How to be your Best Job Huntress (or Hunter) without Losing Your Soul
Part 2 in a series of tbd.
See part 1 for unsage advice on networking.
As an art historian who finished her PhD and went into the job market just as the pandemic hit, I’ve collected more than my fair share of experience as a job huntress. I’ve learned very little but have opinions on everything. In this series, I will go through all the advice I’ve gotten with notes. If you have other ones to suggest, please do. Otherwise, sit back, and get ready to become very, very unsuccessful.
Installment #2— The Cover Letter — Just Tell Them What They Want to Hear
I always thought the cover letter was just a formality, to show your commitment to this application and your delightful personality (Tyra always said you have to show personality). Just write a short introduction about yourself and how you would love to hear from them sincerely. But as it turns out, a lot of workplaces (or HR people) take real stock in this bizarre evaluation method. Which seems counterintuitive to me — you already found an informative, succinct format in the CV, why would you allow people to elaborate in their own words? Never give people room to use their own words, they will rarely use them for good. And why would you want to read all these letters of job hopefuls? (Also I should think, you would reject most of them, I wouldn’t want to get to know them better, it just becomes so personal).
The process is equally confusing for the applicant (as in moi) — now, on top of rewriting and editing your CV for every application, you have to produce actual text. On the other hand, few people are adequately served by their CV’s (especially multi-hobbied, little experienced millennials). So the cover letter is your chance to shine and finally elaborate on all the things the career counselor told you to remove from your CV. It is tricky and requires a lot of skilled humblebragging (which I promise you, becomes exponentially easier with time). I find there are a few elements to a good cover letter: 1. In general, you want to sound like you are everything they’d dreamed of, almost to the point of “actually, I may be too good for you, you should be chasing me” but not too much so you don’t put them off. (This is easily achieved by telling them how passionate you are about whatever their company does) 2. Manipulate everything you’ve ever done into relevant experience and life skills. This is difficult to do on a CV, but the many words of the cover letter give more wiggle room for alternative truths. The period you spent playing tennis in your youth taught you perseverance, healthy competition, sportsmanship, good hand-eye coordination, and prioritizing which balls to chase 3. In the general tone department — you should sound like a Noble laureate, at the minimum — your opening and closing paragraphs should be usable at the Noble ceremony, for example. If you’re not sure about the last bit, I use this test — if what I’ve written doesn’t make me a little bit nauseated, it’s not good enough.
The best part is, you will probably write and send a lot of cover letters, and you will find that although you could easily edit an existing one, you will find yourself rewriting them, because they do have the tendency to make you feel like an adequate applicant. The HR people will disagree, but then you just continue on to the next cover letter, 60th one’s the charm they say.
Your internal monologue while writing should pretty much reflect this:
