Choosing Verbs That Drive Employers to Action

From: Karen Silins

As you've seen, word selection is important when it comes to describing your qualities and skills. But it's equally important in the context of describing what you've accomplished in your professional life and how you were able to do those things.

A cover letter is a sales letter. It's your personal career advertisement, just like commercials on TV or ads in the paper. It is, therefore, in your best interest to follow the role models when positioning yourself as a product.

Think about the PR professionals who create advertising campaigns. Do they use neutral words or write copy that is vague or beats around the bush? Have you ever seen an item advertised as "pretty good" or "nice" or "okay"?

NO! And why not? There's one simple reason: modesty does not sell. No one wants to buy a product that's merely good enough or whose manufacturers aren't certain of its quality and merit. No one will purchase an item sitting on a bottom shelf, gathering dust, if its competitors are situated at eye-level, packaged in colorful boxes, with attractive key words and recommendations visible for the entire world to see.

Moreover, no one wants to buy a product that doesn't have an obvious, identifiable purpose. You need to show that you have exactly what the employer wants in an employee. You want to be specific, not generic.

While you certainly don't want to be too flashy, aggressive, or dishonest in your cover letter, you have to get people to notice you. That means you can't be wishy-washy or modest.

The best way to ensure you attract the right kind of attention is to craft a cover letter that uses precise, active verbs to describe what you've have done so far in your career. These action words must be full of life. Their vitality will give your cover letter a striking "color" that will catch any employer's eye.

To illustrate how this works, let's consider two examples. The first is a "ho-hum" version of an applicant's accomplishments, using dry, dull verbs:

This language is too plain. It suggests the applicant is not assertive enough to explain his accomplishments. It demonstrates a wall-flower personality that's not at all conducive to the high-level position that the job-seeker wants.

Now consider this revised version of that excerpt from a cover letter:

This is true marketing lingo and it will grab the employer's attention. Why? Because it's assertive and shows the writer can say exactly what he means. He's capable of using words that not only clearly express what happened, but also make the reader want to learn more.

For instance, "giving" other people responsibilities sounds pretty dull. It sounds passive, as though the applicant is merely an agent through which responsibility passes.

Substituting "delegated" for "giving" makes all the difference. This action verb is assertive and energetic, and it shows the applicant as someone who really makes things happen. He's an authoritative figure who assigns responsibilities according to the company's organizational structure and oversees tasks to ensure they're done correctly. Now the employer thinks, "This is someone who really could lead my sales team effectively."

So you see, a simple word change can suddenly cast the applicant in an entirely new light. But don't just take my word for it. It's human resource experts – the very people who do the hiring – who tell us they want to see cover letters with a sense of energy. They want to be confident the person they hire will put that energy to work for them immediately.

They don't want to choose someone who has to be dragged through the training program and forced to knuckle down and take responsibility. They want to read the cover letter and feel, in the words of one expert, "This candidate doesn't just want the job – he wants to do it well, and now!"

Karen Silins has been a professional resume and cover letter writer for 16 years and is the acting president and executive board member of the Association of Online Resume & Career Professionals

For more information about writing a cover letter that will grab the employer’s attention, please visit: http://www.breakthrough-cover-letters.com/