Cover Letters Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Palladian Career Resources

Interview Skills in a Cover Letter

I read a cover letter today that did something I see very rarely. It focused on elements that are critical to a recruiter and usually overlooked by job seekers. A cover letter with a sales pitch for the candidate isn’t unique. What was unique was how the cover letter focused on attributes that a recruiter seeks.

I read a cover letter today that did something I see rarely. It focused on elements that are critical to a recruiter, but usually overlooked by job seekers. A cover letter with a sales pitch for the candidate isn’t unique. What was unique was how the cover letter focused on attributes that a recruiter seeks.

Below are three sentences taken from the cover letter:

I interview well and have appropriate skill sets for large scale operations. I possess excellent verbal and written language skills. My style is articulate while always remaining humble and connected to my audience.

What set this cover letter apart was the mention of the candidate’s interview skills. The experience, skills and accomplishments of a job seeker are important, but this is only a portion of what a recruiter looks for in a candidate. The other component that recruiters want to see in a candidate is the ability of the candidate to sell themselves in an interview.

For a recruiter, it is important that a candidate can articulate their strengths and potential. A candidate with a great resume and terrible interview and communications skills will often be rejected for a candidate that interviews better. Additionally, candidates that interview very poorly can hurt a relationship with a client if the client thinks the recruiter cannot find the best candidates.

This makes it essential to quickly assess the job seeker’s interview skill. The cover letter addresses this with three sentences focused on the candidate’s interview and communications skills. This claim impresses me a lot, but not because the job seeker is a good interviewer.

I read cover letters and resumes every day that make claims about skills and abilities. Some are true while others prove to be exaggerations. There is nothing in the cover letter to convince me the job seeker’s claim of having excellent interview skills is an accurate assessment.

The reason the focus on interview skills impressed me was the job seeker thought about what would be important to me. Many candidates focus on what is important to them. This could be their goals and objectives. It could include specific experiences or accomplishments they are especially proud of. Unfortunately, what is important to a job seeker is not necessarily important to the hiring manager.

A Cover Letter Without Complete Sentences

I read a cover letter today that didn’t have a single complete sentence. Each sentence was written without a subject and many didn’t have a verb. The letter was nothing more than a collection of phrases and buzzwords. I’ve included most of the cover letter below, with identifying information removed.

Twenty years of sales experience with a proven track record and many achievements to mention! Caring and compassion to provide patients with quality products is important. Enjoy running a territory as if it was my own business and exceed at building and maintaining both new and existing relationships to maximize sales growth. Extensive experience calling on key personnel within hospitals and surgery centers.

This letter reads like a resume. It is common to omit the personal pronouns from a resume. This is the accepted style. In fact, the paragraph from the cover letter, with a few changes, could be used as a professional summary at the top of the resume.

A cover letter is different. The goal of a cover letter is to grab the attention of the reader and motivate them to want to read the resume. To do this, you need to make a connection with reader. Cover letters are direct, one-on-one communications between a job seeker and a hiring manager. It should be written like a business letter, with a personal, but professional style. The letter above does not fit this mold.

The first sentence of a cover letter should be direct and simple. It should have subject-verb-object structure. I read cover letters routinely that have complicated structures. This just discourages me from reading the entire cover letter. One of the sentence structures I do not like takes a modifying phrase and moves it to the beginning of the sentence. For example, “Possessing 10 years of experience in the widget industry, I have excellent management skills and an ability to drive performance and cut cost.” I would prefer a much more direct format. For example, “I have excellent management skills, gained through 10 years in the widget industry, enabling me to drive performance and cut costs.”

The cover letter I received is nothing more than a collection of phrases. After reading the first line, my impression was confusion. The structure did not fit what I expected. Now, it only took a second or two to figure out the format and structure, and this may seem inconsequential. The problem with this cover letter is that my first reaction was negative and my focus, even if for only a couple seconds, was on structure, not the content of the cover letter. The end effect was to cause me to question whether I should read the cover letter just a few seconds after looking at it.

It is important to remember that hiring managers screen large numbers of resumes at a time. Your cover letter and resume may only get a 15 to 30 look before the reader decides to discard it. This requires a structure and style that can be easily understood.

What Value Does Your Cover Letter Add?

Cover letters introduce your resume and influence how closely your resume will be read. An effective cover letter will get the reader excited to learn more. To do this, the cover letter needs to provide value beyond the resume.

One cover letter I received was simply a shortened version of the resume. The content was good, and I thought it was a good cover letter after reading it. My opinion changed after reading the resume.

The cover letter was close to a full page – over 200 words. It followed a typical format – it started with an introduction statement explaining the background of the job seeker, listed a number of accomplishments and concluded with statement that the candidate is looking forward to discussing opportunities with the company.

