Digital Signature Camp Counselor Cover Letter Made Easy

Digital signature camp counselor cover letter

hello everyone and welcome to another livestream for me Professor Heather Austin today we are talking all about the cover letter and how to write a cover letter that gets noticed I'm so excited for you to be here today and we already have a lot of you in the chat telling us where you're from and you are excited to be here just like I am if you can hear audio okay make sure you give this video a big huge thumbs up now my name is Heather Austin I am the founder of Professor austin.com and the career Club on Facebook and on this channel I teach working professionals just like you how to build your personal brand so that you can find a job you love and grow in a career you love so if this is your first time meeting me that's who I am give this video a big huge thumbs up also make sure you subscribe to this channel or hit the bell notification so that you are notified when I go live or I publish a new video every week so again today we are talking all about the cover letter now I do have my team with us today as well Tori's in the chat so make sure you pop through your questions I know that we already have a couple questions that came through I am going to answer those as we go throughout today's livestream she's going to put the questions in front of me so that I can easily get to them as we are streaming today so thank you everyone so much for being here now let me go ahead and I want to welcome some people who are in the chat who jumped in early nor is here hello welcome gary is coming to us from the suburbs of Chicago welcome Gary it looks like we have Seth black media hello from East Texas Danielle is here from Texas as well awesome Steve is here Steve popped in a really good question about certifications and finding entry-level work in the IT industry will jump to your question soon Steve thank you for popping that in Brenda hello welcome so glad you Veronica is here Clarice hello Bev hello Bev I haven't seen you in a while so glad that you could make today's today's livestream diem Keegan hello Vanessa looks like we have a lot of you here welcome everyone I'll be jumping into the chat and interacting with you as we go through today's livestream I have a lot to cover so as always make sure that you have a pencil and a notepad ready or your favorite pen and a notepad because you are going to want to take a lot of notes today especially if you're a job seeker and you're not getting callbacks from interviews or even getting calls to come in for an interview we are going to learn how to write a really good cover letter today so as always you know that I'm a very visual learner so I'm going to pop some slides up on the screen for you so that you can jot down those notes but before I do that I want to remind you if you have not yet seen the free resume training that I have for you let me show you this workshop really quick well my seat is saved but let me show you how you can get your seat saved you are going to go to Professor austin.com slash free class now Tori will pop that link into the chat for all of you it's the five part formula to make your resume a success now we talked everything including the top 5 resume mistakes you might be making I'm even sharing a secret strategy for highlighting your most relevant accomplishments we also go through a proven method for tailoring your resume to almost any position we talked about a four-part framework to format your resume and a simple technique to hold the reader's attention for longer than 6 seconds so if you have not yet saved your seat make sure you pop over on to that page and enter your name and your email address so that I can get the workshop sent straight to your inbox ok let's jump in to our content really quickly we have a lot to cover today so today we are going to do a quick tutorial on how to write a cover letter that gets noticed but Before we jump into all the great content that I have for you I want to ask you tell me in the chat true or false the cover letter is dead now do you think the cover letter is dead let me know in the chat give me a true if you think it is and give me a fault if you think that it's still something that we need to use as jobseekers now I'm going to show you while you guys are typing into the chat I'm going to show you really quickly what some others in my community have said so I popped this question through on social last week and I said what do you guys think and a lot of people comment on all the different platforms that I'm on and let me just share with you some of the things that they said Fazal said the cover letter plays a major role to impress or to make a bad impression and I actually thought that was really interesting to make a bad impression can you imagine if you're writing a cover letter and you're trying to really get your point across in terms of what your accomplishments are who you are how you can help the company and instead you mess up and make a bad impression so that's what Fazal said let's see who else commented on here Oh Marilyn said that the cover letter has been a great way for her to showcase her writing skills and share my story now my favorite part about her comment was share my story so we are going to learn today a little bit about how can you share your story and what it is that you want to do in terms of the job market and how you can help an employer let me show you a couple of their comments that came through and Angelique said faults the cover letters not dead and then Marilyn let's see pups in again and said that she uses the click the the cover letter to clarify her history skills an overall unique value proposition so let me go ahead and I'm gonna jump into the chat and see what you guys have said Clarice says fault shantel hello welcome says faults we have a lot of faults someone says the manland the masks I love your screen name by the way says the bad ones are yes about are dead yep you're absolutely right crazy engineer hello welcome says fault Bridget says faults yes okay so I did see a couple throughs in there that the cover letter is dead but mostly false so I want to tell you that most employers about fifty fifty percent of the time they want to see a cover letter from you the other 50% they really don't care however what I like to do is I still like to compose a cover letter and I use bits and pieces of my cover letter and I pop it through in a quick email to an employer so I don't need to if they're not letting me send a cover letter or they're not specifically saying don't send a cover letter I can actually use parts of that in an email to the employer to let them know what some of my greatest strengths are and how I can help them solve some of their greatest problems so I still believe 100% you need a cover letter if you are a job seeker regardless if the company's asking for it or not use parts of it in your introduction on LinkedIn use parts of it in an email whatever it is if they don't want the cover letter you can still repurpose it so let's go through and I'm going to share some slides with you again and we are Manish actually share with you today for tips and then I do have a