Nancy wrote: “You are a prolific writer – good on you- but I am a true ‘Visual Learner’ and I would like to see an example of the actual cover letter. ‘A picture says a thousand words.’ I appreciate your enthusiasm!”

Thanks Nancy!  I appreciate the comments and questions.  In order to do justice to Nancy’s request, I will give you a real-world example.

I’m going to warn you, this is a very long blog post (more than 3,000 words), and each part of it is important.  Come back to it if you need, but I’m going to cover:

1. How to analyze a job posting
2. How to figure out if the job is a sham/the company is cheap
3. How to know if you’re qualified
4. How to properly research the company
5. How to begin your cover letter
6. What to say in your cover letter
7. How to end your cover letter
8. What to do after you’ve sent your cover letter

Here’s a real job posted on Andrew Hudson’s Job List – a list of creative jobs in and around Denver.  Andrew is, frankly, amazing and I hope he won’t mind we’re using an older listing from his site.  This is the job we’ll be “applying for”.  Along the way – make notes and let me know with a comment if I’ve forgotten something.

Company Overview
Water For People helps communities in developing countries improve the quality of life by supporting the development of locally sustainable drinking water resources, sanitation facilities, and health and hygiene education programs. Water For People believes access to safe drinking water and effective sanitation are basic human rights, vital to health and economic development. Water For People believes that drinking water, sanitation and hygiene problems are most effectively solved through community involvement using local resources. Local communities must be the driving force of all development efforts. Water For People believes in the power of partnerships and searches out trusted NGO, local governments, and private sector partners who share its vision and work together to build long-term relationships.

Job Description:
This is an exciting early career opportunity for the right person who is looking for challenge and support of a non-profit mission to make a difference in the lives of thousands upon thousands of people. Water For People is a not-for-profit organization that has an 18-year history of developing highly successful and sustained water and sanitation projects throughout ten countries in Central America, South America, Africa and India. The organization’s success at designing and implementing sustainable projects is unprecedented.

The Marketing Assistant is a key support person responsible for assisting and supporting marketing staff in the concepting, creating and distributing key devices and tools. Key responsibilities include graphic design, web maintenance, writing, editing, and basic PR responsibilities. Additional responsibilities involve planning, coordination and support of overseas marketing efforts.

Job Qualifications:
The ideal candidate should possess a range of the experience, qualifications and characteristics encompassing most or all of the following:

* Experience coding HTML as well as updating websites using a CMS tool
* Experience working with Photoshop, InDesign and other creative software
* Experience writing marketing materials and editing for length and voice.
* Proficiency in Word, Excel and PowerPoint
* Excellent communication skills, both written and oral presentation
* Spanish language skills helpful but not required
* Degree in Web Design, Graphic Design, Marketing, Communications, Business or related degree combined with some level of on the job experience (internships okay) preferred.

Salary: $30-40K|$20/hour 40 hours week

Application Deadline: 07/15/09

How to Apply:
Interested applicants should forward a single-page cover letter and a resume no longer than 2 pages to jobs@waterforpeople.org.

Website: http://www.waterforpeople.org/site/PageServer?pagename=About_Career01

Please mention that you found this on Andrew Hudson’s Jobs List.

How to Analyze a Job Posting

This is a pretty standard job description.  Lots of fluff and jargon, hype about the business, and so on.  Let’s get down to the bare-bones:

• Title: Marketing Assistant.
• Company: Water For People.
• Key Skills: HTML, CMS tool (good question here), Photoshop, InDesign, writing copy, editing copy – length and voice.
• Key Words (about company): communities, developing countries, safe drinking water, effective sanitation, basic human rights, community involvement using local resources, partnerships
• Key Words (about position): graphic design, web maintenance, writing, editing, basic PR, not-for-profit organization, designing and implementing sustainable projects, concepting, creating, distributing, planning, coordination and support
• Salary: $30-40K
• Education Required: Web Design, Graphic Design, Marketing, Communications, Business or related degree combined with some level of on the job experience (internships okay) preferred.

First, let’s look at the Salary to see if they’re sane.

According to PayScale.com, a Marketing Assistant with my degree and qualifications in Denver would be making an average of $31,575.  The low end is $25K and the high-end is $39K.  Their listed salary of $30-40K tells me that they’ve done their homework – AND that they aren’t cheap bastards.  Because they are expecting to pay at least the average salary, you can know that they will probably play fairly in the negotiations (and expect you to do the same).  They’re also willing to pay more than the average if you can show them that you’re worth it.

