The Dreaded Cover Letter
Just in time for Halloween
Yes, You Need One.
Yes, you fear one.
Yes, she is a stinker. A snake in the grass. A chore. A bore. And something like vegetables on the dinner plate of the job application supper. Not as fun as dessert or as sexy as the appetizer of the quick-apply, but it is the stuff that fills, energizes, and informs the entirety of our ability to live, fat and full, in our professional ambitions.
It is easy to see job seeking as a series of doors that lead to rooms with some doors leading into others, ending in the winning of a position or being rejected, and so sending one back out into the hallway to start again with something else. Like, it's a ruse, a game, a series of keywords and algorithms, and little more. (Fun fact: each new year, I choose a series of words or phrases I neither want to hear and commit to ceasing to use in the coming one. “Algorithms'' is already on the list for 2023.) Though not untrue, facts are not as singular as that. Think how, in the most positive of eventualities, we get the role! What that means, along with the money, a break in the heartbreaking boredom of the endless applying, is that we are to actually work the job. That means, aside from the responsibilities and tasks, is to LIVE the identity we crafted during the application process and conduct ourselves evermore in the manner presented therein.
OK, try it this way: You know that “starting-a-new-school” kind of thing, where along with the jitters, there is the opportunity to be reborn? Were they cruel to you at the other institution? Low in the pecking order? Did you wear the mark of some renowned embarrassment? Well here, at whatever-whatever academy, you are free! The record is clean. Sins forgiven. Rules cast away. Here you can be trending and funny. Hip, the class clown, a romantic, a mystery, leader or of the pack, or shadowy lone wolf. You tell them! They, your new classmates, even want you to be exceptional. They are as bored as you were at your old school and are hoping that this new person has something going on that will shake up the serene forgetfulness of that status quo.
And so, should you wear that given band’s tee shirt, take up smoking, or boast of athletic prowess, long, long beyond those first few days, you’re gonna have to keep at it! The story you bring- in fact and equally in execution - you’ll need to live for eternity. You’ll need to know, forever know, all the lyrics, have the moves, the jokes, and all of it that you share on day one up until day 180.
Back to the scenario of job seeking: we are talking about how the version of yourself you present is the version you shall be. So, what is that? Obvious question: what is the generalized idea of the ‘character’ described in the job description, and/or informed by whatever research you choose to, or are able to, do as to their culture? Well, no. Those are all elements, but that alone is a rather wooden reading of things. To be that entity, that being, that bot which so cleanly lives up the assets laid out in the job description and nothing more is a built in FAIL.
Rather, the thing, the very most magical thing, is to be the one who embodies their own professional persona as well, more so, even.
Back to the cover letter: the cover letter is where we fill, thicken, imbue “who” we are and the “how” we think into the “what” we can do. The “what” is the resume. A list of things - roles, titles, education(s), responsibilities, skills. Duh, right? Well, too often folx compose cover letters which are little more than a long form reiteration of their CV. Like, why go through the effort? If the tool is not to be used for its intended purpose, why pull it out?
Instead of the above, the cover letter is our campaign statement, our professional manifesto, and window into why we chose to apply to this particular role just now in this time in history, what we might be like to work with, an offering of insight into the way we think and problem solve, what our ambitions might be, and bring forth some instances from our careers thus far that are particularly telling as who we are as professional persons.
Getting deep into the gradual in case you are finding the ‘gist’ alright and all, but the application remains rather vague: Try this, break down an in process cover letter as such:
1) Thesis: I am a [blank] kind of a professional. These are my ambitions. This is what is great about the company/organization and here is why the given opening is super cool. (Short statements, don’t worry about sentences as such yet)
2) A very specific example, expounding on what the CV presents as some aspect of your experience, and how that speaks to #1 (do several of those so we have a few to play with.)
3) Very specific demonstrations of either professional growth or problem solving, how they speak to the above, and as much on HOW you took on evolutions and/or engaged in said repositioning (again, let’s get several of these)
4) Land it: reiteration of said thesis. Gratitude for opportunity to correspond. And, as you have it, perhaps a particularly groovy explanation of why this is an extra-cool or super-special occurrence that you are able, happen, to be applying.
Be wary of the use of the word “I”, as well as the habit of starting sentences and/or paragraphs in similar ways, and length. Overall length is something to be conscious of. Not that someone cannot or should not have a multi-page cover letter, BUT if you really, really must have a longer cover letter, validate the longer read. (Note on that: in most multi-page cover letters, the point, the real meat, does not start until the third paragraph, and likely you can trash all copy above that and be a-OK.)
There is one final, but paramount, point to make here: the cover letter is also a way to inform how the interview is to go. I.e., think of it as you perfect interview scenarios where you present yourself free of nervousness, are only asked your ideal question, and own the narrative in a way that is perfectly, viscerally, fantastically you.
Thanks for reading. Get to writing, and if you are still stuck – let’s talk because bad cover letters piss me off, for I hate reading about great people pretending to be puppets, dead and unblinking carved into vapid corporate wood. I want you to love, admire, and feel seen by the person your cover letter speaks to for all you are and too, that is where confidence comes from.