few people that we are going to review their cover letters they put out an email last week and I said hey if you wanna if you want me to review your cover letter live online we had a ton of submissions so I've narrowed it down to just a couple and we're gonna go through some of the things that they might be doing well and some of the things that they aren't doing well that maybe perhaps you can learn from so step number one is how to format your cover letter so write this down how to format your cover letter now when it comes to the formatting of your cover letter one thing I want you to keep in mind is that it should look very similar to your resume so let's say for example you know you have a certain font and a certain font style and a certain font size you're using on your resume use that same format for your cover letter I wouldn't go any any larger than a one-inch font again if you guys have been on any of my live streams before you know that I'd talk a lot about formatting and I wouldn't go any less than 0.75 inch font excuse me margin the other thing that I want you to keep in mind is if you have a heading at the top of your cover letter of your resume you can place that same heading at the top of your cover letter this just shows a hiring official that these two documents go together so again keep the formatting very similar to that of your resume now let's jump into the second step here to format your resume excuse me we're always talking about resumes on this channel right to write a cover letter that gets noticed step number two is how to start your cover letter so a question that I get all the time is Heather what do I even say just get my cover letter started how do I even come across to let them know that I am a good fit for the position so my recommendation and we're going to look at some examples here in just a minute my recommendation when it comes to your cover letter is to always address a person okay don't ever say dear hiring official now unless you absolutely cannot find their contact information it's okay to put that but at all costs we want to do everything we can to give a name so it could be Dear John Doe dear Sally Smith whatever that is we want to do as much research as we can to find out who is this cover letter going to okay after that we want to start with an introductory paragraph that Wow's them now I'm not a big fan of a paragraph that says hey please accept this application or scuse me this whatever for the job of whatever like you got to get specific you got to come out of the gate with everything that you have now I like to recommend when you start your cover letter to start with a powerful sentence that talks about why you want to work there is it like that something that the company has done you have a passion for the industry do you value their their mission statement what why are you even applying for that position in the first place so if you can start with that in mind that will help it grabs their attention a little bit quicker now the other thing that you want to do is mention you know why is the company so unique to you so that's a that's a really good thing that you could pop into that first that first paragraph and I'm going to show you the examples today we have a couple unique ones some of them do a really good job of this and some of them sorry to say not such a good job so we'll get to that in just a minute let's move into our third tip on how to write a cover letter that gets noticed and that is what should be included in your cover letter so what are some things that you should even put in there I know that I get a lot of people that come to me and they say okay I've done all I have all this work experience but at the same time I'm not sure how to even narrow it down and I'm not sure how to show the company that I can help them solve some of their greatest problems so when it comes to what to include in your cover letter I'm gonna give you two tips here two tips that you need to always make sure it you share inside the cover letter so the first one how can you help them solve their problems now when you're thinking about a company and you're trying to figure out what what are their what are the problems that they're having you need to do as much research as you can the job posting will tell you you might be able to find some information on their website you might know an insider which is super awesome with the company ask them what are some of the things that this company is struggling with or someone in my position if I move into this position would need to help the company with so you always want to make sure that you are sharing that you also want to explain how your skills and your expertise are the perfect match for that organization or for the position now the second part to this so there's there's two parts to what you should include is include a story include some type of story now when when Marilyn mentioned in the comments earlier when I showed you the screenshot she said she uses her cover letter to tell her story now there is a famous scene and I'm sure you guys have heard me say this before but it's facts tell stories sell now I know I talk a lot about quantifying your accomplishments and quantifying all those things yes we want to do that but at the end of the day if you have a compelling story and you can show them that you are the right fit through a good story you're going to have get that position over someone that has all the data and in the world because facts tell stories sell and again you're trying to sell yourself okay now there are there are times where you're going to inside that story explain your talent and your skills in action okay think about your greatest accomplishments and put that into a story format the other cool thing about doing it this way if this gives you such good practice for your interview okay when you go into an interview and they say well tell me about some of your greatest accomplishments or tell me about your strengths you've already written it down inside your cover letter you can just repurpose that again in the interview so again that's why the cover letter is so so so valuable okay last tip number four Before we jump into how to end your cover letter okay how to end your cover letter and then we're going to get to get to some reviews here so I have a couple of cover letters that I'm going to pop up here and in just a second so when it comes to closing out your cover letter you've got to think of yourself as again you're trying to sell yourself okay you need to give them some type of call to action so what that means is how are they going to get in touch with you what what do you want them to do next with your information do you want them to send you an email for a follow-up meeting for a follow-up appointment do you want them to refer to your resume for more detail so again you're going to include a quick paragraph with some type of call to action and then always end it with a friendly friendly close and you guys know that you could say something like warm regards and then list your name or sincerely which is a little bit kind of formal but again you are going to use your cover letter and make sure that you are showing