One of the worst sounds you can hear during a job hunt is crickets. 🦗🦗🦗
You start the job search excited and perhaps nervous about where your next step will take you. You edit your resume and create a cover letter (possibly for the first time if you’re coming directly out of TV News) and start submitting them.
You find a few jobs that you know you’d be PERFECT for! And then…nothing…absolutely nothing.
The job search can be soul crushing, especially if you’re not hearing anything back from potential employers.
If you’re receiving rejection letters without the opportunity to interview, it is only a minuscule better because they’re at least acknowledging your existence.
Then, there’s the cases where you make it to the first round of interviews with someone in HR who doesn’t understand why you’d be the perfect fit for what they need! You get that foot in the door and then they slam it unceremoniously on your toes.
I was working with a coaching client last week who was searching for remote work. When she started working with me a few months ago, she was in a state of despair, feeling like she’d never get out of a toxic environment. Last week, she joined our meeting with a grin on her face.
She informed me, “I heard back from another company!” While she didn’t get the specific position she’d applied for, this was an EXTREMELY coveted company to work for and the fact that she was listed as “in consideration” for the position was a huge confidence builder. When she didn’t get the offer, they let her know they wanted her to submit an application for future openings they had. They were recruiting HER to apply for a job with them!
This was the second time in the last month she’d had companies interested in her application and she was elated! They were both companies she wanted to work for and positions that were a perfect match for her skills. And she told me the difference between her application to these two jobs and the dozens of other positions she had applied for was one thing:
I took the time to work on my cover letter like you showed me during our coaching session.
She personalizing it by telling her story and why her passion and skills aligned with the company’s mission. She used what I call my VAST (Verb-Adjective Strategic Translation) Technique© to match her language to that spoken within the company and it was successful!
The VAST Technique© works by directly connecting your experience to what an employer needs/wants using their own language. For example, if they are looking for a someone to “lead social media efforts”, a meteorologist would talk about how they “lead team coverage during a severe weather outbreak” or a weekend anchor might discuss how they “lead the newsroom on the weekend, beginning with the morning meeting all the way to a debrief after the last show.”
When it comes to job applications, quality over quantity is the name of the game so put your time and energy into fewer, high quality applications instead of sending the same materials to dozens of jobs.
If you want to spend time working on the quality of your remote job cover letter and prepare for interview questions, join me for my remote workshop, How TV News Pros Can Land a Remote Job.
