cover letter advice Archives - Palladian Career Resources

Proofreading Tips

Checking your resume for typos, spelling errors and grammar mistakes is essential. It is likely you proofread it numerous times and had friends check it for mistakes. This effort will hopefully eliminate all errors. Writing cover letters and filling in text boxes for online job applications is a different story. You can’t work on everything you write for weeks or months with numerous reviewers. So, how can you reduce the likelihood of sending out a bunch of typos?

If you struggle with typos in your writing, I’m going to share some techniques that will help you minimize mistakes. These are the techniques I’ve learned to use with my blog, and can help you improve the quality of your cover letters and other communications.

After writing more than 350 articles for this blog, I’ve gotten much better at minimizing typos. There has been a definite learning curve. I’ve always done a lot of writing, but nothing on this scope. I’ve learned techniques to make it much less likely I’ll publish something with a mistake. Equally important, the techniques I’ve learned haven’t slowed me down. I write, review and publish a typical blog article in a single time block, usually an hour to an hour and a half, first thing in the morning. This gives little time to check an article.

Some people will say I should prioritize proofreading higher and devote more time to proofreading. If I adopted a scheduled where I write and review articles a week ahead of publishing them, and then review them the day I post them, I could do a better job with typos. Even better, I could send each article to a professional proofreader for review. This just doesn’t fit my posting schedule. I want to write and immediately post. This requires other techniques to quickly and effectively review each document.

The challenge with proofreading your own work is you know what you meant to write. I have a lot of trouble with this. I can type 30 to 40 words per minute with decent accuracy, and over 50 with mistakes. As I write, I get impatient and push my speed beyond what I can do. This will produce incorrect letters and even skipped words. I’ve found lately I’ve been typing “you” for “your” by leaving the “r” off a lot. I’ve also been leaving out small words – is, be, are, of, at – are a few examples. Even worse, I’ve caught places where I miss contractions. In Friday’s article, I found a place where I typed “can” but meant to type “can’t.” This completely changed the meaning of the sentence. Fortunately, I found it before I published the article.

As I proofread, I read what I meant to type. If the sentence is supposed to have “your” and I type “you,” I read the “your” because I know that’s what it says. Someone else reading it would immediately see the error, though. There are ways to fix this, and I’m going to share my process.

My review process has four steps:

Microsoft Word

I write everything in Word. The spelling/grammar checker will automatically check everything as I type. This catches a lot of obvious mistakes. You need to have the real-time grammar checker turned on for this to work. You also need to pay attention any time Word underlines something in red (spelling) or green (grammar). By paying attention major mistakes as I type them, I avoid a lot of the errors.

Errors found by Word are the low hanging fruit. They are so easy to see and fix, there’s no excuse for not fixing them. I really hate getting a resume written in Word that has a bunch of underlined red text indicating spelling mistakes. It jumps off the screen before I can start reading the resume. All the job seeker needed to do was turn on the real-time grammar checker. Failing to do this will make a poor impression.

Unfortunately, Word can only catch major mistakes. Using the wrong word often will not be caught by the software. For example, the “you/your” mistake I’ve been making lately is one that Word often misses. This first check will not be perfect. It’s just a starting point to clean up the big stuff.

WhiteSmoke

The second quality check I run is with WhiteSmoke, a standalone grammar checking software package. The software is designed to catch more grammar mistakes than Word or other word processors. In my experience, it works. When I first got WhiteSmoke, I checked a number of documents in Word, fixed the errors, and then ran then through WhiteSmoke. In my writing, this process will find an additional one to two typos for every 200 words I write. Now, WhiteSmoke isn’t perfect. It still will not find everything, and it gives a number of false positives. I would estimate that half the errors it identifies are actually correct, but I’ll take a few false positives to help uncover the mistakes.

I have a lot good to say about WhiteSmoke. The bottom line is I use it. The software is much more accurate than Word, it’s easy to use and the technical support team is helpful and responsive. Despite this, there is one major drawback. WhiteSmoke is supposed to integrate with any software package including Word and Outlook. There’s something in my windows settings that prevents this from working and WhiteSmoke doesn’t have an answer for fixing it.

