-: The changing career cover letter
and the email script if applicable.
So please only watch this lecture
if you want to change careers.
And we'll talk more about networking
to help you change careers
in a networking section of this course.
So the script to use in the cover letter exercise
is similar to the one that we used
in the introductory lesson of this section.
It's so incredibly hard to change careers
but like anything else in life
anything is possible if you also use your heart
and take your time to think of a unique
and personal way to change careers.
So how do we do this?
Well you reach out to people only
that have a quality that's similar to you
and then you ask them for help.
So in the changing career cover letter or email script,
and I'll include both,
we need to keep it short as always.
I mention at the top and at the bottom if we can
what we have in common with this person
and then we need to say what makes us unique
for the position and show that we're hungry
and willing to work for it.
And when you're a bit older and you're going after a job
where there are younger people
you gotta especially when you meet
you gotta let them know you're
not arrogant, you're a team player,
you're not an extreme type A personality,
and you're just, you're humble.
You're humble and that can come across in writing too.
Use the word humble, et cetera.
So how do we write this letter?
Well per this photo here, image,
here's the structural framework of the cover letter
or email script.
Now although email or cover letter will be short
we really need to include five things
in this order if we can.
Number one, establish a personal bond.
Number two, what you have already done
to show that you can do the job.
So what have you already done that shows you can do the job.
Number three, what you are doing now
to show that you can do the job.
Number four, sincere gratitude.
And number five, end with a personal bond
like the class of 19 whatever.
So the top is the personal bond
and the bottom is the personal bond
in the middle you've got what you've already done
what you're doing now, and gratitude.
So I included a template attached to this lecture
that does that it's called cover letter changing careers
and feel free to use it and save it in Microsoft Word
as a pdf or whatever you want to do if you email it.
Now if you open this document
of course delete the yellow highlights after you read them
and incorporate the contents
of yellow-highlighted suggestions in your cover letter.
So in this example we have someone
submitting a cover letter that wants to switch careers
and become a software programmer
and the cover letter writer loves software
but this person doesn't have software experience
so he or she mentions what they are doing
to fill this gap.
So I'm going to copy and paste
the non-yellow core script of the cover letter
and it looks like this.
Their first name, hope all is well, per our conversation,
please find attached my resume, I'm also from Mississauga,
and I also attended McGill University,
please let me know if you have 20 minutes
to please meet with me because I would love to humbly,
humbly ask you for some career advice
and to discuss my passion for the technology industry.
I have software experience
when I took computer science courses at McGill University,
and I have taken many other
software programming courses during the evenings
which I'm very passionate about.
Thank you very much for your time,
I really appreciate it, sincerely Chris Haroun,
McGill University, class of 2015.
I am that young, okay, I'm kidding.
So lets review the five framework items
and discuss how we use them here.
Number one, we established the personal bond
at the beginning by listing university and hometown
you have in common right.
Number two, we discussed what we have already done
to show that you can do the job
by saying that we did programming in school.
It might have been a while ago but it's okay,
just list it.
Number three, we said that we are doing programming
at night now to show that we can do the job.
It shows that we're proactive as well.
Number four, we really showed our sincere gratitude
right before our signature near the end.
And lastly number five, we also ended
with a personal bond by making our title
McGill University, class of whatever year.
Now that we have the content nailed
for this changing careers cover letter
what do we put in the email script
if we want to email the text of the cover letter
instead of attaching an actual cover letter right.
Well step one, what is the title of the email?
I want to use the word hi and nothing more.
Why? Because most emails from people we don't know
that states the purpose of the email
in the subject line never get opened.
We want this person to think
hmm, who is this person again?
Then when they open the email
they see the personal connection.
So step two is this, what are the contents
of the email message?
Just copy and paste the contents of the cover letter
starting at the use of their name in the cover letter
all the way down to the bottom of the cover letter okay.
So in our case it'll look like this.
It's simply their name, then three very short paragraphs,
less is more.
Now I also attached the email template to this lecture
if you want to send and email script
with an attached resume
instead of just attaching the cover letter.
So the name of the attached email script is
email script changing careers.doc
or document for Microsoft Word.
Now one last thing please.
What if you're asked email a cover letter as an attachment
and a resume as an attachment?
So in this case it's actually okay to be redundant.
Send the email script we just spoke about
and also the attached cover letter
in the format we also spoke about in this section.