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Cover letters
Skoal Cat
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I love my resume. I think it is pretty damned strong. I know what a resume does. However, I think I am really missing the point of cover letters. They exist to make the resume more personal, or to provide context, right? But can't the resume also do that on its own?
What am I supposed to write?
What am I supposed to write?
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With that being said, I suck at them, and I am not a hiring manager and have never been in any kind of management. I'd offer up mine as an example, but my documents are all on a backup hard drive while I wait to get my primary drive RMA'ed.
For example, your resume is where you put your basic educational info, e.g.
UNDERGRADUATE COLLEGE
Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, May 2009
Cum laude, Senior Honors Thesis: "Esoteric Academic Nonsense"
Your cover letter is where you say something like:
My liberal arts undergraduate education greatly developed my critical reading and writing skills. By graduation I was able to process difficult texts quickly and carefully, then summarize and synthesize their concepts into concise analytical compositions. These skills translate well into tasks involving editing, research, and analysis.
You should NOT say something like:
In 2009 I graduated from Undergraduate College, where I majored in Political Science and was recognized for my academic achievement with a "cum laude" award. After graduation I began my job at....
It's helpful to remember that the resume is generally the first thing a hiring manager will see. The cover letter is what they see after they decide not to throw your resume in the trash. They don't want or need you to repeat what you've already said in the resume, and they don't need you to explain the obvious. (If you graduated at the top of your class, no need to say "I was a very good student.") What they want to know is why YOU think that you would be the best fit for the open position, and how the experiences you detailed on your resume can be parlayed into your work performance.
Also, if you have any weird listings or transitions on your resume -- say, you went from being a broadcast TV intern to a retail store manager to a math teacher within two years -- your cover letter is the place to explain what you were thinking and why those experiences were important to you.
In short, I think a good way to go about a cover letter is to think of it as a three-paragraph answer to this:
So I've read your resume, and I'm interested to hear more about your experiences. My question to you now is, "What do YOU think makes you the best fit for this position?"
1) Intro paragraph, listing the position.
2) General description of your skills - think high-level like "Inventory Management," and paragraph ends with a very strong skill of yours.
3) Paragraph 3 is a story of how you will apply said skill most effectively - "save 2000 kittens."
4)Final paragraph is a call to action - "hire me" - with a statement of when you will be in touch with them. This is assuming you have a person to be in touch with. If not, state when you expect to hear back from them.
Your cover letter should state things on your resume and how they apply to the job description. For example, if the job description says "Experience with programming GUI's in Java an asset", your cover letter should say "I am experienced at programming GUI's in Java as shwon by my time in XYZ position".
I'm curious, which one is right? Would help give me some context for the cover letter (I too am lost on the purpose of a cover letter).
Neither. Your network and connection to the company/hiring person is what gets your resume read. What gets your resume read is someone who matters in the field calling them and saying "hey this guy I know is applying, his name is Demerdar, he's a good guy, make sure you read his resume."
Then your resume says "this is what I know how to do and have done before" and your cover letter says "this is how all the stuff on my resume makes me the perfect applicant for this job", connecting your skills on the resume to the needs of the position.
I guess it may be different at other organizations? But the point still stands: your resume and cover letter do different things, and you shouldn't use your cover letter to re-iterate or explain the obvious. You should use it to contextualize your skills and knowledge (so that the hiring manager can understand exactly what you have to offer the company), explain away any weird bits in your resume, and to explain why you're a uniquely good candidate for the job.
One more tip from my own experience: the first line of readers of your resume or cover letter will often be a young associate or even an intern, because that's bitch work. If you think a 20-something would read your cover letter and find it cheesy or arrogant or pretentious, you're probably right. Don't forget your audience!
So to add onto chopper dave we'll throw in some admin experience for this purpose
My liberal arts undergraduate education greatly developed my critical reading and writing skills. By graduation I was able to process difficult texts quickly and carefully, then summarize and synthesize their concepts into concise analytical compositions. These skills translate well into tasks involving editing, research, and analysis.
* Coordinated data entry, production and shipment of approximately $30 million per year in widgets
* Proficiency in Microsoft Business Suite (Excel, Word, Outlook, Access)
* Supervised a team of 20 admins handling widget trade shows
In addition, I have enjoyed a reputation for being a very hard-working, intelligent, and industrious individual. My motivation is to completely utilize my accumulated experience and knowledge to the fullest extent possible, becoming a valuable asset for the right company. I would appreciate the opportunity to interview with you. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
What I did is elaborate on my skills and experience, but I made sure to indicate specific things about how these applied to the job/company.
