Job Search Letters For Dummies

Chapter 6

Prospecting Letters

In This Chapter

Taking initiative with sales letters to potential employers

Learning the techniques that make your letters stand out

Choosing when to e-mail, postal-mail, or hand-deliver

Prospecting letters are self-marketing documents designed to discover an opportunity in the hidden (unadvertised) job market. They’re sent to individuals singly or in small batches. The best ones are customized — tailored to the recipient’s needs and interests.

When you use prospecting letters to turn the job market inside out for opportunities that you want and can do well, you waste your time and resources if you take the easy way and send letters that are garden-variety bombs — boring, trite, too familiar, mediocre, outmoded: They’ll simply be treated as spam or junk mail. Go for the win!

Pitch with Immediate Promise

Prospecting letters done right can hit the jackpot, says John Lucht, career management guru, author of Rites of Passage at $100,000 to $1 Million+ (Viceroy Press), and chief executive officer of RiteSite.com: “If you send a highly persuasive letter that arrives with perfect (though accidental) timing, the decision maker will pay attention. ...