\u201cYou don\u2019t stand a chance responding to a job ad through the Black Hole machine,\u201d I agreed. \u201cBut we don\u2019t want anybody to waste their time and squash their mojo pitching resumes into those things. They\u2019re useless. You\u2019re going to write to your hiring manager directly, and talk about his or her own movie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow do I know the movie?\u201d asked Amy. \u201cI was busy with my animal-shelter movie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all pretty much the same movie,\u201d I said. \u201cYou only need to let your hiring manager<\/a> understand that you get what he or she is up against. That\u2019s the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Amy saw that a logistics company was opening a 200-person call center two towns away from her new home. She composed a Pain Letter and sent it in the mail to her hiring manager, the VP of Operations. We found him (Jack) in three seconds on LinkedIn<\/a>. Amy attached her Human-Voiced Resume to the Pain Letter with one staple in the corner before she mailed the packet to Jack.<\/p>\n Amy ignored the jargon and long list of requirements included in the job ad for a Customer Support Manager that Jack had running on all the job boards<\/a>. She talked to Jack about the pain behind his job ad, instead.<\/p>\n Dear Jack,<\/em><\/p>\n Congratulations on breaking ground on your new Call Center in Woodfield! It\u2019s got to be a good feeling to add 200 jobs to the local economy during the worst downturn in recent memory. Hats off to you and your team on Acme Logistics\u2019 year-over-year growth record.<\/em><\/p>\n I can only imagine that bringing your new Call Center<\/a> online without missing a beat serving Acme\u2019s FedEx and Acme\u2019s other national accounts is an issue high on your radar screen. It\u2019s no small feat to hire and train 200 agents on new processes and build your Call Center infrastructure simultaneously.<\/em><\/p>\n When I was the Executive Director of HappyHeart Animal Shelter in the DC area, I had a similar challenge. I had to build policies and systems on the fly while overseeing 150 animal adoptions a week, keeping up with constant regulatory and healthcare changes and managing a staff of 30 and a $10M annual budget, all in an atmosphere punctuated by snarls, barks and yelps \u2014 and then there were the animals!<\/em><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve got a minute to talk about Call Center operations, building a team quickly and positioning your new facility for success, my contact information is on my attached resume<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Best,<\/em><\/p>\n Amy Smith<\/em><\/p>\n Amy knew she was the most random candidate ever, so she threw a joke into her Pain Letter. She took a chance. If I\u2019m going to job-hunt as myself, she figured, why not have fun with it? Amy\u2019s phone rang two days later. It was Jack on the line.<\/p>\n \u201cYou really think you could pull this project together?\u201d he asked. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be fast and furious around here for the next two years, at least.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s talk about it,\u201d said Amy. She and Jack met. Jack was enchanted. He\u2019d met dozens of certified and industry-trained Call Center Managers with endless lists of initials after their names, but he hadn\u2019t met any with Amy\u2019s spunk and resilience. Think about an animal shelter<\/a>, a place far more real and earthy than any call center on earth. An adorable stray kitten comes in and is showered with hugs, and another poor animal arrives past help and must be put down minutes later.<\/p>\n Jack saw in Amy that she could handle whatever circumstances threw at her. In the end, he couldn\u2019t care less about the formal Call Center training, the certifications and the industry-specific jargon. He needed a trusted second-in-command and an advisor, because it\u2019s lonely at the top.<\/p>\n Jack made Amy the job offer<\/a> as he walked her to her car. \u201cI\u2019m going to think about it,\u201d she said. \u201cI really appreciate the offer, and I\u2019m glad to know you, Jack.\u201d<\/p>\n Amy called me when she got home. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize that a corporate Call Center is like the Starship Enterprise in Hell,\u201d she said. \u201cI can\u2019t hack that. I have to see sunlight. I can\u2019t hire and train people and stick a headset on them, with two ten-minute breaks in the morning and two in the afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n Amy passed on the job offer, but her mojo zoomed off the charts. She knew she\u2019d get a good job. She only had to zero in with laser focus on a specific hiring manager\u2019s pain and then reach out to say \u201cI understand your movie.\u201d<\/p>\n A month later Amy was managing an art gallery. \u201cI don\u2019t think of this as rebranding myself,\u201d she said. \u201cI think of it as reclaiming the power I never knew I had.\u201d<\/p>\n But of course! You can do the same thing. Don\u2019t torture yourself reading job ads peppered with impossible lists of Essential Requirements. The truth is that hiring managers in pain don\u2019t really care about those bullets. HR<\/a> screeners care, and that\u2019s why we avoid them and go straight to the guy with the pain. Try it!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This article was written by Liz Ryan from Forbes and was legally licensed through the\u00a0NewsCred\u00a0publisher network. Learn more about\u00a0SmartRecruiters<\/a>, the only platform managers and candidates love.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"my-first-pain-letter-comic-strip\"](\"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/my-first-pain-letter-comic-strip.jpg\")
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