Please Stop Sending us Generic Cover Letters

Originally posted on January 23 2015, but as another school year ends and our studio receives a wave of new enquiries it’s still very much relevant.

We frequently receive job-seeking emails mostly from recent grads (usually designers). It amazes and infuriates us how many of those emails begin with a generic cover letter. Normally we will either respond with something equally vague or we will ignore these emails entirely thinking — rather indignantly — that if this person can’t take a few minutes to write something unique then why should we take time out of our day to respond? Neither of these reactions is particularly helpful to us or to that job seeker and, after receiving a couple more emails like this recently, we decided to confront the ambiguity head-on by responding with something more honest and (hopefully) more useful.

Below is an email we recently received. The name and any identifying information have been redacted because we do not wish to shame, only educate.

Dear Cartogram,

My name is <name>. I am a Designer and Illustrator as well as 3D Artist graduated from Computer Animation post-graduate study at <school and program>. I’m wondering if there’s any chance for me to join your team as a designer/illustrator?

I really adore like literally all of your works!
And the first time I got into your website, I really fell in love with everything in there, your style, mood, feel.. I just can’t help to love every single one of them!
I really can see myself working on those projects, and I really hope to have that wonderful chance!

Before attending college and deciding to learn about 3D Computer Animation, I had been working for several design studios in <location>, namely <company name>, and <company name>. I worked mostly on Brand Identity, Logo and Graphic Design, Art Direction and Illustration.

I am good at concept and have good eyes for details & colors which I believe would be a good asset for you and I sincerely wish that I can have the honor to learn from everyone in Cartogram’s team as well as keep on creating and doing what I love the most. I want to grow, be courageous, and show the most powerful version of me.

You can view my full Linked-In profile at <link> and enjoy my graphic design and illustration portfolio at The Loop <link>.

Attached is my resumé for your review. Please feel free to contact me at <email> if you feel that my skill sets can be any help for you.

I truly hope to be able to be part of Cartogram. Thank you very much for your time and looking forward to speaking with you!

Kindest regards,
<name>

This email is polite, but flip out the 3 instances of our company name and you could send this to any studio you can think of in just about any field (web, print, branding, motion, and so on).

Here is our response:

Hi <name>,

Thanks for getting in touch and for your interest in our company. Your portfolio looks great.

Unfortunately we’re not hiring at the moment, and because we’re primarily a web design studio we’d be looking for individuals with, at minimum, a working knowledge of web development (CSS, HTML etc.) and some experience with or at least a clear passion for UI design. I am not seeing reference to either in your portfolio or resume.

One additional tip, and I mean absolutely no disrespect with this, is that your letter comes across as a bit generic. I could very easily imagine this being sent to any and all studios with simply the name of the company changed. While I’m sure this is a very efficient way to apply to all the places you’re even vaguely interested in, to the recipient it gives the impression that you didn’t care enough to really consider my company specifically, what exactly you like about it, or about the work that we do and how you think your skills would integrate with and/or help elevate our work.

You’d be amazed how many people send us generic cover letters like this and, to be honest, it’s an instant turn-off. My advice would be to send fewer letters and take a second to learn something about each company you’re submitting a resume or portfolio to. For example, instead of just saying “I love them all!”, is there a particular project or client you’d like to handle? If so, why?

So, first and foremost, personalize your email (it’s better to use people’s actual names if you can find them — a quick browse of our website would have given you that information). Secondly, tailor the letter to that company. I think you will receive a lot more positive feedback this way and, at the very least, those companies will be more willing to keep your resume on-hand should a new opportunity present itself.

I hope you will not be offended by this response. I only mean for it to help you with your job search in the future.

Best of Luck,
Fiona

In short, we think it’s better to send less emails to only the companies you have a genuine interest in so that you can write more thoughtful responses that demonstrate you actually know something about the business you’re contacting. Otherwise, you can expect to receive either no response or an equally generic decline.

Hope this helps!

Update: We received an email from a student today where, in addition to the message being totally generic, she went ahead and just plopped everyone’s email in the To: field (so it wasn’t even a cc/bcc mixup)!