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The 5 minute email trick that got me 3 callbacks in a week

Last month in Columbus I was sending out resumes for days with zero replies. So I flipped my approach and started writing one short paragraph about a specific thing their company did on their blog or in the news. Then I attached that paragraph to the top of my cover letter, like a conversation starter. It took 5 extra minutes per application but I got 3 interview requests in 7 days. Has anyone else tried tailoring the first line to something recent, or do you stick with a template?
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elizabethtaylor
...and honestly that's the exact same thing my friend Dana did when she was job hunting in Nashville last spring. She picked one company, saw they just launched a new recycling program at their warehouses, and wrote two sentences about how she'd managed something similar at a smaller local shop. She got a reply from the actual hiring manager within a day, not even the usual automated thing. The manager told her later that her note stood out because everyone else just said "I'm a hard worker" and she actually showed she read their stuff. She ended up getting the job, and now she's the one telling everyone to spend those five extra minutes. It's wild how such a small thing can make you feel less like a number in a pile.
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jennifer965
Depends on the job. Hiring managers still skim, templates beat a lucky guess.
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