It helped in my case that the company website had a "realistic job preview" pdf. I basically made my cover letter address the main points covered in that pdf.
So perhaps for any job you want to write a cover letter for, try to identify specific job-relevant things that you can then address in the letter? Rather than only elaborate on the resume. Like a resume is all about you. The cover letter breaches the gap between what you offer (resume) and what the company wants.
There does seem to be a general format for these letter as well - basically the actual format of the letter, thanking them in the appropriate place, indicating that you will follow up with this application, etc etc. You can find this type of stuff in any cover letter template from the internet.
The second is going to be right more often than not. It is much more efficient for a hiring manager to quickly scan applicants' resumes to eliminate candidates than it is to read cover letters.
Your cover letter is another opportunity to sell yourself. The goal is to explain how what it says on your resume is going to make you awesome at the job your applying for. A well written cover letter also demonstrates to the hiring manager that you are able to form coherent thoughts and express them effectively.
Your cover letter is the body of the email that you write to apply for the job. So it needs to briefly summarize why they should be bothered to open up the attachment your resume is in (ie. your suitability for the job).
If you don't write a cover letter that would mean that the body of your email is blank or woefully short which seems like it would get your resume attachment ignored as a probable trojan.
Of course, old fashioned professions may have both of these things on paper, and I'm not sure of the protocol for this.
Actually, it's a good idea to include your cover letter in the body of your e-mail AND attach it as a PDF. This makes it easier for human resources staff to find it, read it, and print it, which is good. And making HR staffers' jobs easier for them can sometimes have a surprising influence on whether or not they choose to move you on to the next stage.
So if the projects I've completed that are relevant, eg did layout on 6 magazine issues, edited 3, helped launched a new quarterly publication, and have my own weekly column in a local paper, I should have those in my resume but explain why its important to the job I'm applying for in the cover letter?
Yes. Also use the cover letter to give examples of specific things you did that had a positive impact on the company. Like if one of those edits or layouts was something you were assigned to on a short notice for some reason, and you still managed to hit the deadline with a satisfactory product. Or if a particular layout was nominated for some sort of award or something.
Hell, even if you got higher-than-average performance ratings, I'd probably put that in my cover letter as well.
I'd keep the cover letter to major things - "Here's the awesome shit I can do and now will do for you," and the resume backs it up with details and shows you have an understanding of the industry's jargon.
At least, that's what I use my cover letters for, to show them that I've done research on them.
This seems like a good idea. It shows you have enough interest in their company that you've made an effort to apply specifically to them, and it's not just a boiler plate type thing.
If the ad was brief and precise, my letter was brief and precise. If the ad was vague or buzzword heavy, so was my letter. If the ad was an eight paragraph babble about how wonderfully enthusiastic their team was and how much fun they have at work, my letter was multiple paragraphs about how awesome and fun I am to work with.
I could even regurgitate their own phrases back at them (very carefully of course) and like MT said, show that I had done my research. If they had a website or any social media presence I might mention things that I had seen there and why they indicated to me that I might be a good fit.
As for which gets read first, it entirely depends on the company and whether or not they are looking at printed copies. I always depended on the fact that my cover letter would be read first, as my replies were almost exclusively via email.
I had to pay close attention to the ads to determine what format they wanted the resume in. Some places only wanted PDFs. Some specified Word attachments only. Some wanted the whole kit and kaboodle copied and pasted into the email. If they didn't specify, I would put the cover letter as the text of the email, then attach my resume as a PDF.
I got lots of interviews so I must have been doing something right. The lady that eventually hired me told me that she received loads of applications from people that had obviously not read her ad and were just blanket posting the same resume and cover letter to everyone on the board. Those all got trashed. A little research and personalization goes a long way, apparently.
While you make a valid point, the argument can certainly be made for quality over quantity. I think taking the time to actually research the company and tailor your cover letter (and sometimes even resume) to the specific job would show, as opposed sending out a rote, boiler-plate spam to every possible option.
The point of a resume, and even moreso a cover letter, is to stand out. To set yourself apart. You're not really doing that if you're giving everybody the exact same song and dance.
