Wednesday, December 06, 2017
These Are the Cover Letter Mistakes That Keep You From Getting an Interview
lifehacker.com: We’ve all had the experience of applying for a job online—you submit your resume and cover letter into the dark abyss of some online hiring portal and, aside from an auto-generated “Thanks for applying!” email, you never hear another peep from the employer.
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I thought I was doing pretty well for the first couple rules. My greetings are always professional I believe. I either know who I am sending to and use that person’s name, or “To Whom It May Concern,” I think you can’t go wrong with that, but who knows. Swapping in company names is where I fell off the tracks. I do not think I ever do a straight swap of names because I often change a little bit about why I want to work for a specific company, but in the end, if everyone I applied to in the past compared my letters they might not be too different. Now, I do not think this is the worst thing because the cover letter is about me and although I tailor it as need to an extent, the bulk of it talks about my experience and work which is the same no matter what I am applying for. Some of the other rules seem obvious though.
This article seems like a very basic overview, but I think hits home some important points. From basics such as proofreading: "Spell check. Grammar check. Read the letter out loud. You’d be surprised how many errors you catch that way," to giving instructions to not speak ill of former employers, this seems like a good introduction for someone who doesn't know where to start. There are now really big reveals here or any information that I wasn't already aware of, but I do think it is a good list. An updated section of advice, to not use MRS. MR. SIR, etc is a good point, and they boil it down pretty simply by stating: "“To Whom It May Concern” works; “To the hiring team at [Company Name]” is good. If you can find out the name of the HR representative or hiring manager, all the better." The focus on the importance of doing research on a company, and this goes as far as making sure you sound knowledgeable in your cover letter to knowing who the correct person to address your cover letter to. Like anything in life, putting in effort is the key to success a fair amount of the time, and people can generally tell when you have put in the work or half assed something--especially when you are applying to a job and you are being compared to others.
The article was very helpful in that it gives a chance to check for the very basic, like checking for spelling errors, making it specific, and showing positive attitude. But also, like Madeleine said above, it was up-to-date in that it advised not to use sexist greetings. To me (and I want to believe to most people), writing a decent cover letter is still time consuming and tricky because it can possibly be my first impression to the hiring person. The fact that people tend to give ambivalent advice on the matter also confuses me. It has to be succinct, without losing specific details about the applying company and my experience. It has to show something that is not visible on the resume or highlight something already on the resume. In the sense, the article did a great job staying consistent and not giving any ambivalent advice. Some of the rules may be obvious, but at least it's not confusing.
I feel like we read a thousand and one articles each week about resumes and interviews, but rarely ever any about cover letters, which is often where people, including myself, make the most errors. This article covers a lot of fairly basic information, but it is still good to read and be reminded of some things. One point that especially stuck out to me is not just replacing the company name with the next company's name and changing nothing else. It can be kind of tedious and tiring to look at the mission statement of every theatre and find unique things about that theatre that you really care about, especially when you're applying to a lot of smaller, very similar theatres, but it definitely is obvious when you have a cookie cutter cover letter. It is also hard to motivate yourself to put in the effort on a cover letter, since oftentimes employers do not entirely care about the cover letter at all, but it is obviously better to be safe.
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