If the salary is off to the low-end, you can be assured that the company can’t pay you what you’re worth.  If the salary is off to the high-end, there’s usually a catch or something – like the frequent, yet unmentioned trips to Antarctica to film videos with the company-sponsored penguin colony.

Next, let’s look at the key skills and education.

Are these skills that you have?  Are any missing?  What have you done that’s similar?  Answering these questions gets you prepared to write your cover letter.  Or, lets you know that you shouldn’t bother.  These are listed in the order that they appeared on the job description, which are usually most important to least important.  Does your education match the one they have listed?  Do you have any special qualifications, certificates, honors, or anything that might make you more qualified?

Mismatched or hodgepodge skills (for example, seeing both JAVA and VB.Net programming languages on a job description or requesting that you be proficient in web graphic design and, oh, I dunno, Microsoft Publisher) indicates that you might be dealing with people who have no idea who they’re looking for.

Do the Company key words interest you?

Here’s a hint: when half of the “job description” is actually a company overview, part two… you know that culture is wickedly important to these people.  You want to make sure that if you apply to this job, you are crazy passionate about communities, developing countries, safe drinking water, etc… and share their passion and ideals.  If you don’t meet their expectation of fitting in to the company culture, you might as well shred your resume now.

How to Properly Research a Company

Okay, I’m interested – let’s start writing…

Time-out.  You haven’t done your homework yet.  Have you even visited the website yet?  Figured out who the key players are?  Who are their competitors?  Did you even stalk your potential new boss on LinkedIn?

Sheesh.  Okay, start by doing a little recon on the company.  A Google News Search on “Water for People” reveals that they received a donation of $216K from AmWater at the beginning of July and there was a Run For Water 5K on July 25th in New Jersey (apparently).  This will be important in a little bit, but first… let’s do some stalking.

Checking the “Water for People” Staff Page tells you your potential future boss’s name.  A quick check on LinkedIn using his name and the company name shows you that Mr. Peter M. doesn’t have a LinkedIn page.  Bummer.

The LinkedIn page can be crazy valuable.  Here’s why: Nick Armstrong.  Now, not everybody believes in having their information public like I do – and you actually have to give LinkedIn permission to publish these things.  But, say your future boss was me.  You’d know I have an interest in podcasting, Star Trek, and that I attended CSU.  These are valuable tidbits of knowledge to have on an interview and in mind while you’re writing your cover letter.

There’s one last thing you need to do before putting pen to paper (or turning on your Word Processor): call Water for People.  Find out who the cover letter for the Marketing Assistant position needs to be addressed to.  Be POLITE, even if the receptionist can’t help you or you reach a voicemail system.  And do leave a voicemail if you have no other choice.  Something like: “My name is Nick Armstrong.  My number is 123-456-7890.  I’m interested in the Marketing Assistant position, but I’d like to address the cover letter personally.  If you could call me back and let me know who I’m writing to, I’d be grateful! Again, my name is Nick Armstrong and my number is… Thanks!”

If they don’t get back to you, call again the next day or write an e-mail to the account visible on the “contact us” page.

Writing the Cover Letter

Now that you know who you’re writing the letter to (avoid “To whom it may concern” at all costs), you can start writing.  Here’s a cover letter I am making up for this position.  I’ll talk about each paragraph in detail below.  Assume that everything I say in my cover letter is the truth (even though pieces of it are made up) – you should always tell the truth in your cover letter about your experience and history.  I’m only making things up here so that I can show you something more fun than a programming job.

July 29, 2009

Dear Mark Pewtershmitt,

I’m excited to be writing you to apply for the Marketing Assistant position at Water for People.  Having reviewed the website, checking out all the cool things Water for People has done lately, and connecting with Water for People’s mission, I feel that Water for People’s Marketing Assistant position would be a challenging and fun opportunity!

I am a 2007 graduate of Colorado State University where I earned a 3.54 GPA and a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Marketing and Computer Information Systems in four years, also minoring in Media Studies.  My degree focused on several skills – website design and coding, marketing and promotion, and business writing.  I’m fluent in HTML as well as writing proper business copy.  In my professional life, I focus mostly on graphic design and copy writing, with some HTML editing daily.

While at college I joined an environmentally-conscious student group working to plant trees around campus.  My primary role was fundraising, although I did do a fair share of marketing as well.  By the time I graduated, I had raised over $3,000 and planted 18 trees in various locations on campus.