Did it work for you? Because I find that a lot of people who are having difficulty finding work actually send *too many* applications, not too few. People often want "a job, any job" but employers want more than just a warm body, and you have to put yourself in their place to understand what they want to hear. They want to hear why you in particular would be good for the job. For jobs you particularly want, it can be worth tailoring both the CV and the cover letter to the job. It's better to send 10 perfect applications a day than spam 1000 boiler-plate applications.
Of course, this only applies to "career" type jobs, so you can probably have a set of cover letters if you are applying to fast food/retail and the like.
1. No lists. It's a letter.
2. Show. Don't tell. A reputation is meaningless if there's no one to attest for it, you're better off giving a specific example of why you're hard working.
3. No empty words. Everyone considers themselves "intelligent", everyone "wants to use their experience and knowledge", everyone with an undergrad can read a "difficult" text and Jesus christ anyone with a undergrad is capable of processing, summarizing and synthesizing information. Unless you're applying for a company where they don't know what skills get taught in college, you're writing empty words.
You're better off giving an example of the kind of research you did in college, say what you liked about it and why you were successful. When you're talking about your current job, tell them about that time you were responsible for a big project and you got everyone involved to make the best widget trade show of 1989.
A related question. What's the practical difference between a CV and a resume? And should I use one over the other if it's not specified?
3DS: 0044-3334-2157
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Usually, UK=CV USA=Resume.
I think sometimes in the USA "CV" can mean a more detailed resume. See link
http://jobsearch.about.com/cs/curriculumvitae/f/cvresume.htm
I was told the opposite about lists. A friend of mine that did recruiting said that after going threw a thousand resumes and cover letters in a 3 day period she would just look at the cover letter for a few seconds see if anything caught her eye, scan the resume real quick and throw it away if she didn't see anything that caught her eye. Bullet lists draw the eye and adding the list increased the responses I got. Also all the research I did was in my resume and I was told not to add anything that was in my resume, but honestly in many entry level jobs the projects you get involved with aren't very eye catching. You did invoicing for widgets for 8 hours and tried not to get tea-bagged by the production manager. So as opposed to making shit up you do the best you can to try not to get your resume thrown away.
When I started out it would take me 30 minutes to an hour to write each letter. So I saved them all in a big word document. After the second week or so I had a long list of descriptive paragraphs I could copy and paste from at will. I would pull what I wanted and paste it into a smaller document, proofread the snot out of it, move sentences around for clarity, etc. Then save as a pdf or copypaste into the email as the ad requested, hit send, done. I got to so it took me 15-20 minutes to answer a posting, depending on detail. I could do 3 or 4 of them in the hour between when I got home and when I made dinner. Considering I would find 2-3 posts I was even interested in applying for on a good day, I felt that the quality over quantity model served me well.
Also it helped that I had a job, it was just that I hated it. But I didn't feel the need to apply to every possible position I might have been qualified for, which directly affected how much time I was willing to invest in the ones that I did.
In science (or at least biological sciences), typically everyone uses CV's since things like publication/presentation listings often go longer than a typical resume would allow. I think it's basically an issue of 'when what you actually want to judge the person on is never going to fit in a resume format, we might as well just use CV's'.
I'd probably default to resume in the US unless it's either otherwise specified, or you know that the field typically uses CV's
Why do you have all your research on your CV? Isn't research part of college education in the US? I only have my theses on my CV. I also only list the title of it, people can google for it if they want to know more. I will elaborate on specific research in my cover letter if it is relevant to the job opening.
I don't think most companies will read cover letters before resumes, they'd probably first filter out CVs that are not proper enough for the job (years of exp, college education, etc). I use bullet points in my CV, but in a proper letter (which a cover letter is!) I write proper paragraphs with proper sentences. Of course, none of us has any research on hand on what kind of CVs get the best results per industry, so ymmv
· 3.8 GPA, Capstone project on the project management maturity model.
· Project management coursework includes Operations Management and Organizational Behavior.
· Business managerial coursework includes Marketing, Economics, Finance, and Accounting.
· Wrote finance research paper on using financial derivatives as a risk management strategy and
marketing research paper on forecasting and retail business analysis. Also wrote research papers on
lean business strategies and property ownership as an economic advantage.
Just how formal are the cover letters you write? To me, the cover letter is the body of the email you send with your resume attached, and in the companies I have worked for it is indeed what gets looked at first, because the guy doing the reading is trying to figure out why you sent him an email with an attached .doc file, and whether it is likely to be a trojan. You may, if you want, attach both a cover letter and resume separately, but the body of the email is still going to have to grab their attention, making it a de-facto cover letter, even if you include a more elaborate one as an attachment.