them who you are telling your story getting your point across and from there use that repurpose out information into your interview or in emails that you might be using to communicate with a hiring official of what your greatest accomplishments are now I want you to pop into the chat really quickly of the floor tips or of the information that I've shared with you today what has been your take biggest takeaway what is your biggest takeaway so far we still have a lot more to takeaways that are gonna pop up here but what is your biggest takeaway so far of the tips that I shared with you today pop that into the chat and one thing I want to make mention really really quickly I haven't brought this up yet today my team and I put together a special offer for you guys now this is only a three day offer actually it's a little bit less than three days so we put together a special offer for you to help you write your cover letter even better than from the information that you're learning from me today so if you do not have the career advancement tool kit yet let me pop it here on the screen we have a link and Tory's gonna pop that link in to the chat we have a link for you where for the next three days now this offers not out there anymore to the world this is an offer that we have we have brought back and we're just going to be using for our live shows for now and you have three days to grab the career advancement toolkit for a special limited time price now let me show you what is inside the tool kit of course that's our cover but this is the this is kind of the contents one of my favorite parts inside the tool kit is we have a guide to the perfect cover letter so with the information that I am sharing with you today and the templates and all the examples in side the tool kit you should be able to create a knock out cover letter and again not just a cover letter because we're talking about repurposing your cover letter and using it in your interview and in emails that you might have email communications that you might have with the hiring official now the other cool thing and this has been by far the most favorite thing of the cover letter from from my clients or excuse me of the tool kit are all the templates that you have now don't have to go scour the internet and find templates from so-called industry experts Kay you have them all right here so we have your template for your cover letter your resume your references template your resignation letter your application follow-up email so these are if you are accepted into a job interview how do you follow up after that interview and it's a little bit different for a phone interview and a video interview but I give you the exact template to follow in order to do that you also have your in-person follow-up email and let's say that you're rejected from a position that you thought was perfect for you there is a follow-up in there for that as well and then we also have the bonuses inside the career toolkit these are some of my favorite you have your headline for LinkedIn and your Linkedin summary so the headline in the summary are two of the most important parts on LinkedIn but two of the most important things to create so I show you inside the toolkit exactly how to create those so again if you don't have the toolkit yet there is a special let me call it a two and a half day offer available for you to grab that even those that are watching the replay this this is a limited time offer so if you want to grab it now is your time now let me let me jump in and and look at really quickly where where you guys are in terms of your own your own cover letter so I asked you a question what was your biggest takeaway so let me just see really quickly what you guys popped in and the man in the masks says to tell a story yes that's one of my favorite parts as well clarice says including my story with your greatest accomplishments yes those two together are deadly in a good way since we're talking about as the cover letter dead it's actually deadly in a really good way Susan hello Susan so glad you're here says facts tell and stories sell yes and this is so true in an interview as well you need to all these principles apply to your resume your cover letter and your interview Bev says strong storytelling good job hello Kelly sherilyn awesome sure Cheryl Ann says toolkit was already super helpful jump-started my resume update so fantastic thanks for sharing that Cheryl Ann also before we jump into these reviews I have to show you guys I I'm like becoming a mug collector my sister-in-law got me this my sister-in-law where she's married to my husband's brother and they're both like computer geeks and she got me this mug that says I don't need Google my husband knows everything she got one for herself too so I love that okay let's jump into these reviews because I think you guys are going to learn a lot from these and I'm gonna just kind of go go at them pretty quickly and then we'll jump into questions I want to leave plenty of time at the end to answer your questions okay so very first one I know you guys see this but let me pop it up on my screen here so I have Doris Day it's really not Doris Day but we have Doris days cover letter let me let me talk a little bit about what I enjoy first about Doris days cover letter I do like that she has a nice heading at the top she has used her name and then she has her you know all of her contact information and also her LinkedIn her LinkedIn URL so that's super super powerful on the one thing that is missing from the top of this again we talked about addressing the hiring official we need to get the hiring officials name up here on the cover letter so she needs to be able to say something to the effect of Dear John Doe or something something like that now I want to show you I'm going to show you the example really quickly in side the career advancement toolkit so that you can see what the top of this should look like now granted this is inside the toolkit so the heading is you know that's not going to be on your version but notice that I have the date inside here and then I also have really descriptive information about who this letter is going to so I'm talking to John Doe he's the hiring official he's in the human resource department so on and so forth and then I'm also saying dear mr. John Doe so that is actually missing from Doris Day's cover letter so we want to get that in there Doris if you're here online today which I think you are make sure you get that in there now the other thing that I really really really like about Doris is cover letter is I like how she is starting and she's seen I'm excited to be applying for an existing career with and she's talking about who this is and then she's going into what some of her strengths are and she's talking about why she wants to work for this company so again she's leading with the correct information and I love that the only thing here Doris that we want to make sure we remember with our cover letter and again I'm gonna go back to I'm gonna go back to formatting here is that that notice that this first paragraph is is really long okay we want bite-sized pieces and so did the heck so do hiring officials so what I would