Tips On Writing Better Cover Letters
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Cover Letters,
Quick Tips,
Resume example
Work with me on this. Rethink how you approach writing letters--your ad-response, direct contact, networking request, thank-you and mass-mail letters. Include anything you compose with a pen, pencil or word processor in which you try to express who you are, what you do and how you can meet an employer's needs. The following steps will put you on the road to writing letters that hit home, talk to the reader and build rapport.
Step 1. Eliminate the term "cover letter" from your vocabulary. The very phrase connotes passivity and disguise. Don't think of your correspondence as a quilt, a page attached to your resume to keep it warm. A letter often is your foremost voice and should establish a relationship with its reader.
Step 2. Steer away from books containing 101 examples of what your personal correspondence should look like. These guarantee ways to grab 'em, grip 'em and, of course, get the job. They may provide a short cut, but they also discourage you from thinking through this part of your presentation.
While it may be useful to store some stock phrases or even entire "sell paragraphs" on your hard drive, you should approach every letter as unique in content and context. Standardize the process and you lose the chance to distinguish yourself. The sad request "Would you please review my resume?" suggests that you're a lazy or frightened job-seeker.
Step 3. On behalf of letter recipients everywhere, I urge you to stop trying to "wow" us. Instead, speak to us when you write. This task requires you to consider our respective roles and expectations.
Express yourself directly and concisely in correspondence, but don't write exactly the way you speak. It's useful to think of letters as conversations and visualize yourself addressing the recipient as if you were face-to-face with him or her.
If you view your letter as an advertisement or public relations blitz, intended more to impress than inform, you face a hard truth: Most people have learned to recognize and resist sales pitches. When a loud commercial blares on TV, we divert our attention. When a car salesman's spiel turns hot, we turn cold. Employers also exercise self-preservation instincts -- from the human-resources assistant screening your ad-response letter to the big cheese reading your post-interview follow-up.
Conversations between people aren't conducted with stock phrases, canned responses and high-pitched advertising-speak: "Vast potential! That's what I offer the visionary employer who insists on the very best." I feel demeaned when I read a chunk of turgid prose in a letter clearly not written specifically for me. The hard sell makes me defensive. I attack when I sense someone's hiding behind rhetoric, $5 words and stilted grammar.
Step 4: Don't tell me what to feel. Save punctuation meant to evoke emotion for love letters. Also, exclude unsupported self-descriptive adjectives and adverbs: "I'm a motivated, creative go-getter and an energetic and dynamic problem-solver who leads teams to their highest performance!" Question marks are the tools of the salesperson trying to pre-qualify a lead: "Would you agree what you need is a highly qualified HR professional like me?"
The answer is no, I won't agree to anything without full and credible supporting information. If you want to excite me, provide information so I can decide whether you're exciting. Give me facts, accomplishments, results, degrees, numbers, percentages, past employers -- real information from the real world.
Step 5: Understand me before you put pen to paper. Take a moment to imagine my frame of reference as I open your letter. My mind automatically asks these questions: Who are you? Why are you writing me? What do you want from me? What are the stakes? Until I have this information, I can't evaluate what you say.
There's a difference between a strong first paragraph and a "hook"--a phrase that grabs attention but provides no information. A letter that starts "I'm the answer!" triggers an automatic response: "What's the question?" A clearly written frame of reference tells the reader what the letter is going to be about:
I'm writing to explore whether a company growing as rapidly as SemiHemiDemiTech needs a professional experienced in recruiting and managing a national sales force capable of closing high-margin, low-volume technology-based transactions.
If you're mass-mailing, you may think it impossible to target your approach to an individual reader. The effective use of "mail merge" word-processing functions can make correspondence look less like a form letter. Always write to a person, never to a title, as in "Dear Marketing Manager." Avoid telltale phrases such as "your fine company" or "your industry." People dislike being just another name on a mailing list, so check your letters carefully for revealing goofs. The proprietor of an inn called Windham Hill Farm once received an individually typed letter on quality bond paper that began, "Dear Mr. Farm: No doubt you and the entire Farm family have long dreamed..."