To use WhiteSmoke, I copy what I write over into the WhiteSmoke window and run the check. I then review the edits and make them manually in the original document. This is a little tedious, but works. The way the software is supposed to work, you highlight the text in Word, hit one of the function keys and WhiteSmoke will then open a window and check the document. As you review the errors, you can simply click the corrections. At the end, you click Apply and WhiteSmoke will copy the changes back to the original document. This is great when it works, but in my experience, it rarely works, so I use the more tedious manual method. Even though it is a little tedious, the software works and makes me more efficient and reduces errors.

(WhiteSmoke Review: This article was 1770 words when checked. WhiteSmoke identified 2 spelling errors, 14 grammar errors and 1 style error. In reviewing the errors, the spelling errors were places where I failed to capitalize the “s” in WhiteSmoke. Of the 14 grammar errors, I made six changes and found the other eight were actually correct. The style error was also a good suggestion resulting in a change. So in total, I made 9 separate changes to the article on top of Word’s suggestions because of WhiteSmoke.)

Read Out Loud

The third step in my review process is to read the text out loud. I really shouldn’t call this reading. When done right, I read each word individually out loud. Reading full sentences quickly causes me to see what I meant to write, not what actually ended up on the screen. Going slow and reading each word is the best way to find places where the writing is awkward, or where I used the wrong word. It is much more effective when reading out loud. Start at the beginning and say each word individually. Go slow and you will pick up on errors. This process is a little tedious. If you read any of my articles in the last six months and see some obvious errors, it’s very likely I skipped this step.

Another technique when reading out load is to read from the bottom up. Read each sentence individually, starting with the last sentence of the document. This process is a little slower, but can be more effective. It keeps you from getting into a rhythm with what you know should be there.

(Reading Out Loud Review: I printed the article and read it out loud. This identified 29 additional changes. Many were corrections to grammar errors. A few were changes were to text that was correct, but the changes made the text read better.)

Google Spell Check

After checking a document in Word and WhiteSmoke, and reading it out loud, there shouldn’t be any obvious errors. Despite this, I always run a quick spell check from the Google Toolbar before publishing each article. I do this in case I added new spelling errors as I edit and format the document in the browser window. It’s rare that I catch a mistake with this last minute check, but I still do it. I know I can’t write and review an article in under an hour several days a week and never have a mistake. At the same time, I really don’t want obvious errors that jump off the page, and running spell check one last time can’t hurt.

You can get the Google Spell Check function with the Google toolbar. All you have to do is hit the button, and it will spell check any form boxes in the browser window.

Other Techniques

This is my four step process. It’s not perfect. My goal for this blog is to provide a lot of high quality advice. Minimizing errors is important to me, but at the end of the day, this is just a blog. I write quickly and will not be perfect. Every time I write a blog article about typos or proofreading, I get comments from readers who are deeply offended by every typo I make. Hopefully, the majority of people will learn from my articles. In this article, I hope you get something that helps your writing, especially for your job search. There are other techniques we can employ and further improve the quality of our writing.

Proofreading in a different location than where you wrote the document can help the review process. It will get you out of the thought process you had when you wrote the document. Printing the document can help this too. Both techniques will allow you focus more on what is written instead of what you meant to write.

Letting a document sit for several days can make it much easier to proofread. You will forget what you meant to write, and read the document as if you weren’t the author.

Get a second opinion. Ask a friend, co-worker or family member to review important documents. They will pick up on errors you may have missed.

Hire a professional proofreader. I can’t overstate the benefit of a professional. Not only will they give you a second set of eyes on a document, but they are trained to spot mistakes. When I wrote my book, Power Up Your Job Search: A Modern Approach to Interview Preparation, I used two professional proofreaders. The first reviewed a preliminary copy of the book and corrected a number of major mistakes. I used the second proofreader late in the process after we had completed a number of rewrites. The results were fantastic and the two proofreaders help cut months off the editing process.

