Tag: cover letter

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.

 

Newly published in 2010:  Get the best book for Manufacturing Resumes

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.

Cover Letter Misdirection

I received a resume from a job seeker with a cover letter that created false expectations.  The cover letter indicated that the job seeker was currently employed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  It didn’t give any details of the individual’s career – just that he worked for the FBI.

I expected the job seeker to have a law enforcement background.  We work with a lot of former military officers with security, law enforcement and intelligence background.  Reading that the individual was from the FBI, I assumed that he had a background that was related to these fields.  I was completely wrong.

The job seeker was a public relations specialist, with significant marketing, graphic design and multimedia design experience.  Although he interacted with law enforcement personnel, his role was entirely focused on PR. 

The problem with the cover letter was that it directed me down a particular thought process that was unrelated to the candidate.  A much better cover letter would have highlighted the public relations experience of the job seeker.  Mentioning the FBI in the cover letter is good, but emphasizing the career of the job seeker is essential.  The best cover letters show the value that a job seeker will provide an employer.  This requires describing past accomplishments.

Because my firm works some security positions, I read the resume close enough to understand the candidate’s experience.  If I specialized in graphic design and PR roles, there’s a chance that I might discard the resume after reading just the cover letter.

When you write your cover letter, make sure it focuses on the value you would bring to an organization.  This requires you to create a clear picture of what you do and how successful you are at doing it.  If you don’t make this clear, the impression you give may not match reality.

Worst Cover Letter Ever

Below is the cover letter from an resume I received by email this week:

**************Plan your next getaway with AOL Travel. Check out Today's Hot
5 Travel Deals!
(  — Link to AOL Travel —  )

This email wasn't spam.   There was a resume attached and it was from a job seeker interested in an opportunity.  Other than deleting the link, the text of the cover letter is complete, exactly as I received it.

This isn't really a cover letter.  It's the signature that AOL automatically puts in every email sent out.  It would not have taken much time to put in a message.  At the least, the job seeker could have written something like this:

To whom it may concern,

Please accept my resume for consideration.

<Job Seeker's Name>

My version would be a bad cover letter, but significantly better than just an AOL Travel advertisement.  What the job seeker sent was just terrible.

My Reaction

When I opened the email and saw an ad, my first reaction was to delete it.  The one word subject, "Resume," caught my eye right before I hit delete. I realized this was actually a submission from a candidate and not spam.  I very surprised that this didn't end up in my spam folder – it is just an ad.  Somehow, it slipped through. 

As I write this, I haven't decided if I'm going to open the resume.  The "cover letter" has given me enough information to know whether I want to represent this candidate.  Even if the resume looks good, I have to question the professionalism of a candidate that sends each resume with just a travel ad.  If they aren't willing to spend a few seconds typing a short message, how committed are they to their job search and their career? 

Bottom line: Make your resume submission a persuasive sales pitch for you – not for AOL.

Cover Letter Worst Mistakes

Although there were a lot of mistakes in the cover letters we benchmarked, six stood out as the worst.  Below is an excerpt from our Cover Letter Best Practices Report.

Worst Mistakes

Being Unprofessional: Using an informal salutation won’t help and most likely will make a poor impression. If you aren’t going to address the letter in a serious manner, why should a hiring manager take your resume seriously.

Being Sexiest: It was surprising to find cover letters addressed “Dear Sir” and “Gentlemen.” Even if the job seeker intended no offense to female hiring managers, by addressing this way, they are showing that they are not aware of how this might be perceived – not the impression you want to make. Even with male hiring managers, this will make a bad impression. Most hiring managers will conclude that the job seeker has the potential to be an EEOC or Sexual Harassment liability. The downside for the company is too great to risk, and the job seeker’s resume will probably be discarded.

Wrong Customization: A number of the submissions were addressed to the firm, not an individual. In these cases, one spelled the name of the firm wrong and one had left the name of another company in the salutation, forgetting to replace the name from the last time they sent the same cover letter. Needless to say, neither of these mistakes made a good impression.

Spelling: The majority of cover letters had no spelling mistakes. The ones that did have mistakes, tended to have multiple mistakes. The two spelling mistakes that were the most entertaining were:

– A job seeker, in the first sentence of their cover letter, wrote that they were “seeking a challanging, new position which will utilize my skills and allow me to make a substantive impact.” They should focus on the challenging task of learning to spell challenging.

– A job seeker wrote a lengthy cover letter that focused almost entirely on an MBA they recently received. The letter was 2 paragraphs, 178 words, dedicated to their education and how it would be a benefit to an employer. This would not be a problem if they could spell the University of “Pheonix.”

My Name Is: A number of cover letters start out with the first sentence stating the name of the job seeker. The first sentence of a cover letter is the most likely to be read. Wasting this prime real estate on your name makes it much more likely the reader will skip the cover letter and move on to the resume.

Too Much Hype: Some of the cover letters examined were submitted to confidential employers, where the name of the company was not disclosed. Despite this, some of these included gushing statements of how the job seeker was extremely impressed with the company due to their excellent quality, track record and reputation. You can get away with blanket statements like this if you know who the company is. Doing this when it is clear you know nothing about the company will make one of two impressions. First, you are exaggerating everything you write and it can’t be trusted. Second, you’re making up whatever you think the hiring manager wants to hear, so nothing you write can be trusted.

Cover Letter Best Practices

Palladian International conducted a benchmarking survey of cover letters used by active job seekers. This survey examined a variety of characteristics of cover letters in order to identify the best practices that job seekers should employ. The survey also uncovered a number of common mistakes that job seekers make.

Best Practices

  1. Write a Customized Cover Letter: Very few of the submissions included a customized cover letter. The vast majority either omitted the cover letter or had an overly general letter. Personalizing a cover letter’s salutation and customizing the body of the letter to the position will help create a compelling presentation. Customization also demonstrates effort and initiative.
  2. Give a Reason to Hire: The vast majority of cover letters made blanket statements similar to “I am confident that I am the best candidate for the position” or “I am confident I will be extremely successful in your organization.” These statements do little to help impress the hiring manager. One of the primary purposes of a cover letter is to generate interest and sell the job seeker. Do this with tangible accomplishments. A very limited percentage of cover letters focused on significant, specific accomplishments. Including just one accomplishment can help validate the remainder of the cover letter and get the hiring manager excited. The best cover letters had 3 or more accomplishments that directly related to the position the job seeker was pursuing.
  3. Give Information Not on the Resume: Only 8% of cover letters gave a reason why the job seeker was looking for a career change. This is a question that virtually every hiring manager will want answered. More importantly, if your cover letter and resume make a strong case for your track record of success, the question may come up: “If they are so good, why are they looking for a job?” There can be a lot of good reasons to look for a job. If you don’t include your reason in the cover letter, you open the door for doubting the credibility of your success.
  4. Keep it Short: The best cover letters had between 150 and 250 words. Letters that were 400+ words, on average, contained less content and were less valuable than the shorter letters.
  5. Make it Easy to Scan: The best cover letters utilized bullets with titles making it easy to scan the letter quickly. This improved the readability of the letter. Cover letters should draw the reader’s attention to the most important information. Once the reader focuses on the key points, they are more likely to read the entire cover letter and then read the resume thoroughly.