transformations that turn boring letters into knockouts. Plus, there are tips on resumes, e-mail and scannable cover letters, thank-you letters, and dozens of sample opening paragraphs. Also provides proven first paragraphs to start the cover letter with strength.

Cover Letters for Dummies by Joyce Lain Kennedy
		Cover letters are alive and sell! When they’re written right, that is. To stand out in today’s sea of qualified job seekers, learn to craft riveting new breeds of cover letters, create vibrant images online, and discover sensational self-marketing documents you never imagined. This completely revised and updated 3rd Edition of Cover Letters For Dummies brings you all this — plus over 200 great new samples by 62 successful professional cover letter/resume writers. Since the last edition of Cover Letters For Dummies, blazing fast change in tools, technology, and how hiring managers come calling and how we invite them to look us over, means big dramatic changes in our job messages. In this exceptional handbook of contemporary job messages, you’ll discover fresh ways of thinking about cover letters that captain an entire team of new-style job messages.

The Damn Good Resume Guide: A Crash Course in Resume Writing by Yana Parker
		Yana Parker has helped hundreds of thousands of job seekers write and refine their resumes to damn near perfection. Her resume guides have been praised for their user-friendly style and savvy advice and, rightly so, have become staples in libraries, career centers, and employment offices nationwide. Now, in this fully revised and updated edition of the best-seller, you can quickly garner resume-writing wisdom by following ten easy steps to a damn good resume. Also included are completely new sections on formatting resumes and submitting resumes over the Internet. Here is a resume guide you can count on to get that resume done fast and get it done right.

Knock ‘em Dead Cover Letters: Features the Latest Information on: Online Postings, Email Techniques, and Follow-up Strategies by Martin Yate
		This book has been a top seller in the job-search category for more than 10 years. Now, in an all-new edition, Martin Yate shows readers the words and phrases to use that get them that critical first interview. This edition includes new material: an update of the text; a step-by-step procedure for turning weak cover letters into strong ones; the latest strategies for online cover letters and job searching. A new section, Before and After, reveals how to transform sloppy cover letters into powerful tools.

No-Nonsense Cover Letters: The Essential Guide to Creating Attention-Grabbing Cover Letters That Get Interviews & Job Offers by Wendy S. Enelow, Arnold G. Boldt
		In today’s competitive job market, if your cover letter doesn’t grab the interviewer’s attention, he or she may never even glance at your résumé. No-Nonsense Cover Letters gives you the powerful, practical tools to write “attention-grabbing” cover letters that complement your resume and get you more interviews and job offers. No-Nonsense Cover Letters begins with a thorough but easy-to-understand explanation of the key elements that are vital to creating “attention-grabbing” letters, including: Why writing a cover letter is all about selling yourself. How to craft targeted cover letters. When to use bullets or paragraphs. Creating E-Letters for today’s E-Search environment. Subsequent chapters offer tips on creating winning letters for opportunities in virtually every profession: Administration & Clerical; Accounting, Banking & Finance; Government; Health Care & Social Services; Hospitality Management & Food Service; Human Resources & Training; Law Enforcement & Legal; Manufacturing & Operations; Sales, Marketing & Customer Service; Skilled Trades; and Technology, Science & Engineering. Each chapter includes sample letters contributed by leading resume writers and career consultants worldwide.

Through the Brick Wall: How to Job-Hunt in a Tight Market by Kate Wendleton
		Here is a unique, business-oriented approach to job hunting which provides the reader with step-by-step instructions in finding a new and/or improved position. Wendleton explains why the “tried and true” techniques no longer work and includes up-to-the-minute job-hunting techniques and astute lessons on how to turn interviews into offers. Kate Wendleton believes you need to take a proactive approach to getting the kind of job you want, and she shows you how to get it in Through the Brick Wall.