The resume was a little long, around 700 words, and followed a standard structure. It had a summary statement at the top, followed by the employment history and concluded with an education section. Like the cover letter, it wasn’t bad. Looking at the resume by itself, I thought it was ok. Not perfect, but it made a good impression.

The problem was putting the two documents together. The introduction statement of the cover letter was word for word identical to the summary statement on the resume. The accomplishments in the cover letter were also word for word identical to bullets in the work experience section.

My feeling after reading the two documents was the job seeker had wasted my time. Duplicating the information annoyed me. I would have preferred if the cover letter added something unique. This job seeker had a great progression, but had worked for their most recent employer for less than a year and just lost their job. An explanation of why would have helped.

Another effective way to structure the cover letter would have been to take only one or two of the accomplishments (instead of the seven listed in the cover letter) and tell the story behind them. A paragraph giving a lot of detail of why the accomplishment is significant could make it impressive. Listing the shorter bullet of the accomplishment in the resume would then be ok, since it shows when in the person’s career the accomplishment occurred and it would only be one item being repeated.

There may be a good reason to duplicate a limited amount of information from your resume in your cover letter. Just make sure that your cover letter is adding value and does not repeat everything word for work.

Sentence Structure

I updated some of my social media accounts this weekend. My motivation was twofold. First, some of accounts badly needed an update to the design and content. I had not updated some of the information in the last couple years and it showed. The second reason was motivated by one of the blog readers. She pointed out that the writing style and sentence structure of my LinkedIn account wasn’t consistent. When I reviewed, I realized this was a generous assessment – my LinkedIn profile was awful.

I had setup my LinkedIn account a couple years ago and used my bio from my website. My bio is written in a 3^rd person style and this is suitable to a corporate website. On LinkedIn, the style should be more personal, and written in the first person. The same goes for other social media sites. I’m still working on updating and improving – these are going to be a work in progress. That’s a lot better than what they were, though… stale and out-of-date.

So, what does this have to do with a job search? The sentence structure of a cover letter and resume need to be written professionally and in a suitable style.

A cover letter is a business letter from you to another individual. As a result, it should be written directly in the 1^st person. Do not refer to yourself in the 3^rd person. It makes a very poor impression.

The resume should have a different style. It should be written in an implied first person. This structure starts with the personal pronoun “I” but this word is omitted. For example, “Managed the production department” is a sentence that has an implied subject – the “I” is left off the beginning of the sentence. This style is appropriate for a resume.

Write your resume in the 1st person but avoid using “I” or your name in your resume.

I’m still working on improving my profiles online. On LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/garycapone), I accept all invitations to connect and have over 2,500 connections. You can invite me to connect at [email protected]. I setup a Twitter account this weekend (www.twitter.com/garycapone). The other account I updated was Facebook. This is the one account I don’t accept every invitation. I’m limiting it to people I know and have established personal relationship.

Failing to Customize

I read a cover letter of IT professional that was one of the most general I have every seen. It was over 300 words long but didn’t say anything of substance. In the IT field, technical skills and experience with those skills are the critical factors. Despite this, the candidate failed to specify anything about their technical skill.

The first sentence of the cover letter illustrates how general and unimpressive the cover letter was:

I am writing to express my interest in the position of [Network Administrator / Help Desk], advertised as being open with your company at this time.

Now, you need to understand that I haven’t advertised a network administrator or help desk position in a very long time. In fact, my firm doesn’t advertise positions much any more. We are very proactive in our sourcing of candidates for our recruiting clients. This resume was completely unsolicited.

Here is what I think happened. The job seeker had a template for their cover letter that they customized. Over time, they grew frustrated with the lack of success and moved towards a mass mailing strategy, deciding to send their resume to hundreds of recruiters. They attempted to write a very general cover letter that would appeal to the greatest number. By doing this, they minimize their odds of impressing each recruiter.

In particular, putting the job title in brackets leads me to believe that the job seeker wrote this cover letter with the intention of replacing the actual job title each time they sent it out. When they decided to send out resumes to recruiters that didn’t advertise a position, they took the short cut and just sent the template without any changes. Not a great first impression.

The cover letter goes on with very general statements. When I finished the cover letter, my expectations were very low. I planned to read the first few lines of the resume to confirm my assessment of the cover letter. The resume turned out to be much stronger the cover letter.

The start of the resume highlighted specific skills and experiences. The job seeker had a number of impressive accomplishments, good skills and several certifications. Overall, I would say a pretty good network administration candidate. This was completely opposite to the impression the cover letter made.

