: Re: How to obtain a thoughtful critique of a job application cover letter? Sometimes, not always, when searching for my next position or project, I make an effort to write an interesting cover letter,

@Martha805

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Cover letters are tricky, because if you're writing a CL for a traditional job you're probably competing with somewhere between 50 and 300 other applicants. This means HR has to find a fast way of filtering the wheat from the chaff. Your resume is generally the first thing an HR person looks at. If you make it past the first screening, your cover letter may have a chance of getting read. Unlike its name implies, the cover letter isn't the first thing to be read anymore. (Was it ever?) Some places only look at the cover letter if they're feeling strongly about a few candidates, and need a tie-breaker.

In any case, you've got two fundamental problems you need to overcome when angling for a job:

Lack of third-party buy-in
Attention scarcity

You have somewhere between 5 and 25 seconds to get someone's attention; to get them to see you as a human being rather than text on a page wasting their time.

People don't read monologues (even clever ones!) because they're being bombarded by messages every day, and they have other things competing for their attention. If they want to read long-form content, they're gonna read a book or a magazine, or you better be solving an acute problem that they need help with right now. Don't believe me? When was the last time you wrote a long-form business email to someone you already knew, and it was obvious that they didn't read it the next time you interacted with them? And this is someone who knows you and has some investment in the relationship already.

In terms of cover letters, I've learned to love brevity and whitespace, no matter how badly I want to write an amazing essay explaining why I'm perfect for their company and their opening. Generally that means 2-3 sentences, 2-4 short bullets, and 2-3 sentences to close, and that's it. (And every cover letter is custom-written for each job I'm interested in.) This is an information-dense format, and the use of bullets breaks up the look and the flow of the cover letter. Bullets are better than a wall of text because they tell the reader that there's a discrete piece of information here, instead of needing to start at the beginning which is the subconscious message of a wall of text.

I used to do the long-form thing. My response rate was less than 10%. Now my response rate is damn near 50%, which very, very good. As with all non-fiction writing, it's about understanding who your audience is, and the context in which they're likely to be reading what you've written. Your message is pointless if it never gets heard.

Remember: You're not trying to seal the deal with your cover letter. You're just trying to get them to pick up the phone and call you.

(And if this sounds like marketing/copywriting advice, that's because it is. When you write a cover letter, you're absolutely marketing yourself.)

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