As evident by recent status updates, I HATE cover letters.  I hate writing them, reading them, editing them, giving up and sending them, the whole situation.  I realize that they are necessary but can’t help questioning their true purpose.  Are we supposed to view them as tools for showcasing our verbosity(big word 🙂 )?  How over/underqualified we are for that position?  Or how well we seem to grasp the job description?  All three while remaining engaging, official and short?  Not a challenge at all…

Cover letters make me miss the days of reports and papers.  Sure, we were forced to read some of the most boring articles and books.  But in the end, you got to state your opinion/take on a specific question and back it up with facts and/or examples.  Of course, your professor could disagree or point out something you missed but all you had to do was have an opinion and express it with grammatical correctness (not to be confused with political correctness).  Either way, the whole thing was about something you thought, not on yourself.

The fact that I am about to write this on a personal blog seems to discount what I’m about to say BUT I don’t like writing about myself.  In a regular conversation, if you were to ask me about myself, I’d stammer out a list of general qualities.  But to really know what type of employee, friend, sister, etc, I was, you’d need stories, anecdotes and personal opinions.  Since a cover letter is used, if not expressly meant, to replace a first meeting, for good or bad, you’re given the opportunity to finely craft and proofread your first impression.

I’ve tried to view a cover letter as just a resume in paragraph form but that tactic is flawed.  A resume is supposed to tell what you’ve done while a cover letter is supposed to tell who you are.  That’s a lot of pressure for 3-4 paragraphs.  Plus, isn’t the whole thing about what you need in an employee and not really about me?

Regardless of how I feel about them, cover letters aren’t going away.  I just have to accept them as a part of the process and remember a really good one could help end the process for me.

I believe I would be the perfect fit for this position because….

Jo’van

September 17, 2009
Categories: Office Appropriate (Work Life), Whole Truth, The . Tags:cover letters, job search, office, resume, unemployment . Author: tjovand

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