Fortunately, the resume led off with several details that helped make a strong impression. If it had not, there is a good chance a hiring manager would read only the first few lines and discarded the resume. The cover letter made such a poor impression the resume would only get a very quick look.

Cover Letter Mixed Signals

I received a resume with a cover letter that sent mixed signals. It started out well but quickly changed course. Below are the first three sentences:

I am a results oriented leader with a proven track record of success. I have several years of experience in a variety of fields including insurance and product / project management. In addition to my extensive leadership experience, I have strong communication, customer service, and administrative skills.

The first sentence is general but decisive. It makes a statement that emphasizes results, leadership and success. My expectation at this point is to hear specifics about the leadership experience and the track record of success.

The second sentence backs off from the statement of success with a wishy-washy “several years of experience in a variety of fields” statement. It’s difficult to be less impressive than this. In reviewing the resume, the job seeker has more than a dozen years of experience in leadership roles. There was no need to be evasive. A simple statement such as “I have led teams in the <industry> for more than a dozen years.” This isn’t very impressive, but is a lot better than the original line. Another option would be to merge the first two lines: “In more than twelve years leading teams in the , I have a proven track record of success and achieving results.” This combines the statement of experience with the statement of success.

The third sentence again backs off from the first sentence even further. It emphasizes communications, customer service and administrative skills. For a successful leader, these three skills are basics that should have been mastered. Mentioning them in a resume or cover letter isn’t a bad idea, they just shouldn’t be emphasized this early. A much better option would be to list a specific accomplishments that backs up the first sentence.

The cover letter went on for another 250 words with little change from the first three sentences. The job seeker would make a statement of success, and then back off with generic statements. The most compelling statement in the entire letter was the first sentence.

Superhuman

Thursday night, I watch “The Real Superhumans and the Quest for the Future Fantastic” on the Science Channel. The show profiled individuals with abilities that are incredible and verge on superpowers. It was very interesting. When the show started, several of the people profiled in the show were presented in 30 second teasers. The purpose of the teasers was to get the viewer excited about the show and motivate them to keep watching. It obviously worked with me.

The teasers were very similar to a cover letter, the executive summary on a resume, or the tell me about yourself answer in an interview. The first person the show presented was the Iceman. The teaser showed the Iceman running on a snow covered road wearing only shorts. He didn't have shoes, a shirt or a hat – just running shorts.

The teaser explained that the Iceman was running in Lapland, a location above the arctic circle. Let's look at the initial statement of the narrator:

It is January and the temperature is -26 degrees Celsius. This man has been running on ice and snow, barefoot, for over one hour. He does not have frostbite. He does not have hypothermia and he feels no pain. He has the power to live in the cold. To withstand temperatures so frigid others would die. He does this by willing himself to heat up.

Looking at this, the Iceman is positioned very clearly. The teaser leads off with an accomplishment. Running in freezing temperatures barefoot for an hour. This was presented to get attention fast. The teaser then explains the significance of the accomplishment – no frostbite, hypothermia or death. Finally, it gives an explanation of how he achieves these results – he wills himself to warm up.

When you write a cover letter or resume, you want to grab the hiring manager's attention quickly. Most people provide facts about their background, but little in the way of accomplishments. This is how most people would present the introduction to their resume.

Experienced at enduring cold conditions. 10 year track record of successfully running in cold weather. Able to warm up my body at will. Experienced swimming in near freezing water.

This teaser doesn't generate much interest. It's a set of facts that don't qualify the talent of this individual. A person in a polar bear club that runs around in a pair of shorts and then jumps in a local river for a few seconds every winter could have a similar start to their resume. The teaser in the show made it absolutely clear that the Iceman was far from ordinary – separating him from everyone else on the planet.

Another thing the teaser did was present the title of the individual – Iceman – before the teaser. This helped to create a single image of the individual that could be remembered. It is very helpful if you can generate a word or phrase in the mind of the hiring manager that they can use to remember you and your background. Something that symbolizes why you are exceptional.

If the teaser for the show was in fact a resume, cover letter or interview answer, it would go too far. I don't recommend giving yourself a nickname like the Iceman. Supply Chain Superstar, Manufacturing Man, or The Energetic Engineer would all come across very badly. What you need to do is create a picture of one or more accomplishments that is so clear and impactful that the hiring manager develops their own phrase to remember you.

Another noteworthy aspect of the teaser was the choice of people to profile. The Iceman was the first. There were other people in the program whose abilities are arguably much more impressive. So, why was the Iceman picked to be first?

The Iceman's ability and accomplishments were very easy to demonstrate quickly. Some of the abilities presented later in the show took several minutes to explain. They were too complicated to capture in a word or phrase. The Iceman, with just a nickname and a few sentences, could be presented very clearly.