almost recommend here Doris is I would almost recommend shortening your first paragraph and really pull it packing a punch with just the most important information and really concentrating on your formatting so some of your some of your sentences are they kind of overflow with each other so for example let me just read this the second sentence it says as a highly detailed and quality German administrative professional with more than eight years of medical front and an clinical floor experience I thrive on now that's kind of a mouthful so my recommendation is get tighten that up a little bit make it nice short and sweet and let them know why you are excited to work for that company she talks about why she she says I'm eager for the opportunity to bring my relationship focused approach to seed her sigh and I perfect I think cedars-sinai that's that's great now here's an interesting approach that Doris has taken she is using bullet points to kind of break up some of the information which think it's good in in my toolkit example I don't include bullet points in a in my cover letter because I want the cover letter to read nice and smooth I don't think this is bad however I think what you have to do Doris is you have to make sure if you're using phrases here these have got to be the 100% most important phrases that the company is looking for so I'm talking about the keywords and keyword phrases from the job posting that are absolutely necessary for that position because that's really what they're going to be focusing on and you want to make sure you get that cleaned up and tighten that up again no I do like that you're going on to say furthermore this is this is some more of my experience again some of these paragraphs are a little bit long I would almost recommend breaking it up and maybe you know maybe not that much but you I would I would recommend breaking these up into three separate paragraphs so it's a little bit more digestible the other thing that I want to make sure that you are doing here is you need to include inside that very last paragraph you are called to action so right now they don't know what else you want them to do do you want them to call you do you want them to email you do you want them to schedule an interview we want to be blunt about that and get that in that last paragraph of your cover letter and now let me show you the really quickly the the toolkit again so that you guys can see the bottom part of this it's just a nice quick little paragraph and then I say warm regards Sally Smith okay so again we want it we want to be able to do do a little bit of that when it comes to your your cover letter Doris but but so far you have a really good start we just need to tighten it up just a tiny bit now let's jump in really quickly - give me a second while I pop through the second cover letter for us to review and let me know again is this helpful for you guys are these cover letter and resume reviews and I also like to do LinkedIn profile are they helpful for you I know that I'm a visual learner and I actually learned from other people's mistakes I learned from my own mistakes as well but I really like to learn what what other people are doing that might not be working but what other people are doing that are work that is working so again let me know in the comments give me a big yes if this is helpful for you also if you haven't yet hit the thumbs up button make sure you do that that shows me that this content is working for you and that you would like to see more of this okay let's jump into our next resume and give me if I get to get this one up this is Elvis Presley so Elvis Presley sent me his email or excuse me his resume and I love how how Elvis has his his resume formatted so he also has his city state all that bad information nice and neat at the top now the one thing I'd recommend for Elvis is make sure that if you are using this heading at the top of your cover letter use this exact same heading also at the top of your resume should be the exact same format okay love that you have the date in there that's perfect I love that you include the company again that's fantastic one thing I'd recommend Elvis is to go one step deeper here and include the name of the person again at the top include their title and include their department so it just beefs that top part up just a little bit and then rather than saying dear hiring manager get that person's name so we want to put that person's name inside the cover letter now here's the cool thing if you guys were not sending the cover letter as an attachment to an email all you would need to do is copy the entire piece of the cover letter and pop that into an email or let's say that you are going to reach out to someone on LinkedIn all you need to do is copy just a portion of your cover letter and pop that through into a LinkedIn connection request okay or into it if you have in mail on LinkedIn you could pop that into the LinkedIn in mail message to the individual okay so overall this is what I really like about a lapel veces cover letter I like that he has nice easy readable paragraphs can you guys see how it's it's kind of broken down really easy easy to read I also like that he has some good spacing at the end he's listed sincerely and then his name I also like Elvis that you are talking about you're excited to apply for this position but even more than that I really like this parrot this sentence here you say as an individual who grew up in Saskatchewan did I say that right I have always found the potash industry it's not how you say it I don't even know industry interesting so now this is where your story is starting you're now talking to them you're introducing your story in this first paragraph which is so valuable a lot of us have a really hard time with that because it's hard to tell our own story but I love that you that you have brought that in you do go on to say I believe this is a great opportunity to join an innovative team with the potash industry I would like you to get a little bit more specific why is that an innovative team why is this a great opportunity to join so get a little bit more specific with that and then I think that would really really really bring it all together again your first and your second paragraphs look good I do like that you're adding to some quantifiable results in here I accepted a 12-month internship so you now you're going deeper into some of your your accomplishments and some of the things that relate to the position and then here we go this is what I'm looking for more in in the beginning of your that beginning paragraph you say nutrient would be a great team to be a part of because of some of the values that we share I would like you to talk about that more at the beginning so I would I would switch those out and then just make sure you tighten up your your your paragraph a little bit here and then here we go again on this last paragraph what's the call to action we want them to get in touch with you okay where's your email where's your phone number please call me I'm ready for an interview I want to start work right away I mean not those exact phrases but get that call to action in there at the very end good good good cover letter so far just adjust those few things make sure that you have accomplishments in there and your story okay fantastic we are going to move on to our final cover letter but before we do I want to remind you guys a couple things again you are your registration page for the free training make sure if you are not have not yet safe saved your seat you actually get instant access right away to the workshop jump on over to Professor austin.com slash free class to jump into that training you'll you'll actually get an email right away you do need to confirm your email address you'll get an email right away that tells you exactly where to go to watch the workshop so make sure you jump in and register for that again Tory's going to pop the link in there and if you do not have the career advancement tool kit yet remember you're going to want to jump on over and grab that we have a two and a half days special for you where you can grab the tool kit it includes all of your templates all of your examples anything that you could possibly need to secure your job interview this is a two and a half days special if you want the toolkit and you haven't yet had the chance to grab it you'll definitely want to do that now after two and a half days the toolkit offer will expire okay fantastic we have one more present excuse me one more cover letter to review I'm getting a lot of yeses that this is super helpful for you Brahe him thank you says yes daniel says yes very helpful Clarisse thank you says yes Nisha yes please do more reviews these are actually my favorite types of livestreams to do because I I love to give examples and I'm very again you guys know I'm a very visual learner so I learned from other people's mistakes and I know that if I learn that way hopefully hopefully some of you learned that way as well zu Hause is yes very helpful Chantal yes love this more please awesome okay so glad to know that you guys really enjoy this thank you everyone for all of the comments let's jump into our very last cover letter again if you have questions Tory is popping them through into a document for me I will do my best to answer most of them I'm going to depending on our time and happen and how we go here I will if we get short on time I will pick some that will apply to most of the audience here but for the most part I think we should be able to get to most of them so if you have questions pop them in to the chat okay let's look at this this one really quickly so this one does not have a name because the nameless person did not provide their names so what I'm gonna recommend and I know who this is and if you're watching you know who you are to what I'm going to recommend is is to include your name and your contact information at the top of your cover letter so that the hiring official knows exactly who you are the other thing I'm going to recommend is to keep an eye on the date so notice how you just have 7 - 3 - 19 that's not very formal for a cover letter we want it to be spelled out so if you remember back to the example in the tool kit and let me pull it up for you guys really quickly here if I can grab it back to the example in the toolkit we have the date listed so again make sure that you have your date listed at the very top the other thing that this third resume excuse me this third cover letter is missing is there's no contact information we want to see that the name the hiring there are titled the Department and then their address and then we also want to see the name of the person okay again let me reiterate this if you are not sending a cover letter and the company does not need a cover letter that's totally okay you still need to introduce yourself somewhere and a sometime you can easily copy and paste all of the information from your cover letter and pop it somewhere online either an email maybe there's even an application section it wants to know a little bit more about you that is why the cover letter is still so so so powerful okay so again nameless person make sure we get the name on there the other thing here we go is we we say this is how this cover letter is starting out I believe I'd be a great fit for the blah blah blah blah blah because blah blah blah I want you to pack a punch with this first paragraph and I want you to talk a little bit more about your passion for the company now I do I do like that you say I have a deep understanding of the business and part me partnering with patients providers payers and advocacy groups this is so so so powerful you're also saying while my background has mainly been in pharmaceuticals I have I have experience with personalized diagnostic tests now I would not include this sentence unless because you're you're saying hey well even though I might have this experience I also have this experience if they're me if they're mainly focused on personalized diagnostic tests let's just focus on that and not even bring up that you've been in pharmaceuticals unless it's it's a pharmaceutical role does that make sense so you don't you don't want to say even though this than that because we want to focus on what are they looking for and get that in there don't talk about anything else that they are not looking for or that doesn't mean anything to them okay I do like that you've gone into I've launched two personalized tests so having a product for early detection I love this so you're talking a lot about about detection of colon cancer screens now here is a really good opportunity for you to share a story okay so I met with the client the other day who is he is trying to get a position with a company that does like home health care like the research they send individuals into the home and they you know take their blood pressure they do all that kind of stuff and he is on he wants to be on the research team for this because he sees the value of having someone come to your home now I have a mom who's 70 and she's getting older and she is you know like anxious about things and her blood pressure goes up and she's like I need to go to the hospital and there's always things going on and she feels like she has to she has to go and it's such a pain in the butt to go and go to the hospital and get you know have a doctor say you're fine and so the anyway the point behind it is have a purpose why who are you seeing that this this service is going to benefit and bring that in so bring it bring up a story in terms of why why is this so important to you okay the other thing too I like that this nameless person did put some bullet points in here again get very specific with these if you're going to include a section that's calling out hey read me I'm a bullet point it has to be super beneficial okay so again I know that a lot of the information you you're putting X's in here so that you can go in and add that later which is fine but make sure whatever you're including in here is really something that they are looking for and then again you say thank you for your time and this is great however we're missing the call to action okay what do you want them to do now do you want them to call you do you want them to schedule an interview are you available for an interview right away let's get more specific