Getting a second opinion or a professional proofreader will work in a lot of situations, but isn’t practical for everything. You can’t stop in the middle of every job application form and send your text to a proofreader. Even a lightning fast turnaround of a few hours will cause your job search to grind to a halt. At some point, you will need a DIY approach, and I hope my techniques help you to write a little more effectively and accurately.

Tailor Your Cover Letter

Each time you apply for a job, you are sending an advertisement for a product, you and the work you are capable of doing, to a sales prospect, the employer. The more you can learn about your prospect, the better you can tailor your sales pitch. The key is tailoring your presentation to what is important to the prospect – not what is important to you.

Many job seekers send the same generic cover letter to every employer (or worse, fail to send any cover letter). This might work if you were the only person sending out a resume and the employer was desperate to hire. They won’t care what your sales pitch was. This isn’t the situation, though. We know there is a lot of competition for jobs. You are not going to be the only option for an employer. This makes it essential to craft the best sales pitch possible.

Gaining intelligence is an important first step. The more you can learn about the priorities and expectations of the employer, the better your chances. A hiring manager will be looking for much more than just someone who can do the job. Hiring managers have specific objectives and will prioritize skills and abilities differently. A lot of this comes from the team that is in place. If a team is extremely strong in some areas and weaker in others, the hiring manager may prioritize the areas of weaker skills in order to elevate the team’s performance in this area.

If you can learn the specifics of a hiring manager’s goals, you can tailor to them. To get this information, you need to network. You have to meet people within the company and learn details about the organization few know. The more you learn, the better your chances. Networking takes time and effort, but it works.

Once you gather the research you need to tailor your cover letter, it’s time to get writing. Your cover letter should be brief. Your goal is to make a quick positive impressive and to generate interest in reading your resume. Think of it like a car ad. The purpose of the ad isn’t to sell you a car – it is to get you visit the showroom. Your cover letter is like the ad – it needs to motivate the hiring manager to want to read your resume closely.

There are number of elements of a cover letter you should customize. First, you should have a specific statement why you are interested in the company. This shows interest and that you have taken the time to research the company. Most hiring managers will assess your resume more closely if you show you have put a lot of time into learning about their company. Second, you should tailor the skills you highlight to the specific position and needs of the company. This is where your research becomes incredibly valuable. Finally, you should include a couple accomplishments showing your past successes with the skills you highlighted. The accomplishments are the key to the presentation. They show what you could accomplish for the company and will help you stand out from your competition. The more you can tailor the accomplishments to the job, the better the impression you will make.

This may sound like you have to write a completely new cover letter for each application. It’s actually a lot easier than this. Once you develop a structure you like, you are just changing a little information. It really doesn’t take much customization to develop a really strong cover letter.

Cover Letter Credibility

The cover letter l read this morning contained several statements designed to make a personal connection with a hiring manager, but failed dismally. The cover letter was too wordy and faked an interest in an employer.

How can I be so sure the interest in the employer is faked? Easily, the cover letter and resume were posted online. They were not sent to a specific company. There is no way for the job seeker to know who is going to read his resume. Below is how he started his cover letter:

I am looking for a dynamic and challenging position where I can utilize my leadership, operations, and human resources expertise. I am familiar with your organization and am extremely interested in working for a company of this caliber.

Making the claim of being familiar with the organization, when the job seeker has no idea who is going to read the resume hurts the overall impression and credibility of the job seeker. My reaction is to consider this a bunch of BS and to expect the rest of the cover letter and the resume to more of the same. The job seeker now has an uphill battle to win me over.

The cover letter would have been much stronger if it had skipped this first paragraph entirely. The next paragraph focused on the candidate’s skills and abilities. It’s not perfect, but makes a fair impression and would be fine without the intro in the first paragraph.

Remember your audience, a resume screener or hiring manager, will be skeptical when reading your resume and cover letter. They know each job seeker tries to create the best sales pitch. Part of the assessment is looking for claims that are not credible and exaggerations that overly inflate the candidate’s experience. You do not want to hurt your credibility by including information that is obviously untrue. Your resume may only get a 15 to 30 second look initially. You have a lot of competition and it is easy for a hiring manager to reject you and move on to the next resume. Don’t give them a reason at the start to reject you.

