I hired this guy because of his LinkedIn message.

We receive 5-10 resumes a week. Maybe more. I've lost count and send most to the archive folder. Why? Because most are so unimpressive. 

Let me count the ways: generic subject lines, lack of true digital or advertising/marketing experience, and template (fill in company name) email cover letters. 

After a while, an executive like myself just becomes jaded and hands them all off to someone else to handle. 

I love my stories of how I landed each of the jobs that formed my career. And I had almost lost all hope in this generation of job seekers until Glenn Winters sent me a LinkedIn message late last year. 

Here's the LinkedIn letter that won Glenn Winters a job at Cement - my advertising and marketing agency.  

Hi Alaina,

You changed my life 3.5 years ago and I wanted to say thanks.

I came to a “Learn how to not suck at Facebook” class that you held at Cement. My friend Greg Turner invited me on a whim and I came. I was a month away from graduating at Ohio State, had just started an internship at Ohio Right to Life in the Key Bank building right around the corner from you guys and knew nothing about the online world.

That workshop was the first time I'd heard about SEO, social media for business and saw that people could be creative on the Internet and get paid for it. I took the handout packet home that night and referenced it at my internship for months afterwards.

So now I guess I’m writing to you because somehow you connected with me on LinkedIn and I think it’s important to encourage people and acknowledge when good things happen!

When I graduated and realized I didn’t want to teach with my English degree, it was a scary precipice to be standing on.

But! Through that Facebook workshop, you showed me that there was a way to be creative, use stories to change people’s lives and work hard online to get the small things right. And that excited me and gave me hope that I might be able to do work that I found immensely exciting and worthwhile.

So for the last two years, I’ve been at a car dealership in Delaware running their social media, working with our website company to stay sharp, making people happy with online reputation management and just really digging into this dealership and the Delaware community.

I’ve been doing some freelance work on my own on UpWork and have lately been really into copywriting, which I know was a first love of yours. When I look back at my life, things have tended to happen in three year chunks. Three years ago your actions led me down what has become a very rewarding chunk and I wanted to say thank you for playing a small yet significant part in that! I hope you’re well!

I read your recent “10 Ways” post and I’m glad to see your last three year chunk has been formative and vulnerable as well! Thank you again for using your talents for good and being faithful to the small things: their reach goes far beyond what you can even measure!

-Glenn Winters

• On 11/17/2015, Alaina Shearer said the following:

  This made my night. Thanks so much, Glenn! Sometimes I feel like it's all for not - the hard work it takes to build a business and be "crazy" about digital. To know your professional course was changed (for the better) because of a workshop I gave is pretty outstanding.

I then made an introduction to Patrick Locy and Seth Gray and they hired Glenn a few weeks later after screening his experience and all of that jazz. 

Here's what Glenn did that others do not: 

• Showed his admiration for Cement and our culture, in this case, on a personal level because I had led that particular workshop.
• Demonstrated his willingness and capacity to learn, take that knowledge, and apply it to his internship and then his full time job (at a car dealership, people!). Rocking it wherever he could in order to gain the hands on experience he needed to propel his career. That's what it's all about and that's what we look for. And, I know from past experience that car dealership digital marketing is no joke. 
• He also showed an example of going above and beyond his day job for more digital experience. 
• Expressed the understanding that we all evolve and change and ... learn! 

With that said, I just know there are talented people out there completely missing the mark and shooting themselves in the foot before they even get that foot in the door for an interview by sending generic resumes via email. 

Stop it. Just stop doing it. Stop sending me your generic resumes.

Show us your work. Show us what you've done. Show us you love the s&*t out of what you do, or tell us why you love Cement and want to be here. 

Today, Glenn is a happy Cementer and loving his new digs, his new job and his newfound knowledge. He's also completely killing it from a performance stand point.

Just goes to show that putting yourself out on a limb to make a real connection with a potential employer pays off big time. Go figure. 

You can say "congratulations" to Glenn and connect with him here.

About the Author: 

Alaina Shearer, a popular personality, coveted speaker and provocative marketer who never shies away from a challenge founded her content marketing focused agency, Cement Marketing, in 2009 at the cusp of the digital marketing revolution. The firm, proudly based in Columbus, Ohio, is now one of the leading digital marketing agency in the Midwest with over 25 local and national clients.

Like this post? Read more from Alaina, "The Ten Ways I Transformed My Management Style to Save My Business".