with that but overall I think these cover letters there's a lot of really strengths a good some good things to them I do also think that there are a lot of improvements that can be made so any of you that want to grab the career tool kit use that with this replay or this this live stream to really create a knock out cover letter okay let me jump into questions you guys have had some fantastic comments coming through today I'm so excited that you are here joining me and I'm gonna jump into some questions so Steve hello my friend jumped in really early into the chats a minute I'm gonna answer his question let me let me take a drink out of my money Google Google mug okay Steve says hey Heather huge fan hello Steve I'm 40 and have 20 years of customer service experience which I know is good to have in a nightie for entry-level roles yes very good I'm currently studying for my a plus fantastic Steve I actually got my a-plus certification when I first graduated graduate school because I worked in IT as well I actually worked as a helpdesk person and it was required so I went and got it you said how hard will it be for me to find work without any IT experience but 20 years of customer service okay first of all you're doing the right thing by going and getting an A+ certification you might also want to look at some other certifications that they have I know that there's like I don't know if this is still a certification network plus there's things like that look at what some of those certifications are and that's what you're going to mention inside your professional summary the other thing Steve that I would recommend that you do is if you can even just do some volunteer work at a company just to get your feet wet and it doesn't have to be volunteering for ten hours a week it could be like a couple hours a week even if it's like a company that needs someone to do helpdesk support from home okay anything that that you can that you can get on your resume that shows what you're doing now that can contribute to that workplace really good question oh good question from Seth black media thanks for the question Seth one of my challenges in my cover letter is trying to not be redundant with some of the info that's in my resume yes this is this is actually one of the things that I get a good questions a lot so think of your cover letter as a means to tell your story so when I when I work with individuals that either have a gap in their employment or they're transitioning a career where they have some sort of special case scenario the cover letter is the perfect time to break that all down and to talk a little bit more about it now your resume is going to be more data-driven so again we're focusing on some of your quantifiable achievements and we're focusing on some of your greatest accomplishments the cover letter is a really good time to to kind of bring it into a story format okay because the resume we're being quick we want bullet points it's a little bit more formal where your cover letter is a chance to kind of you know let loose a little bit talk about why you're you're applying for the position what's so neat about the company what's so neat about the position what's so neat about you so you're and even though it you might have some redundancies that's okay because you're not explaining it in a story format in your cover letter or excuse me on your resume but in your cover letter you are so again think back to how can you tell that story Susan hello Susan so glad to have you here you say I'm struggling to explain my changing fields from mental health social service to office assisting positions okay super awesome this is what I'd recommend for you Susan and anyone else in this position so it's almost like a career transition I do have a video on how to switch careers in fact maybe Tori if you can grab that video really quickly and pop it into the chat this this talks to you a little bit more about this and it will give you more detail but just to kind of cap it all off focus on your transferable skills or what we call exchangeable skills so these are things that you've that you did in the mental health profession but they can also apply to social services now one thing I'm going to mention here and write this down for anyone who is in this situation well anyone really any job seeker so if you're here write this down there's the difference between hard and soft skills so your hard skills are things that you have learned in your your education and your training there's also things that we call soft skills these are things like your personality behavior character you can you have skills in both of those areas that you can transfer to your new position so that's what we want to focus on in your resume and in your cover letter and the cover letter is a fantastic way to explain it a little bit more so Susan why are you changing fields what what has inspired you to move from mental health now to social services so your cover letter is the perfect time to talk about that good question okay Gary hello Gary Gary says age discrimination is a fact I I agree I agree with that statement Gary I have 30 years of experience in sales and business development privately held manufacturing company and am suspect when you are required to enter information that would age date me I agree you know and I'm a big proponent because I don't even like to share my age and I don't like anyone to know my age in fact I tell my kids if anyone asks you how old I am tell them I'm 10 years younger and they think that's hilarious so I told Leah gris with you I think there are ways to get around that and again Gary I'm going I'm going to say this to you and anyone else that might be in your same situation you have to you have to get in tune or in touch with your network so the the more senior level you are or the more you advanced you are in your career and I actually think this is true for anyone you need to know your network and you need to be in touch with your network I'm talking about messaging emails I'm finding someone on Facebook that you knew 10 years ago whatever that might be well LinkedIn is the perfect platform for that but if they're not if they're not returning your messages on LinkedIn find them on Facebook what what I mean is you you have to look at other avenues in terms of finding finding work and and your network is the perfect perfect place to do that because they are going to get you in front of the right people or they're gonna put you in touch with someone that they might know that is hiring so I hope that helps I I will you know I am considering a video on this because I think I think younger people that that talk about this I think that they might not see it as an issue but but I I do see it and I do I think that it is something it's not fair I'm not saying that it's a fair thing i but i still think it shouldn't ever be anything that holds you back because you're coming to the position with wisdom with experience with things that someone else might not have and that's what we need to focus on not the age or whatever that might be you got to focus on what your greatest strengths are what do you do better than anyone else and forget forget all the