Step 6: Don't talk down to me. In letters intended to impress people more than inform, it's common for writers to sling jargon and acronyms. Technical terminology is fine as long as you're sure readers understand what it means. But you gain little by writing over readers' heads. They'll miss your meaning and resent feeling ignorant. If you're unsure of a reader's sophistication, use general terms. Additionally, emphasize the application of your knowledge: "I'm an expert in fifth-generation veeblefetzers" isn't as compelling as "I was the first to integrate a fifth-generation veeblefetzer into military-spec micro-widgets."
Step 7: Remember who really "owns" the conversation. Readers are interested more in their needs than yours. Letters addressing only your objectives ("I was born at an early age and from that point forth I had a dream...") are irrelevant to a potential employer. As one HR manager said, "I don't hire people to self-actualize on my front lawn." Your "conversation" must focus on the value you can add. Therefore, avoid the kind of "I want" and "I'd like" statements this letter contains:
Dear Mr. Smith:
I suppose I should answer the question my resume raises: Why would a Ph.D.-trained scientist want to enter sales? I thought I'd like research more than I have, but it just isn't challenging enough for me.
Step 8. Write simply, directly and briefly. In this regard, one actually may be able to learn from our government. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) now requires prospectuses to be written in plain English. "Why write something long when something short will do?" the Commission said. For example, instead of saying "the net-asset value of the fund's shares fluctuates as market conditions change," one company's brochure says "the fund's shares will rise and fall in value."
The SEC prescribes six basic writing principles for clarity and brevity that apply as well to job-search correspondence as financial offerings. They are:
Use the active voice;
Use short, not complex or compound, sentences;
Use "everyday" words: More syllables don't make communication clearer or demonstrate greater intelligence;
Use bullet points for complex material;
Avoid jargon and technical terms whenever possible; and
Avoid multiple negatives.
Today many word-processing programs include a "readability" function that analyzes reading levels, the number of words in a sentence and the number of sentences in a paragraph. Though there's no need to use it as often as a spell checker, it can help guard against writing that sounds like a college professor or a pompous snob.
Step 9: Avoid the passive voice. While "brevity is the soul of wit," the objective isn't simply to chop your writing into bite-size pieces. The goal, even in a post-interview thank-you letter, is to display your personal style and the quality of your thinking. Compare these two letters:
Dear Mr. James:
Thank you again for the opportunity to interview with ABC Co. on Tuesday, Aug. 17. I am confident I have the skills you need and would be a strong contributor as ABC moves to address the many challenges and opportunities facing dynamic companies in the highly competitive recycled shoelace industry in the fast-paced '90s and beyond.
Haven't we heard this somewhere before? There's no law against revealing your personality and enthusiasm, provided you're not too breezy.
Dear Mr. James:
I enjoyed meeting you on Tuesday. I hope you felt our rapport as immediately as I did. And you're right: The lack of breadth in product lines and customer base does appear to constrain ABC's growth. My background in technology transfer, especially my most recent experience with Y'All Drawl Fasteners, seems directly on point. At YDF, I identified and evaluated promising product concepts and led their rapid development and commercialization.
The passive voice is writing's darkest villain. It breeds convoluted sentences and backward syntax ("The opportunity to interview with your fine company was greatly appreciated"). Worse, it renders the writer anonymous -- the last thing a job seeker should want. It's also the favored shelter for those seeking to avoid accountability. For example, "It will be impossible for that report to be completed on time" really means "I can't do it." To hiring managers seeking responsible employees, the passive voice suggests a passive candidate.
Step 10: After you write a letter, let it cool. In the heat of the moment, we often dash off letters and throw them in the mail with little review or reflection. Or we convince ourselves the recipient will enjoy reading our masterpiece as much as we enjoyed writing it.
For important letters, ask a friend or family member for a critical review. Ask them: Is this letter clear? Is it understandable? Is it logical? Is it friendly? Does anything annoy you or make you feel defensive? The most important question is: Does this letter sound like me?
By Douglas B. Richardson
