Liz Ryan

A Pain Letter is like a cover letter, but it is much more powerful than a cover letter is. A Pain Letter doesn't talk about you, the way a traditional cover letter does. It talks about the letter's recipient, instead -- your hiring manager. Your…

If you're job-hunting you have probably noticed that filling out online job applications is the worst possible way to get a job. Most of the time, you never heard a peep back from an employer after you've spent an hour or more completing their online…

If you ask anyone who's job-hunting "What's it like to job-hunt these days?" you will likely get the answer "It's hard. It's frustrating." If you ask me, whose job is to survey the landscape of the post-millennium workplace and help people navigate…

Isabel: I've been hearing about Pain Letters. They sound unpleasant! Liz: That's funny! They are pleasant. A Pain Letter is a letter that you compose to a hiring manager. Isabel: A hiring manager? Liz: Yeah, any manager who has a job opening. Their…

A Pain Letter is a new-millennium alternative to a cover letter. It's a letter. It has black or blue ink on a white page, but that's about all that a Pain Letter has in common with a cover letter. When you send a cover letter with a resume into some…

The number one question people ask us is "How do I write a Pain Letter? Give me the story!" Here is the story. You might want to wait until you have fifteen or twenty minutes to dive into this topic before you start reading, because this story…

If you've stepped outside the velvet ropes of traditional job search to write your first Pain Letter, congratulations! You've entered the high-altitude job market where dreaded Applicant Tracking Systems have nothing to do with the action. People get…