rest okay forget all the rest and then get in front of your network such a good question okay Danielle hello my resume has a lot of info and small fonts I'm afraid it looks too dense with the same size font and the recruiter gets bored even starting to read it okay excuse me that's a mindset recruiters probably don't get bored reading your resume what you need to do is figure out a way to beef it up a little bit so again if you don't if you don't have yet the career advancement toolkit I'm going to highly recommend it for you because inside that toolkit I have a special resume template where you can't effectively format your resume so I show you how to do a professional summary how to do a professional highlight section how to do your competency blog so there's a lot of other things other than work experience that we're going to show an employer that we are the fit for the position and that we want the interview and did bring us in for the interview now in terms of font sizes I don't recommend going any lower than a 10-point font and I don't recommend going any larger than 12-point font but think of other things that you can do to fill your resume so that it does seem like there is some good depth to it Oscar hello so happy to have you here Oscar says do you have any suggestions for a cover letter for someone who is a is transitioning from one career to another so good so last time I went live we have a lot of questions about gaps in employment this time we're getting a lot of questions about career transitioning so yeah Oscar let's see who was it that asked the question Susan so I answered Susan's question earlier about about focusing on your transferable skills or your exchangeable skills and then also looking at your hard and soft skills so we want to use a combination a combination about both of those in your resume and then focus on where you're going not where you've been okay look to the future not to the past so yes you have accomplishments before but where are you going and what can you contribute so that's what we that's where our main focus really wants to be really needs to be okay awesome cooking Couture Atlanta hello how are you supposed to know how long the cover letter is supposed to be the link debate is subjective because someone told me two pages are excuse me two paragraphs that you know I think the cover letter should be as long as it needs to be without going overboard I'm I'm going to I'm going to go with a nice solid four paragraphs you have your introduction paragraph you have the two paragraphs in the middle that give a little bit more depth so you're talking about your accomplishments and your story you remember I talked about that and then you have the closing paragraph when you talk about there's debate now let's say I'm gonna send this as an email and they never required a cover letter I might just send two paragraphs so then what I do is I repurpose my cover letter and I turn it into just two paragraphs okay so it depends on the situation cooking Couture Atlanta but good good question I love that okay zu ha hello welcome says what if you what if we do not know the name of the hiring manager you can't just put hiring manager but I would do everything in your power and nice me machinist Shani says what if there is no hiring manager named so good good questions for that if there is no hiring manager name you just got to put Deere hiring manager you could put Deere hire an official you know I wouldn't I would never say to whom it may concern you know that's that's a little bit stuffy and impersonal so if there is absolutely no one you can't find anyone and you've done everything you can it's okay you could put Deere hiring manager but do whatever you can to find the name good questions guys okay we're getting close we're getting closer okay Daniel says could you display an engineer construction cover letter example so Daniel I'm going to also refer you to the career tool kit because the way that I formatted it is I have an example but I also have a template so in the template I tell you exactly what to put in paragraph 1 what to put in paragraph 2 and what to put in paragraph 3 and so on and so forth so you can just read the the statements inside the template and pull from your own experience and pop that into the cover letter okay neasha would it be alright to send a generalized cover letter if you were applying for different roles it depends so if the if you are applying for your dream job so this is like a role of a lifetime I would definitely personalize it however let's say that you have like you just need a quick summer job or a quick job for Christmas or whatever that might be or holiday season you would you could have a you could have the same cover letter and use it however what that's going to do is that that does not personalize the cover letter so now if I'm hire an official I'm getting your cover letter you're not telling me anything about my company you're not telling me anything about the position and so if someone else sends a cover letter that's telling me why they want to work there why they love the position so much why they love my company I'm gonna probably interview the person that's telling me about the position over someone that just sends me a general cover letter but really really really good question okay Chantelle if I'm doing online mini courses to upgrade my skills yay so glad to hear you're doing that can I insert this into a summary or somewhere Missy meaning showing hiring people that I'm willing to learn yes you can definitely add this here it depends so if you have a large amount of if you have a large amount of ex work experience and maybe you have volunteer experience maybe you have professional skills and you have a lot of other experience that you can pull from you might not need to add this to your resume however if you don't have other ways to beef up your resume it's okay to add it to your resume the other thing you can do is add it to like a statement in the cover letter it has to be 100% focused on that job though and like so meaning it has to directly relate to that position if you're going to include it the other place you can pop that is into your Linkedin summary so again inside the toolkit I talked a lot about your Linkedin summary and I even give you a template to follow to write your summary this would be a really good place to put that as well good questions guys okay Brenda when submitting for online application with the option to attach your cover letter what can you do to get someone's attention when the company doesn't apply excuse me doesn't have the people listed on or no option to attach the cover letter so one thing you can do before I answer this I want to make sure you guys are awake give me a big a big yes if you're still here and you're still listening even if you are listening to this as a replay give me a big guess in the comments below let me know that you're still here also if you weren't able to introduce yourself in the beginning let me know where you're coming to us from in the comments if you're listening to this as a replay I just want to make sure you guys are still here I know that we we it's just me talking and I'm a very I'm