This is a good lesson for your resume and cover letter. The most impressive accomplishment from your background may not be the best to present first. A less impressive accomplishment that can be read and understood very quickly could be more effective. The reason for this is the same as the reason the show had the teaser – motivate the hiring manager to read the rest of the resume. If the most impressive accomplishment is so complicated that the hiring manager doesn't understand it quickly, they may move on without ever getting it. This makes it completely ineffective.

A Cover Letter Without Spell Check

The cover letter I read today illustrates a number of basic grammar mistakes. The overall impression is either the job seeker can’t write or has no attention to detail – possibly both. This is the cover letter:

Iam purusing a Project Manager of Construction job. With multiple years of experience and millions of dollars in residental and commercial developments being seccessfully completed you will see in my resume that iam qualified to assist any company with their projects. I look forward to hear from you in the near future.

There are a number of typos. Purusing should be pursuing, residental should be residential, seccessfully should be successfully and hear should be hearing. This are basic mistakes – probably the result of typing quickly and not proofreading. What I don’t understand is the use of “Iam” instead of “I am.” It’s used twice in the letter, leading me to believe the job seeker meant to type it this way.

The problem with a cover letter like this is that it creates substantial doubt about the job seeker’s credibility. This individual listed their salary requirements – $90k and up. Do you think a company is going to be comfortable paying that high of a salary for a manager that could be responsible for decisions on multi-million dollar projects?

Below is the same cover letter in Microsoft Word. As you can see, almost every mistake is caught by the grammar check and underlined in red.

The one mistake the grammar check didn’t catch is “hear” instead of hearing. Software grammar checkers are not perfect, but they do help in avoiding a lot of mistakes. A cover letter and resume are so important to your search, running them through spell check is essential. One minor typo will often be overlooked, but a half dozen obvious ones won’t.

OpenOffice is a free open source office suite similar to Microsoft Office. I use it on my laptop at home. It has a word processor similar to Word, a spreadsheet tool like Excel and a presentation program similar to Powerpoint. It’s a great office suite if you don’t have have Microsoft Office. You can download OpenOffice at http://www.openoffice.org/.

No Clipart

One of my recruiters showed me a cover letter that they received that I have to share. The cover letter is from a successful manufacturing executive and illustrates how your professionalism and style can greatly impact the impression you make.

The Cover Letter had a large font – a 14 point. This made the letter look more like a flyer than a professional letter. Most resumes have a 10 or 12 point font for the body of the text. A 14 point font is usually good for section heading, to add emphasis. Additionally, the cover letter had larger than normal margins. A 1” margin on all four sides is a good choice. Increasing the margins beyond this doesn’t make sense.

The font size and margins weren’t the problem. They didn’t help the cover letter, but they weren’t terrible. What really made the resume look cheesy was the clipart. The job seeker had put a cartoon at the top of their cover letter. The image looked like one the stock images that comes with Microsoft Word.

Adding images to a cover letter is never a good idea. Cartoons are an even worse idea. It sets an unprofessional tone that doesn’t match the purpose of a cover letter.

Remember, your cover letter and resume need to get attention, but resorting to gimmicks will hurt your chances. Getting remembered as the worst resume or most ridiculous cover letter won’t get you hired.

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Resume Writing for Manufacturing Careers - Front Cover

Don’t Quote Statistics on a Cover Letter

I received a resume with a cover letter that started out with a statistic on the labor market. Quoting statistics to make a point isn't a good lead in for a cover letter. Here's how the cover letter started:

Dear Recruiter,

Labor statistics indicate that people change careers an average of three times during their working life. At this time, I am looking for a new and long lasting career. Please consider my professional strengths as they apply to your current searches:

The remainder of the cover letter is pretty good and continues with several bullets detailing specific skills and accomplishments. Unfortunately, the first paragraph sets the wrong tone for the cover letter and resume.

My first impression was that the job seeker is making an excuse for changing careers. It shows a lack of confidence in their career progression and that they are trying to justify the changes they have made themselves. This impression was wrong. The actual progression of the job seeker was good, having worked in a single industry throughout their career.

The second impression that I had was to question the statistic. I've read that individuals will average five career changes. Is the stat I remembered right, or is the stat the job seeker quoted right? I don't know, and it really isn't important. The problem is that I was focused on thinking about the statistic, and not the content of the cover letter. This may have distracted me from the content for a few second. I realized that I had kept moving my eyes as if I was reading, but wasn't processing what I was seeing. I then had the choice to reread what I glossed over or skip it and keep going.

Bottom Line: Focus your cover letter on topics that help sell your potential to an employer. Content that doesn't promote you should be avoided. Unusual or unrelated content should be avoided as it draws the reader's attention away from cover letter and resume.