Addressing Requirements in a Cover Letter

One technique for writing a cover letter is to address each of the key requirements of the job. This approach provides a bulleted list or a table. Each line has one requirement and a short description of the job seekers experience with that specific task.

This technique can be very effective. It focuses on the key experiences the hiring manager wants and organizes them in a very easy to read format. When done well, a cover letter written this was should almost guarantee an interview before the hiring manger reads the resume. Unfortunately, writing a cover letter in this style is often done poorly.

There are three primary pitfalls with this style. First, the cover letter focuses on the key requirements of the position and provides a specific assessment of the job seeker’s experience with each. If the job seeker does not have extensive impressive experience with each requirement, the format will highlight the holes in the job seeker’s background.

Second, you need to have an accurate and complete list of key priorities to write a cover letter in this format. You may be able to get the key priorities from a posted job description. Often, the job description will not list every requirement and the relative importance of the requirements is usually difficult to determine. The reason for this is a result of where the job description originates. Most companies have standard job descriptions for each position. When the position opens up, the standard description is used. The hiring manager may have specific challenges in their department that are slightly different from the job description. Often, the hiring manager will post the standard description but actually assess candidates on the ability to meet the current challenges. This can make it difficult or impossible to understand a position fully from just a job description.

Third, many job seekers provide vague assessments of their experience. If you outline your experience relative to each job requirement, you need to be specific. Generic answers will hurt the overall impression you make.

The cover letter I read today fell into a couple of these pitfalls. Below are the first few bullets from the cover letter:

Maintain and expand customer base: See resume
Develop marketing plans: I have been doing that my entire career.
Expand company revenues: I was instrumental in growing a small local manufacturing company into a national supplier with plants in three states.
Manage trades shows: I have done them but it was not a major tool for us.

The format of the bullets is good but the content doesn’t work. The first bullet references the resume. If you are going to call out your specific experience, you need to include it in the cover letter. Don’t make the hiring manager go and look up the information.

The second bullet is extremely vague. It says nothing about the role of the job seeker in developing marketing plans, the scope of the plans that were developed or the success of the plans. We don’t know if the job seeker developed the marketing plan for the annual church bake sale for the last twenty years or if the job seeker was the chief architect of the global marketing efforts of a Fortune 500 company.

The third bullet is also vague. It does not show the job seeker’s role, the scope of the sales growth or the time period of the accomplishment.

The fourth bullet highlights the lack of experience with this requirement. Stating that trade shows were not a major tool is equivalent to saying that the job seeker has limited experience in this area. If managing trade shows is a key priority, this bullet could sink the job seeker’s chances by itself.

To rewrite the bullets to be more effect, we need to be specific and focus on the benefits the job seeker has provided in their career:

Maintain and expand customer base: Over a twenty year period, grew a small regional manufacturing business into the leading supplier of a line of precision equipment in North America, expanding the customer base from a limited number of local firm to almost every major company in the industry.
Develop marketing plans: Developed and managed all marketing plans, including managing sales, estimating, proposal development, advertising, and customer relationships over a 20+ year period, resulting in an increase in sales from $2 million to over $14 million.
Expand company revenues: Entered a new market, growing sales from nothing to over $6 million.
Manage trades shows: Managed and attended various industry trade shows over 20+ years in sales management.

The bullets are much more specific. The first three should make a very positive impression. The fourth is vague but much more positive than the original. If the majority of bullets are specific, one or two that are more general won’t hurt the overall impression. Ideally, the job seeker would describe how many trade shows they attended, the sales results from attending and the names of the specific shows.

One final drawback of this style of cover letter is how it focuses on the requirements and not the job seeker’s strengths. If your background matches the position exactly, this isn’t a problem. Most people will not be an exact match though. Your cover letter could be more effective focusing on your greatest strengths and accomplishments. The cover letter is a sales pitch for you and you should chose the structure that fosters the best sales pitch.

If you aren’t going to be specific with each requirement, avoid this style cover letter. It will do more harm than good.