The Journey to a Design Job: 5 Tips for Your Graphic Design Cover Letter
It’s a sudden-death game.
When you apply for a job, your cover letter will be among the first things your new employer will read. Along with your resume, a hiring manager will use your cover letter to determine whether you are professional, capable, and a fit for the position. If you do this part well, you will make a fantastic introduction and a lasting impression. If your cover letter sucks, nothing will get your application into the trash bin quicker.
No pressure 🙂
Now that we’re off to a running start, let’s take a look at 5 tips that will make or break your graphic design cover letter:
1: Be Honest
I said it a couple weeks ago in my post about your resume, and I’m saying it again. If it didn’t happen, it DOES NOT belong in your job application! I read one story recently where a creative director received an application with a list of previous projects. One of those projects was a website that the creative director herself had designed! That particular applicant did get a strongly worded reply to their application but sure didn’t get the job.
When you’re writing your cover letter, present the facts as they are. Many organizations who are hiring recent graduates and new designers into full-time positions understand that their professional experience is limited. They’ve trained themselves to look for qualified applicants in other areas, such as professional communication and ability to follow instructions.
It’s tempting to embellish your experience or make vague reference to projects you were a part of but cannot include in your portfolio. I promise that you will get the experience you need to develop an incredible resume throughout your career — but start now with what you have accomplished and nothing more.
2: Personalize
“To Whom it May Concern” is likely to concern no-one. Every cover letter you send out should be personally addressed to the person who should receive it. If you’re lucky, that contact’s name will be in the job listing. If you wanted to reach out to me, you’d address your cover letter “Dear Mr. Strachan.” If your new employer is a lady, it will be “Dear Ms. Owens.” In many cases, your contact will ask you to call them by their first name by the time you come for an interview, but you can’t hurt yourself by starting out as professionally as possible.
If you’re not sure who the contact is, start with the company’s website. Look for owners, creative directors, or the title of the person that the job description says you’ll be working for. If that fails, call the company. Tell them that you’re submitting an application for the open position and that you’d like to know to whom you should address your cover letter. That gesture alone can put you miles ahead of the competition.
Next, make sure that your name and title are personalized to each specific application. If you’re applying for Junior Graphic Designer, title your cover letter with “Jane Doe, Applying for Junior Graphic Designer Position.” This touch, again, demonstrates that you are not just canvasing the job field with generic applications, but that you’re taking the time to personally address each hiring manager that will read your application. Remember, for every application you submit, there is another human who has to spend all morning digging through potential applicants. That person will make decisions quickly and is likely to make a favorable decision if they see their name on your cover letter.
3: Get to the Point
You know those times where you have to have a tough conversation with someone, and they’re totally clueless about it? It’s so hard to shift the conversation toward the only thing on your mind; you make quickly, non-committal replies, you get nervous in the pauses because it’s finally your time to speak up, and you try to tread lightly into the subject. Yeah, we’ve all been there.
I have great news.
Your job application is not one of these conversations! The hiring manager on the other side of the table knows EXACTLY what you want. For that reason, it is your job to show your new employer as quickly and effectively as possible that you are also EXACTLY what they want. I’ll use a couple of examples to demonstrate my point.
Here’s what not to do:
“Sara is a highly skilled graphic artist committed to learning and understanding new design trends and implementing those skills across a variety of communication mediums to influence positive connotations and customer or viewer action.”
Wow. Can you speak that sentence with just one breath?
While that might look like a really comprehensive introduction, I have actually managed to say nothing at all. If you break it down, here’s what I really just said:
“Sara thinks very highly of himself and seems to understand the general job description required of a graphic designer. He is not capable, however, of demonstrating that he has any actual experience.”
Yikes.
Instead, I might introduce myself like this:
“Ricky is a graphic artist with 5 years of experience in print, web design, and email marketing campaigns with consistent 20+ percent engagement rates. He combines his Bachelor’s of Science in Digital Communication with industry-leading psychology of design research to create viewer experiences that influence response.”
Let’s break that one down — those sentences tell the reader that Ricky has 5 years of professional experience, exactly which mediums he’s worked with, what kind of results his work produces, and what his educational background and current research interests are. Notice that there are no adjectives like “highly skilled,” and no ambiguous terms like “positive connotations” or “a variety of communication mediums.”
As you’re writing the rest of your cover letter, apply this same test. Do your words convey real meaning that line up with your experience? Do you need those adjectives and adverbs to communicate the point (you don’t), or can your artwork speak for whether you’re a highly skilled artist without you having to say it?
Take time to simplify what you write. If you present the facts well, your new employer will come to a positive conclusion about you on their own.
4: Triple Check
If you take only one thing away from this post, please take this piece of advice! You MUST proofread your cover letter! Consider this to be your first test — one that you HAVE to get 100% on.
Here’s my personal preference for a proofreading checklist:
- Revise:read through and focus on content and simplicity. Cut extra words and unnecessary descriptors.
- Review:use spellcheck, Grammarly,or a similar program to check your spelling and grammar. I personally use Grammarly Premium, and I LOVE it! The free version should provide you with everything you need for a solid proofread. I can’t recommend this highly enough.
- Revisit: After completing those steps, set your cover letter down for a solid 24 hours. When you come back to it, the refreshed perspective will allow you to see all kinds of things you may not have noticed before. If you don’t like the wording, go ahead and fix it! Note: if you do make changes, go back to the review step!
- Reach Out:have a friend or a loved one read your cover letter. Ask them to check for spelling and grammar and to ask any questions if it seems not to make sense. If you can’t answer those questions clearly, that’s something to work out.
Whatever you do, make sure that some form of editing is built into your writing process. For some motivation, ask yourself how you would feel if your DREAM job loved your portfolio but tossed your application because of a silly typo in your cover letter. Yeah, it would suck. Don’t do that!
5: Follow Up
Finally, use your cover letter and your resume as an opportunity to demonstrate your professionalism over time. I highly recommend concluding your cover letter with a sentence stating that you’ll follow up on your submission in one week. By writing that, and then by following up, you’ll give yourself a touch of street credit with the hiring manager. You demonstrate that you’re committed to the application process and that you manage your communication effectively. In Design Your Career, we reinforce the importance of following up on your job applications and show you how to do so professionally. Suffice it to say for this post that you should be regularly following up on job applications.
If you do decide to state in your cover letter that you’ll follow up, however, be sure to do so! I personally use reminders on my iPhone to manage my whole life. I’d say “Hey Siri, remind me to follow up with [Insert company name] next Thursday at noon.” It will pop up on my phone, and I’ll get it done! Hiring managers will often remember that you wrote this and may even wait to see if you keep your word. Make sure to follow up.
Take these tips and create a better cover letter that shows who you are. Have you had any learning experiences that helped you create a better cover letter? Share them in the comments!
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