In my current position, I maintain the company website, which is written in a combination of PHP and HTML.  We use WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) and I use it to directly manage and edit the copy that appears on our websites, located at http://localhost/.  I also designed many of the website graphics in Photoshop and for the printed brochures, I used InDesign.  More of my graphics, copy writing and HTML-based work can be seen at my online portfolio, located at: http://localhost2/.

In my spare time, I enjoy building a community for my non-profit podcasting group Giant Gnome Productions, which specializes in Star Trek audio drama.  The current story line revolves around a world, coincidentally enough, suffering from a polluted water supply.  If only the world’s problems were as simple as driving away a few Romulans!

I’m very interested to learn more about the Marketing Assistant position, including which content management system is in use at Water for People and how your recent events were marketed – such as the Run For Water 5K in New Jersey last week.  I’m also interested to learn more about the work you do with other organizations like AmWater.

Please call or email me at your earliest convenience so that we can discuss the Marketing Assistant position in detail and schedule an interview.  My number is 123-456-7890 and my e-mail is Nick…com.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you for your time,

Nick Armstrong
Cell Phone
Email
Website Portfolio

Holy crap. What did he just say in that Cover Letter?

In the span of about 30 minutes, I busted out a cover letter – it’s not the best one I’ve ever written, but it’s not the worst either.

This cover letter is one page in length, just like they asked.  I’ve checked it in both Word and by print-previewing it in email form.

In the intro, we’ve successfully avoided the “To Whom It May Concern”.  In an email, you can omit the date and your address as these are redundant or unnecessary.   I introduce myself and tell Mr. Pewtershmitt why I’m writing him.  I give him a basic run-down of why I’m excited to apply.

Then, I tell him my basic info – my education qualifications, my experience, and note that I’ve made sure to include most of the key skills in this paragraph.  Web design, graphic design, HTML, writing copy, etc.  Or at least some variation of them as I set them up in the next few paragraphs.  The trick is, you want them to see you’re qualified without having to dig too much to get to that info.  Notice that I described my education as quickly as possible and fit in a lot of facts into one sentence: 2007 grad, 3.54 GPA, CSU, two majors and a minor in four years.

In the next paragraphs, I talk about the experience that I have which will benefit me in the position.  The more experience you have, in general, the better – particularly if you have achievements which really kick ass.  I’d have listed them here, but, saving HP $2K per eligible employee per year doesn’t really speak to my world-saving humanitarian skills.  Match your achievements to the job you’re applying for.  In this case, my made-up achievement (yours should be real) of the tree-hugging group was the one I wanted to emphasize.

In the next paragraph, I talk a bit more about my personal life and additional experience.  This shows I’m not just a 2D person, I exist, I have hobbies, and I’m capable of being and bringing more to the job than just work experience.  Okay, so, it’s a pretty nerdy joke, but… then again, I’m a pretty nerdy guy.  It’s okay to be true to yourself.  If they can’t take you for being you, then you wouldn’t be happy working there in the long-run.

Next, I ask questions based on my research and knowledge of the company.  In the job description, they list “content management system” but not which one, specifically.  This is a good time to ask about it as any, since it shows you were paying attention and have knowledge enough to know that there’s more than one.  I also ask about how the marketing assistant position would be doing real-world work… like the 5K and the partnerships with other organizations.  Again, you’re showing that you have an active interest in the company and care enough about the job that you’ve done some research.

Finally, we’re ending with a call to action – please call or email.  I’d like to schedule an interview with you as soon as possible.  These are important terms and can be worded however you’d like – but it gives a nice wrap-up to the letter and a next step to take if they’re interested.

Note that I’ve put my contact information in two places here.  I’ve put it in my signature and on the “please call” line.  You can put it in lieu of your address on top of the letter, too (same order as your signature).

Before you send your letter, have someone proofread it for you.  E-mail it to someone to check over.  Make sure your “your/you’re” and “there/their/they’re”s are all right.  Nothing kills your chances faster than looking like an idiot.  Save it for an hour and come back to it with fresh eyes.  Tripple-check you have the right address to send it to, and are sending from the right e-mail address (the one that looks like your name, not I<3Kitties69@gmail.com).  Make sure all the relevant documents (resume, references, etc) are attached.

After you send the Cover Letter

The Waiting Game Begins!

