Job-Hunting 101: Cover letters CYA*

Cover letter I wrote for a recent editor position I found on the Web.

Dear hiring manager,

I am an experienced editor, both copy and substantive, who has worked with technology and science for many years. I have and am currently working on an intermittent basis editing scientific papers for NOAA Fisheries, most recently for the Galveston lab (a few hours per month).

I have edited academic work for scientists and graduate students.
I have gained, and can quickly gain, expertise with any type of subject matter.
I have edited for non-native English speakers.
I enjoy editing highly technical or scientific materials, helping to make them clearer and easier to understand. I love deadlines.

I am interested in hearing more about this position and the work involved. I hope to hear from you soon.

Skye Hughes


I went to a talk at the local Association of Women in Computing (AWC) meeting in November; the talk was given by two local recruiters. While the job market is tough here in Houston, it's not as bad as most places. But it's still hard to find work right now.

They offered quite a few suggestions and insights, and there was one in particular that surprised all of us: Hirers and recruiters DON'T READ COVER LETTERS. But you have to include one. Period.

WTF?! I mean, what a waste, to require a cover letter but to never read it. You simply check off your hiring list "cover letter? check." Job hunters put enough time and effort into resumes and their professional Web sites and the whole searching for work on job boards and state employment sites and company sites. So we are required to craft a decent cover letter just so it can be another item on a checklist? Even professional technical writers I know find cover letters excruciatingly difficult to write.

I bet I would be penalized if the cover letter were dreck. But they'd have to read it to discover it was dreck, and you cannot lie. Someone may read it some day. (As a professional writer, I should be excellent at writing cover letters. But these little things provoke more anxiety in me than anything else I've written. Except maybe that novel I'm working on.)

Another technical writer and recruiter who has his own firm extols the value of cover letters. He's the one who has taught hundreds of us how to write a simple, pointed cover letter. In this letter, you basically create a matrix or a bulleted list that matches your qualification with each of the requirements on the recruiter's job notice. Makes sense.

But not if the recruiter never reads the (*&@ing cover letter.

It only goes to validate the idea held by me and many other job seekers: recruiters and other hirers use arcane and unknowable means to find and hire employees. Unless you have a personal contact in the system you are doomed to wander the unemployment underworld ceaselessly. Where the hell is Charon** when you need him?

As for the job? Never heard back. But it was your basic online application, so I was just one of dozens, perhaps hundreds, applying for this same job. It is remotely possible my application was even looked at. In this economy, having over 20 years of experience isn't really what matters. What matters is getting your resume into the hands of the right person. And that rarely happens with random resumes coming in via the Web. Thus my going to AWC meetings. And Society for Technical Communication (STC). I'd look for more, but even if you aren't a member, it still costs to attend. The small(ish) costs add up. And even my little fuel efficient Subaru burns up the gas to go 2/3 of the way across Houston and back (my god this is a big place!). And now I'm learning networking and other job-searching techniques from a place called Between Jobs Ministry (BJM). It is held at a church and they, unfortunately, do give a fairly long "encouragement" sermon in the middle part of the program, but they also have a lot of sessions for how to network, how to make your resume better, how to look for jobs, and so on. It's a good thing, and it's free. And it's a 45 minute drive from my house .

I know this post sounds negative, but that is just discouragement talking. I've been assured again and again by recruiters talking at meetings and by other job-seeking professionals that the jobs are there. But you have to find them, and you have to find someone who will put in a good word for you, or you have to develop a relationship with someone in the hiring process. For an introvert like me, who is also shy, it is painful and scary. Assuming I survive the process, I expect I will be less shy and talking to complete strangers will become less scary.

But I still apply to jobs I find on job boards and I'm keeping my fingers crossed anyway. They have to hire someone!

*CYA=cover your a**. In case you didn't already know this one.

**Charon is the ferryman of the underworld who transports souls across the River Styx, or in some stories the River Acheron, into Hades. Sometimes he transports the living back, always for a price. This might make him a sub-recruiter: someone who weeds out the potentials from the no-way-in-hades.