The beginning of 2014 was a difficult time in the Porteous household. For the first time in my adult life, I found myself jobless. And while I did whatever it took to keep some sort of income rolling in for my family, the reality was…I needed to find a job.
And that was scary.
In a world where almost everything is digital nowadays, how could I stand out?
How could I make my education, job history, and everything else that goes into a resume look different than the multitude of other resumes submitted on CareerBuilder?
How could I even get someone to look at my resume among the virtual stack of others clogging up their inbox?
After struggling through these questions, my wife came up with an idea:
“You’re a writer and a blogger. You’re trying to find a job that involves writing. What if you wrote your cover letter like you write a blog?”
You mean do something different? Take a risk? Try something that others aren’t doing? But what if they laugh at me? Ignore me? Reject me?
But here’s the thing: the hiring managers already were ignoring me and rejecting me. And if they laughed at me, well, at least it meant they had seen my application. So I gave it a shot. No more generic cover letter. I wrote a cover letter like a blog…from the heart. It was personal, witty at times, and it focused on the company I was applying to. (Sample Cover Letter.)
And guess what happened?
I started to get calls for interviews. And during my interviews, do you know what I heard each time?
That was the best cover letter I’ve ever read.
Seriously, the people interviewing me weren’t talking about my resume, work history, or strengths and weaknesses. They could see one of my strengths right in front of them, and they were asking me about it.
Thankfully, I accepted a great job in digital communications in April 2014 after a friend of mine sent my resume and cover letter to a friend at the company that would hire me. When I sat down with my team leader on my first day, he said to me, “I read the first paragraph of your cover letter and knew I wanted to hire you. It was passionate and innovative, the kind of writing we need on our team.”
My network got me in the door. My cover letter got me a job.
And this got me to thinking…
Too often in life, we ignore our strengths and focus on our weaknesses. We try to improve upon the things we’re not good at and spend less time on the things that we already do great. And while it’s noble to seek this sort of growth, the reality is, the world needs our strengths. If I had focused on making the weak parts of my resume stronger, they may have only looked average at best. In the meantime, the companies interviewing me would have never recognized my ability to write.
What are your strengths? What do you do well? How can you use those gifts to serve the world?
Maybe you aren’t looking for a job, but perhaps focusing on your strengths could help you get that promotion.
Or maybe you aren’t looking for a promotion, but perhaps focusing on your strengths could help you grow your own business.
Or maybe you aren’t looking to grow a business, but perhaps focusing on your strengths could help you be the wife/mother or husband/father you are called to be.
We’re all unique. God created us that way. And given the current state of our world, perhaps if we all focused on our strengths, we could find the world as it was created to be.
Question: What is one gift or talent you need to share more with the world? (Share your thoughts and inspire others in the comments below.)