What Color Is Your Parachute? 2009: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard Nelson Bolles
		Still the best-selling job-hunting book in the world, What Color is Your Parachute? is the most complete guide for first-time job seekers as well as careers changers. For more than three decades, it remains a mainstay on best-seller lists, from Amazon.com to Business Week to the New York Times. The 2009 edition is an even more useful book, with its updated, inspiring, and detailed plan for changing readers’ lives. With new examples, instructions, and cautionary advice, Paracute is, to quote Fortune magazine, “the gold standard of career guides.”

Career Match: Connecting Who You Are with What You’ll Love to Do by RShoya Zichy, Ann Bidou
		For some, a job is just a way to pay the bills. For others — those whose careers fit their passions and personalities — it is a source of great satisfaction and success. Career Match is designed to help people discover their ideal work. Using the author’s revealing ten-minute self-assessment, the book helps readers determine their personality style, then walks them through the range of career choices best for them. This indispensable guide will enable anyone to: • identify the type of work that will inspire and exhilarate them • recognize the type of boss and work environment they need to thrive • confirm the rightness of the path they are on — or help them find a better one • speed up their job search The book includes in-depth chapters for each personality type, detailed explanations of career options, and inspiring real-life stories of people who have found fulfillment in work that suits their personality. This invaluable resource will help anyone in need of direction match who they are with what they should do — for a lifetime of gratifying work and greater success.

]]> http://www.coverletterinfo.com/2009/01/books-on-cover-letters.html/feed http://www.coverletterinfo.com/2009/01/the-killer-cover-letter.html http://www.coverletterinfo.com/2009/01/the-killer-cover-letter.html#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:29:20 +0000 admin http://www.coverletterinfo.com/?p=5 If your résumé regularly opens doors for you, congratulations.

You can probably send it with a run-of-the-mill cover letter and get your fair share of interviews. But, sometimes a job search requires more that a just-average cover letter. Sometimes it requires a Killer Cover Letter.

This is often the case if the economy is struggling, or if you work in a particularly competitive field.

Try to put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes.

What kind of pain does he or she have if his or her team is short-staffed? Or a certain kind of expertise is missing? For example, what if a sales manager is receiving 10 highly qualified leads per day, but has no sales person to cultivate those leads and turn them into sales? Potentially profitable business is going out the window.

Take time to create a strong opening.

Take a page from professional sales letter writers.

The classic outline for a sales letter is to attract attention, generate interest, arouse desire and get action. (This outline is often shortened to the more easily remembered: “AIDA”). Let’s flesh out this idea.

Attention: Your first job is to get the attention of the hiring manager. So, for instance, a purchasing agent might write: “Would you be interested in meeting a purchasing expert who saved his last employer $150,000 a year?” This opening should strike a chord with managers who are looking for purchasing people who know how to find cost savings. The key point is this: you need to get your prospects’ attention before you can get an interview appointment.

Interest: Let’s say you have succeeded in getting your prospect’s attention. Now it’s time to interest him or her in what you can do for the company. Perhaps you can highlight a success story from your most recent job.

Conviction/Desire: This is the spot where you want to emphasize what you bring to the table: additional accomplishments, experience and skills. If anything is going to help you clinch an interview appointment, it’s if your background aligns with the employer’s needs.

Action: Your goal is a job interview. Make the next step easy for the hiring manager. Enclose a self-addressed postcard (or reply form and self-addressed envelope) so all the hiring manager needs to do is drop it in the mail. And include a (businesslike) email address where you can be reached.

If your finances permit, you could offer to work for free for 30 days. (We’ve never heard of an employer who failed to pay a person who tried this approach.) Or find another way to offer a “sample” of the kind of work you could do for the prospective employer.

Explain that you will follow up. Then follow up.

Let your reader know that you will call in the next few days. Sometimes this will prompt the recruiter to phone you. If not, you will need to get on the phone. This step can’t be skipped. Even if you end up leaving a voicemail message, it demonstrates that you are a person who keeps his or her word.

Make some notes before your pick up the phone. You want to know if your knowledge and skills are a good match for the position. And if there is a gap, you want to know that as well. The hiring manager may be looking for experience that you have but did not include in the cover letter. In any event, whether there’s a potential match or not, it’s helpful to know what hiring managers are looking for.