COVER LETTERS

JOB SEARCH PREPARATION

FINDING A JOB

JOB INTERVIEW

CAREER TRAINING

Broadcast Letter

Recommended format: Paragraph style

Broadcast letters are a different hybrid job search strategy and can best be summarized as merging your resume and cover letter into one document. The one distinct advantage that broadcast letters offer is that these letters avoid the knee-jerk reactions employers have to many resume and cover letter packages. These "preprogrammed" actions might include:

1. forwarding it to the human resources department;
2. setting it aside to review later; or
3. depositing it in the "circular file."

With a broadcast letter, you are delivering a personal piece of correspondence with no visual cues as to its purpose. Therefore, an individual must read (or at least peruse) your letter in order to determine its content. This, then, allows you the opportunity to communicate your message without being immediately "dismissed" as you might have been by using the more traditional approach of a cover letter with a resume.

Broadcast letters are extremely controversial. Some people praise their effectiveness, believing that they generate more interest because they eliminate the visual cues. Others deplore them, believing that they attempt to manipulate the truth, changing the reader’s perception of who you are. This, indeed, might be true. The greatest value of a broadcast letter is its ability to create a "different" picture of who you are.

Another point of controversy relating to broadcast letters is that they clearly try to circumvent the traditional human resources resume-screening process. After all, a broadcast letter is a personal letter sent directly to a senior executive. If that executive is interested in you, she will pick up the phone and call you, or perhaps route your letter to a lower-level manager who is the hiring authority for your functional area. Although it’s true that one important function of the HR department is to recruit, screen, and recommend candidates, our job-seeking clients have told us time and time again that they have benefited tremendously from conducting a "guerrilla" campaign, working around HR.

Characteristics

Broadcast letters are characterized by the following:

• Depth and quantity of information, which is greater than a traditional cover letter, as outlined in any of the other categories in this chapter.


• Number of pages. It is more than acceptable for a broadcast letter to run two or even three pages, as appropriate for a particular situation.

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