It’s sent! Let the waiting begin!  It can take a while in this economy for anyone to get back to you, but most companies will at least send you an auto-reply telling you that they received your stuff.  If you don’t hear anything (besides an auto-responder) after a week, send another email, attaching the original documents and cover letter, and say something like, “Dear Mr. Pewtershmitt, I am still very interested in the position and hope that it’s still open.  If so, I’ve attached my original cover letter, my resume and my references in this e-mail for your convenience.  I would love to schedule an interview with you soon for the Marketing Assistant position at Water for People – call me at 123-456-7890 or email me back at nick…com so we can arrange a time.  Thanks for your consideration,”  End this letter with your signature and contact info.

If another week goes by with no contact, send another e-mail – similar to the one above, but modify it so that it sounds fresh and new.

My rule is if you haven’t heard back from them within 3 weeks and after 3 emails, you’re likely never going to hear from them.  Don’t fret – there are other jobs out there.  Just put as much into applying for those as you did for this one, and you’re sure to hear back from someone eventually.

Always be polite – never discouraged, never down, never angry or upset.  It’s a small world and everybody knows friggin’ everybody, so be nice.

The Last Word

Remember that the economy is primed to put wheelbarrows and wheelbarrows full of resumes on the desks of hiring managers everywhere – you have to stand out.  Do your homework, don’t be afraid to show you have personality and hobbies, and go the extra mile to make sure you don’t get forgotten.  Keep your chin up – you WILL find a great job, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think you deserved it.

What’s It All For?

My most favorite words ever written were those prepared for a character named Alan Shore on David E Kelley’s smash legal hit Boston Legal, which tonight wrapped up its 5 season run with all the class you can come to expect from a show filled with top-notch actors.

But of all those actors, none have made me feel all at once elated and deflated as the character of Alan Shore, played by James Spader.  No one else’s words have ever had so much power to get me so fired up.

Arguably, the show has been a sounding-board for liberal agendas – but it’s hard to mistake the simple theme that always comes through in the dialog: hope belongs to those who fight for it.

My point in sharing all of this is that I so desperately want to give you that same feeling of hope.  My words will probably never be so eloquent, but the passion – the passion is there.  We live in a world where fear is right around the corner.  In the distance, the boogeyman has replaced the American Dream.

As long as there are good people out there, willing to work hard at good means and stick it through to the good ends, there will be hope.

To succeed, you have to have passion.  To have passion, you have to have something to believe in.  Find that belief.  Find that passion.  Bring it to every minute of every day and fight for what you believe in – in your career and in your life.  If you don’t, who will?  But most importantly of all, you have to believe in yourself!

Here are the key lines to my favorite Alan Shore speech.  I’d watch the video version courtesy of Boston-Legal.org, if you can.  The transcript is below.

“When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn’t.

Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.

Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.

And now, it’s been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidently, we haven’t.

In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we’re okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretappings, prison without a fair trial – or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.

There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there’s no clear indication that young people seem to notice.”

For the rest of the speech, please visit Boston-Legal.org.  Anyway, my point in utilizing this particular speech… look, our generation was startlingly silent these last few years.  I don’t care what your politics are, but… man.  Just compare us to the kids of the 60’s, 70’s… even the 80’s, a decade where the CLOTHES were louder than we are today….

I don’t believe one bit in this stodgy corporate culture the old folks have created for us – one in which it’s “not PC” to express an opinion.  Because God forbid anyone be offended or WORSE, disagree with you!

We simply can’t allow ourselves to be cornered like that anymore.  The economy sucks, the job market sucks, the resume advice and cover letter sites out there – with the exception of one – suck!  And guess who screwed all that up?  Old people.  I know, I know, it’s ageist.  Well, screw you old-people!

Your generation has had it’s run, and you screwed the pooch.  Instead of our best and brightest going into med school to cure diseases, they went into BioMed to turn a profit for the drug companies and pump out erection pills.  Instead of your kids going to Harvard Law to make the world a more ethical place, they litigate for Big Something and make the American people bend over and take it.  Instead of building a better society where anyone can learn a skill and follow the American dream, your greedy-bastard kids ran straight from their Ivy league educations and right into Wall Street, where they learned how to screw the little guys into thinking they could buy stuff they couldn’t afford.

Well guess what, Golden Girls.  We’re the future professionals… and we don’t share your stupid dusty values.  We know history.  We know what happens when there’s no accountability.  We’re coming for you – and we’re gonna be holding everyone accountable – you, them, and even ourselves.

And I’m sick of the way you drive, too!

Guess What Happens if you get an A?

