Today’s Plan:
- Cover Letters Intro
- Drafting Cover Letters
- Examining Sample Cover Letters
- Optional: Building a Linkedin Profile
- Following-Up on a Job Application or Interview
Cover Letters
The ABO entry for “Application Cover Letters” [pp. 36-41] identifies 3-4 purposes for your cover letter:
- Introduce you as a candidate with the skills that can contribute to the particular organization
- Explain what particular job interests you (or why you are interested in the advertised position
- Illustrate via specific examples qualifications in your resume that match the position
- Signify your desire/availability for an interview (this is a phatic closing gesture)
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend doing things in that order. But you might. It is tricky–you are playing a kind of meta-game with a reader (since the rhetorical purpose of your document is super obvious: GIVE ME A JOB). The game concerns how skillfully/subtly you can perform within this charged situation. You want to consider tone–how do you come off as someone who is hard-working and professional while also not sounding too formal and/or stiff? Unless the job advertisement and your online research suggests that they are a formal environment. Essentially, how good are you at reading the room?
Here’s what the cover letter shouldn’t do: it shouldn’t just summarize your resume. It should select one or two skills from the resume and flush them out, providing context and details. Bottom line: TURN A GREAT ACCOMPLISHMENT INTO A STORY. Don’t tell me you have experience researching grants, tell me how you partnered with the ARC of Weld County to identify and research, using both the State of Colorado and the Foundation Center databases, 13 specific grants for non-profit organizations focused on children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Or how you worked with a team of designers to produce flyers for both print and digital distribution for 8 upcoming events. Mock ups of these flyers are available on your website. Whatever. Aristotle reminds us that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end–a problem, your solution, and a measurement/assessment of the results.
The cover letter is your opportunity to tell a story about the best work you’ve done. Caveat: the best work that is relative to the position. It is an opportunity to show a few awesome things (the resume is your opportunity to tell them about all the things).
A few other resources:
- How to Apply for a Job You’re Not Sure You are Qualified For
- Example of cover letter with lack of relevant experience
How I Conceptualize Cover Letters
As we discussed last week (and I imagine we will discuss further tonight), a big challenge with resumes concerns constructing a document that can beat a machine and at the same time engage a human. It is a balancing act.
At least that is one hurdle with which we don’t need to deal with cover letters. The challenge of the cover letter is to convey, in a few short paragraphs, the value (explicitly?) and energy (implicitly?) you will add to an organization. In addition to being a high stakes writing sample, it is also an elevator pitch, an introduction, a first date, a sales proposal, an intellectual and professional biography. A lot has to happen quickly.
I’ll offer the following outline for cover letters:
- First paragraph. First sentence: position for which you are applying. “Thesis statement” as to why you are a good fit and/or interested in the position [pay attention to the specifics in your add, look for tests/prompts/possibilities].
- Second paragraph. Storytime. Chances are your thesis involves something you can do. Tell a story about the time you did the thing. Are you applying for a marketing job? Tell a story about how you developed content for a social media channel. Applying for a grant writing position? Tell a story about the time your under/graduate class partnered with a local non-profit and you researched/developed stuff and/or liaised with folks to do things. Ideally, your story should have a what I did–what effect that had narrative structure, but it doesn’t have to. The point here is to take one thing you discuss in the resume, the best thing, and turn it into a paragraph of meaningful prose.
- Third paragraph. Do you have a second awesome story? Cool. Tell that too! If not, then think about how you can translate your academic success and abilities into language that shows you are a strong fit for the position. If the ad stresses personality, then can you use something like the psychometric test to sell yourself? Is there something that the ad indicates as a requirement that you can indicate you are familiar with (or something similar, that given your familiarity with Adobe Photoshop and Premiere, you are confident that you will be able to learn InDesign quickly and/or given your interest in expanding into digital marketing, you are currently enrolled in a HubSpot social media marketing certification course?)
- Concluding paragraph. Open with a reiteration of your interest in the position. Close with the standard stuff–you look forward to an interview to further discuss your qualifications / the position (is it about them? Or about you?)
What does a story look like? Here’s one from Hannah Hehn:
In the past semester I earned the title Creative Director of The Crucible Literary Magazine. In this post I’ve overseen the production of our Fall 2021 issue, working with the editors, editor-in-chief, and social media directors on the content, layout, themes, and promotional materials for the edition. This semester we worked with a document design class here to design the cover and internal visuals as part of a contest. This entailed consulting with the design class as well as The Crucible’s President and Vice President extensively to make final decisions. Working individually played a large role as well, both in creating a possible internal design for the edition, and in editing the final products for printing within our tight deadlines.
And here’s one by Carl McDonald:
During my education, I took part in a team tasked with assisting a local nonprofit, Santa Cops of Weld County, to find and apply for grants. This project included locating grants through various grant databases, including the CRC America and the Foundation Directory Online, familiarizing ourselves with the grant application process, and writing the proposal itself. I focused my efforts on a Build-A-Bear Charitable Giving grant, which procured 120 stuffed bears for at-risk kids the following Christmas.
I also assisted Impact Locally, a nonprofit in Denver, in the same capacity as an intern this summer. I worked remotely, giving weekly updates about my research and progress. At the end of my internship, we were selected by Colorado Blueprint to End Hunger for a substantial grant to continue food distribution to the homeless through the Covid19 crisis.
Sample Cover Letters
I’ve got a few to examine. Maybe one more.
Building a Linkedin Profile
Let’s just say that this video by Professor Heather Austin provides perspective.
- Basics: Get a Headshot
- Slogan: Max of 300 words
- About: Split into Summary (Who you are, who you help, how you help them) and the Expertise (block of resume-style skills). Keep paragraphs short.
- Skills: Pick the “big” three. Then a handful more.
- Experience: Be descriptive
Resources:
- UNC Office of Advancement, free professional headshots
- Adding symbols to a linkedin profile (it is simply copy/paste)
Let’s talk follow-up (FlexJobs). But first, a scene.
