Writing Effective Cover Letters
People ask me all the time if cover letters are even necessary these days and the short answer is no. They certainly aren’t necessary but a personalised, relevant cover letter can absolutely help with your job application and improve your odds of securing that critical first interview.
Fewer than half of the job applications I see have some form of cover letter and, unfortunately, most of those cover letters are generic and pointless. People that spend a lot of time hiring can very quickly identify if a cover letter has been specifically crafted for a particular role or company. When it’s clear that the cover letter is a copy & pasted, generic block of text that could apply to any company or position, then not only is the cover letter dismissed, it can often ignite a negative response from the employer as their first impression is that you haven’t given a lot of thought to your application.
With minimal effort, you can write a tailored cover letter that will not only grab the attention of the person reviewing your application, it will increase the probability of you landing that all important first interview.
To whom it may concern
It’s unlikely that you’re going to know the name of the person who will be reviewing your job application so a relatively broad greeting is often necessary. There are a few assumptions every applicant should avoid making:
Never ever assume the person’s gender (e.g. Dear Sirs)
Don’t assume their role in the company (e.g. Dearest HR Manager)
Don’t assume they will be receptive to a casual tone (e.g. Hi folks!)
Some simple but appropriate alternatives:
Dear <Company Name>,
To whom it may concern,
Hello,
Get to the point
Your opening paragraph is instrumental in ensuring your application is taken seriously. If you establish the role you’re applying for (use the exact job title from the job ad), where you found the job advertised, and what it was that convinced you to apply, not only will you have captured their attention, you will also have given them valuable context on where their job advert is actually getting noticed.
Dear DeepBurger,
I saw your Staff Software Engineer opening on Hacker News and I was fascinated by how you’re applying AI to the burger industry. Having spent the past 15 years consuming burgers whilst earning a living writing Scala, I think this is a great opportunity to marry my skills with my passion and join a disruptive BurgerTech organisation like DeepBurger.
As an employer, this simple paragraph tells me a lot about you.
You clearly took the time to write your cover letter specifically for this role at my company.
You clearly like burgers (a legitimate interest in the product, platform, or industry makes a big difference).
I need to pay attention to your CV because you have indicated that you have plenty of relevant experience.
Selling yourself
There’s a very fine line between selling yourself and overselling yourself. A cover letter is a great opportunity to summarise your skills, experience and interests into a more conversational tone. It should absolutely be used an an opportunity to convince the employer that they should give you the opportunity to at least interview for the position.
Humility is far more valuable than arrogance however confidence is critical. To clarify this fine line, let’s continue the earlier example and assume we are applying for a Staff Software Engineer job at DeepBurger and assume one of the specified requirements in the job ad is for applicants to have significant commercial experience using Scala and some team leadership experience.
Selling Yourself:
I have spent the past four years working for a company where I was able to significantly level up my Scala experience, working on large scale applications whilst surrounded by a fantastic team of engineers. Most recently, I was the Lead Engineer on a major project where I had the opportunity to lead a team of 15 wonderful engineers to deliver a critical new feature for the platform which resulted in an X increase in revenue/traffic/DAU/etc.
This is a perfect blend of confidence and relevance. It hits the relevant areas of experience that the employer is looking for, and shares critical context like the specific team size that you are leading that the employer would otherwise have to ask you for if they were to interview you. Now, let’s make the same points as above but this time we will oversell ourselves.
Overselling Yourself:
I am a highly experienced and accomplished Senior Scala professional with over 15 years of experience in this field. In my current role of Lead Engineer, I am solely responsible for directly managing a 15 person engineering team. I have only been in this role for a few months but I have already delivered a critical new feature for the platform which resulted in an X increase in revenue/traffic/DAU/etc and addressed many performance problems within the team.
Whilst you may have established the same metrics as the first example, your points are being completely overshadowed by perceived arrogance. The first example makes references like “opportunity to lead a great team” whilst the second example focuses on how they were “directly responsible for managing…”.
Employers are humans and humans are flawed. They will make assumptions about you and your personality based on the tone and approach of your cover letter. In this circumstance, the assumptions I would make is that the person in the first example is a collaborative and effective leader with a hands-on approach to getting shit done. The assumptions I make about the person in the second example is that they are arrogant, self-centred, and clearly believe they are more important than the team they lead. I already know which one of those two people I’d rather work with.
Signing off
Even if you really do believe that you are the perfect candidate for the job you’re applying to, let the employer come to that conclusion through a clearly written CV and a cover letter that sets an approachable, likeable tone.
The final sentence should be a call to action but that call to action should be circumstantially appropriate.
I look forward to scheduling an interview at your earliest convenience.
Here you’re making an assumption on my behalf. You are assuming that I am going to come to the conclusion that you are the perfect candidate and you are assuming I will want to interview you immediately. That assumptive close might work if you’re selling insurance but when we’re talking about spending almost every day in each others company, an assumptive close is simply too aggressive.
My mobile number is 07********* and my email is stevie@foo.bar. Thank you for considering my application and hopefully we’ll speak soon.
This is my favourite example of an effective close. Friendly, useful, and appreciative.
Your mileage may vary
I’ve been hiring people for a very long time and I’ve applied for my fair share of jobs over the years. My perspective is just that, one person’s perspective. The reality is that there are employers out there who are convinced a firm handshake tells them everything they need to know about a person. Those people are likely to post screenshots of this blog post on LinkedIn and write broetry about how I’m some form of snowflake that needs to harden up. These people will hand you a pen and tell you to sell it to them. They want you to be over confident and to oversell yourself. They want you to assume that you have no power in their hiring process and carry that mentality into the job if you are ‘lucky enough’ to join their team.
Your mileage may vary but I am a firm believer in being true to yourself. Set a tone in your cover letter that you feel comfortable maintaining throughout your career with that company should they offer you the job.
Good luck.
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