The best way to get a read on if your resume will do well is to be preemptive. Do your homework. Investigate HR sites and see what they consider annoying. You might never know if your “sly compliment” was actually interpreted as a sexual advance… and they will most certainly never say so. If you never knew that “love” was not an acceptable thing to call your interviewer, you might be prone to making that mistake if you were, say, a swashbuckling Englishman with a taste for women and employment. But people still tend to do it anyway. And why? All they had to do was read the blogs of the people that were going to hire them.

You can generally avoid stupid mistakes (or at least big pet peeves) by visiting the blogs and websites of the people who are actually reading your resume and cover letter, the ones who are actually doing the interview with you, and so on. They, like everyone else, tend to spill the beans on the worst of the worst that they encounter. While it may seem only like common sense to not flirt like a drunken sailor, make eyes like a Hooters girl or beg for a job like a junkie searching for his next fix… people still do it.

Hiring managers, also sometimes known as “HR” (they tend to conglomerate together in something called a ‘Department’ and make rules about things and make you watch those awkward videos about places you can’t touch…) are usually the ones to read your resume and call you back for an interview. So, to help you out, I’ll list some of my new favorites here that look at things from the opposite side of the cover letter:

• I Hate HR – very well written and concise. A lot of HR-specific content, but good tips and hints here and there to make the read worthwhile for a job seeker.
• Not Hired – hilarious doesn’t quite cut it when talking about this site. They find the worst of the worst resumes/cover letters/etc… a definite must-read.
• Important Elements of Resume Writing – multiple points of interest in this article in particular, and on a few of the other articles on this site. Good place to get info.

Read through those sites… enjoy it… and then realize the most important thing you can ever realize about job searching: you are your own worst enemy. The HR people… they’re allies in disguise.

Sometimes Mom Just Won’t Do…

In today’s job market, it sometimes seems that who you know is more important than what you know. This is especially true in certain industries that favor word of mouth as a way of finding new talent.

There’s no better source of word-of-mouth advertising for the awesomeness that is you than your references. So, looking forlornly at the reference section of your applications, wishing you could remember the names and phone numbers of people who would sing your praises like MJ offering candy to little children out of his limo… well, that’s just not right and neither is having no references.

Your first objective, then, is to create a word document with your references in it – at least five. If you can’t find five people to sing your praises, you need to start leaving your apartment more often. Maybe get a tan. A healthy glow tends to attract people to you. Glowing in the dark because you never leave the fluorescence of your computer screen… does not.

Anyway… everyone has friends or somebody who can speak well of them. But picking the right people for the job is important – and I don’t mean the job of talking about you, I mean the job that you’re applying for. Think about it – does your mom know anything about particle physics? Well, then, don’t ask her to be a reference for you when applying as a repair man for the Large Hadron Collider.

Matching up the job requirements and your references can be a tricky deal – your co-workers, especially early on in your career, might not have any clue what your career is about. They might not know what your style of work is. If you find yourself in this predicament, and usually this means you’re a student or a recent grad, Facebook or LinkedIn stalk a few of your former classmates. Ask them if they wouldn’t mind speaking about you (it helps if you worked on a project with them, or at the very least, asked to borrow a pencil from them at least once). In fact, and maybe tellingly, the best way to get a reference from someone is to offer to be a reference for them. Quid Pro… something. Row, I think.

While we’re on the topic, Mom, though she’s undoubtedly a great person (I mean, she did pop you out, right?), really should be left off your list of references. This is equally true of all your family members, even if you worked for the family diner back in high school. You should stick with classmates, co-workers, and good friends who have worked on something with you (personal projects, believe it or not, are okay – they show insight into your personality).

The other important factor in picking out references is honesty. Hiring managers can tell when someone’s taking them on a ride. It’s perfectly good to have someone say nothing but good things about you, but more poignant is someone who can point out a fault you had and what you did to fix it. This little bit of honesty is important, because it points out that you not only work on improving yourself, but that you are so confident in your skills that you’d allow someone on your reference sheet who wouldn’t just blow smoke all day long.

The final tip to ensure your success: provide all your references with the most recent copy of your resume and a little description of the job you are applying for. Tell them what skills the interviewer is looking for in you, what kind of job it is. Some of your references may not want this sort of “guidance”, but most will appreciate the effort so that they can effectively communicate the right praises in the right way.

So, to sum up:

• Know your references
• Chose relevant references
• Avoid mom, but call her anyway (she misses you)
• Supply your references with information
• Trust your references to say the right thing

Good luck out there!