an extrovert so I like to communicate with people and I like to know that you're still there so if you're still here listening and watching pop a yes into the question into the chat Chantel says thanks for answering my question Susan still here hello Susan so glad that you're still here yes okay good be happy you guys are here awesome so so glad to see you so so so glad that you're still here okay so Brenda asked about when you submit an application an online application with an option to attach a cover letter but there's no there's actually no option to attach it so one thing you can do is if you save your your resume and your cover letter as a PDF and you're submitting it to an actual person you can it you can actually put them all into one document so that would be one way to do it the other way is to even just have them all in a Word document and have them have them in a Word document in the same attachment so you just include them together and I hope that answers your question I kind of think that's what you were asking in terms of if you really want to get your cover letter a cover letter to them now if they don't want you to submit a cover letter don't submit one there are some job postings that are just like do not submit a cover letter just don't submit it okay now you can use pieces of your cover letter again I'm going to say this again and again use pieces of your cover letter in the in in like your introduction because you're going to be talking to them via email at some point so use pieces of your cover letter in that email okay couple more questions here miss Shani says I have three years of a gap due to attending grad school and travel congratulations that sounds like a fantastic fantastic thing I'm I am working now but the gap is I did how to address the gap in a resume or a cover letter as I'm looking for another position so fantastic okay so Miss Shani one thing you can do and Tori I do have it I do have I did a live stream like a month or so ago all about how to address the gap and I even have a whole entire video on how to address gaps in on a resume so I'll have Tori pop those in below or excuse me I'll have Tori pop that into the chat so when you're talking about gaps in your cover letter you you will explain that so you will say I attended grad school and traveled but don't just say that why did you do that and what were some of the benefits of you doing that why you weren't working so why weren't you know like what were you gaining from that other opportunity or that other experience okay so that's what you'll talk about in the cover letter in terms of the resume a gap is a gap you're gonna have it there you could talk a little bit about your grad your graduate work inside the your professional summary again make sure you have your your professional highlights in there and your summary that talked about your greatest accomplishments so that they're not focused on the gap and the toolkit does a really good job of showing you exactly how to do that okay couple more questions Daniel should you let them know that you are transitioning to another field could that eliminate you for looking and experienced or unprepared it depends on what you mean by should you let them know now if you're talking about your your you know your submitting a resume again your you have to focus on some of your greatest accomplishments but if you're also focusing on your your transferable skills it's not like it's necessarily going to come up unless it's in in an interview you could also get a little bit more specific with that in a cover letter but let them know why so again I think it was was Susan that asked the question in the beginning yes it was Susan so Susan asked the question about transitioning positions or fields why are you so what's inspiring you about this new field or this new industry why are you going into that new industry so again yes you can talk about that in the cover letter you could even mention that in your Linkedin summary okay cess thanks for answering my question I'm a creative so my resume has a creative but professional design so it makes me stand out is this an area you've helped people with yes okay so Seth when I first became a university professor I actually taught web and graphic design students for lots of years and if you're in the design field or the creative field your resume is more of like an infographic resume so it's not necessarily going to have the same format as someone that you know like more in in like a business professional field not the creatives aren't professional because they are but more of a standard resume format now the one thing you're going to run up against Seth is if you apply for a position I would have two versions of your resume if you apply for a position with a large company that uses applicant tracking systems you if you have if you have a very design heavy resume like it's an infographic resume or you use tables and columns and things like that your information is going to get jumbled together before before it gets presented forward to them so I would be really careful about that if you if you know you it's gonna go through an applicant tracking system I would you can add some subtle color you know some maybe icons and things like that but nothing too crazy I would have two formats of your resume just for that that case okay Brenda a couple more questions guys and then then I'm going to I'm going to hop off today Brenda says if going to a recruiter that has posted on their job board with no company name is it okay to address as dare recruiter yeah so Brenda I am I at answer this question just a little bit earlier you would say you could say dear hiring official or dere hiring manager but again do your very very very best to do your very best to get the name of the employer because that we're addressing to them we are talking to a person and we want them to know that we are talking to them so really quickly again guys before we sign off today make sure if you have not yet registered professor austin.com / free class this is a free five part formula to make your resume success training you'll be able to watch it instantly jump on in you'll give your your name and your email address so that I can pop it through to you in your inbox also remember there is a link in side.the the chat will also place it in the description below I don't think it's there yet but we'll pop it through as soon as we sign off here today the career advancement toolkit we have a two and a half day special for you to grab this so if you want to grab it two and a half days this live offer will expire so make sure you grab that Tori has popped all the links that you could possibly need for today in to the chat will also pop them through in to the comment and the description below this video thank you everyone so much for coming I look forward to next week's video and the next time that I go live so again every week I'm either on this channel live or a new video drops all about how to help you find and grow in a career you love so again if there's any topics you guys want to see from me in the future jump pop those into the comments below or into the chat and I will see you guys next time you you