Big companies may have formal requirements for cover letters - big companies often have a lot of odd, super-formal ways of doing things - but I've had success with cover letters that basically say who I am, what I can do, and what position I am applying for. AFAIK the people reading these things like them short and to the point, because they are busy people so anything long enough to be TL;DR on a web forum is too long for a cover letter. 3 short paragraphs is good.
I refuse to put full letters in e-mail, because I have almost no influence over the lay-out, while I have full control over how it looks in a PDF-file. First impressions are priceless, some badly formatted e-mail is not going to leave a lasting impression. At my current job I send all the quotations we make as PDF-files, although we could just copy some text in an e-mail, it'd look so amateurish no one would take us seriously.
I applied for a store manager position at a tea store, so filled it with tea-related items liked, "I am seeped in experience in both inventory management..." and " I am confident I would blend into the position." Apparently they were not impressed.
Unless you are applying for a job as a visual designer, that's way excessive. For most people, as long as they spell everything right, use good grammar and don't include a wall of text, that's better than the competition. You can overthink these things. You should be thinking about how to sell your skills as a *whatever* to the employer, not about how to impress them with the beauty of your layout. As long as they can read it clearly, they are unlikely to care. If you leave out important information because it makes your layout look lop-sided, you've got your priorities wrong.
I'd never send a blank or one-sentence email, it's disrespectful to busy people to make them open up a pdf before they even know whether you are within 5 miles of what they want for the job. Remember, they get hundreds of emails a day, and they are looking for excuses to throw away a few.
YMMV, especially in professions where beautiful documents are key.
Cover letters have the following goals:
1- indicating which post you're applying for
2- why you think you're a good match for the post (highlighting the elements in your CV that are most relevant, elaborating a little, especially when you have some important details that don't fit in the CV, but are great points in your favor)
3- showing some kind of interest in the target employer ("I've been hearing good things about your company in the news/in a well-known online place" or "I heard about project X / product Y you recently announced/launched.") Briefly explain why you want to work for this particular employer
4- selling yourself
You would normally tailor your CV for a particular job, but it should never say explicitly which post you're aiming for. That's a job for the cover letter.
Since a CV is just basically a list of facts about you, it doesn't argue for you. That should be done in the cover letter.
Showing interest in the target employer might seem like sucking up, but done well, it will show your enthusiasm for the job in question.
That's another point: a CV should be mostly unemotional -- a simple list of facts, showing little personality in the way it's written. You should use the cover letter to let some of your personality shine through, and one way to do it is in the enthusiasm it will contain.
Which leads to my 4th point: the CV is like your specs sheet, whereas the cover letter is your sales pitch. You might get some jobs on the strength of your "specs" alone, but if you're competing with others for the same job, specs alone probably won't be enough. A good sales pitch can make all the difference.
A CV doesn't have to be an interesting read, but a boring cover letter can kill your chances, if it ends up competing with a more interesting cover letter. That's why I don't recommend following rigid structures when it comes to cover letters: some people will tell you it needs to have X paragraphs, and then they'll tell you what goes into each paragraph, and they may even give you some specific formulas to use. Once you figure out what you want to say in your cover letter, just write it, and if it takes one or two paragraphs more or less than the "recommended pattern", so be it. No employer will be counting the number of paragraphs in your cover letter. Instead, they will consider the impression it gives them of you.
Put yourself in the shoes of the person who will read your CV and cover letter. Based on the requirements in the job posting, does your cover letter highlight how you're the best match for the post? Does your CV confirm this? Does your cover letter clearly communicate your enthusiasm for the job in question? Does it "sell" you well? Is the CV clearly and logically organized, making it easy to find information at a glance? If yes, then you're probably good to go.
Now, look through all your contacts (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) and try to find someone who works at the place you're aiming for, and try to get them to submit your CV and cover letter to HR. The reason for this is that if you're submitting through email, an online form, or worse, directly through the job site where you found the posting (Monster, Workopolis, that sort of thing) then it's likely that your application will first be filtered automatically, with a system that's looking for keywords and such. Only a certain percentage of applications will go through that arcane process, and you never know if you might be missing a few of the keywords that you need to get through the filters. By going through a human contact, you at least have a chance of one human reading your stuff before it proceeds to the next step (or gets rejected.) Also, many places offer referral bonuses, so the person you contacted might get a bonus if you end up being hired.
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