Get the Job Interview with the RIGHT Cover Letter Getting a Job in the US
A bad cover letter could prevent you from getting the job even if you’ve got a strong resume.
In this video, we sit down with three experts to figure out how to make your cover letter work for you.
We’re going to make sure you pass into the interview process.
If you’re one of my non-native students looking for an English lesson, at the end of the video,
we’ll go over some idioms and phrasal verbs that were used in the interviews.
Steve is a local small business owner who’s done a lot of hiring for his company.
He knows what he’s looking for and I thought it was interesting what he said a cover letter does.
In your opinion what can a cover letter do
that a resume can’t?
A cover letter, I think it helps start a conversation and can be more personal.
The resume feels often to me like a series of your history, of your work history,
and the cover letter feels like, if done right, can be a good way to start a conversation,
let people know what you’ve done, what you’ve accomplished.
I’ve never heard, heard it that way, as starting a conversation but I like the idea of that.
It starts a conversation it can be more personal if done right. How do you do it right?
Here, I sit down with Cindy, who in her career as an executive director,
has interviewed and hired literally hundreds of people.
I think it’s safe to say she’s read
thousands of cover letters.
Thousands.
What does she have to say about a standout cover letter?
A cover letter that stands out to me is one that has been personalized for the job and for the role.
And so it’s one that generally early on in the cover letter, expresses why somebody wants that job,
it’s the one thing that you can’t put in your resume.
Why?
It’s a compelling question and it does feel like it’s a question that leads to conversation.
If you’ve spent any amount of time around a small child, you know this question gets asked a lot.
Why?
It’s how a child begins to understand his world.
This employer is trying to understand you.
Why you?
They have hundreds of people who want this job.
Before writing your cover letter, sit down and ask yourself why you want the job.
Write down every idea that comes to mind.
It’s just a brainstorming session so don’t judge your own answers, just write down everything.
You never know what one idea will lead to.
Maybe, your perfect answer.
Then do the same for this question.
Why should the employer hire you?
Brainstorm without judgment.
When you’re done with your brainstorms, look at your lists.
Pull the clearest, most compelling, most unique, and truest points,
and write these into the beginning of your cover letter.
Remember, a potential employer might not read your whole cover letter. Hook them at the beginning.
I sat down with a career advisor, who stressed that what you really want to focus on
is answering the question why an employer would want you. She has specific advice on how to do this.
Make a case for yourself.
She talks here about students who are
just starting their careers,
but this definitely applies to any cover letter for any job,
and also relating that to your resume that you’ve worked so hard on.
Laura, do you have any advice on how to help students put together the best cover letter and resume possible,
especially if they’re just starting out with their career and don’t have much experience?
You need to think about what the employer wants and then you have to make a case for yourself.
So don’t expect the employer to
interpret your resume the way you want to interpret it, or to
read a cover letter the way that you want them to read it.
You have to connect the dots for them and make a case for why you’re the best candidate for the position.
That means that you’re doing a lot of targeting for that particular position.
And when I say targeting, I mean you are changing your resume to use certain keywords that
would fit with the job description.
You are shifting things around in your resume so that the most important things are at the top.
You’re shifting things around so that anything that is relevant rises to the top half of your resume
because employers typically spend around thirty seconds on a resume.
There’s just no time at all, so there has to be something that catches their eye and rules them in further.
And then in a cover letter, even more so, you’re connecting the dots.
So you’re taking the experiences that you have that are most relevant from your resume
and you’re highlighting them in a cover letter,
and you’re explaining why that experience prepares you for this particular position.
I think one of the biggest challenges students face is that they try to explain why they want the job
and focus more on that than why they’re
qualified for the job.
Interesting.
Employers may care, most employers do care why you want it,
but not nearly as much as what you can
do for me as an employer.
So focusing more on what I have to offer and showing them what that is rather than just telling them.
So don’t tell me as an employer “I have good communication skills”.
I can read that through your bullets in your resume.
Tell me what you did that proves that you have good community skills.
So I think making that case for yourself by showing examples and not just telling me is very important.
I love the point that you don’t want to
leave it up to interpretation.
You want your cover letter to be crystal
clear with examples.
Think about the number one thing you want this person to know about you.
Get really specific.
Have an example why do they want you.
Don’t just list qualities, list examples that
support those qualities.
What makes a bad cover letter?
And what do you do if English isn’t your first language?
What stands out on the bad side is something that says “to whom this concerns”, or some generic start,
and then something that has clearly not been personalized for this role in any way whatsoever like,
or worse, it actually has a different job written in it.
That hasn’t been changed yet.
Oh, gosh. Okay, like a copy and paste error.
Correct.
The other thing you’re looking for in a cover letter and the resume is, can somebody write
in a way that is compelling, that has no
errors, that is clean.
Like you are looking at the writing, but that’s not going to get you a job, it is going to
potentially not get you an interview, right?
But the content is important as to like why do you want this job, what’s compelling to you about this?
What if the content was great and the grammar wasn’t perfect?
It depends a little bit on the job and how unperfect it is.
So if it’s really poor grammar consistently through,
I think it’s unlikely that somebody’s going to get an interview.
So that part is really important.
What if it’s a non-native speaker?
Like is there an allowance for that, would you say?
It depends on the job.
So it depends on: does this person need to produce writing that has no grammar mistakes for their job?
In which case, it’s unlikely.
If this is a role in which being a bilingual person is a part of the requirements, then yes I think there there’s room.
But it depends.
And it depends on like, is this a role where there’s no writing involved at all?
Right.
Then I think there’s a lot more allowance for that.
A lot of the jobs that I’ve hired for are jobs that require writing for the part of it, and knowing that you’re not,
you know, good in editing and mistakes. But I’ve also hired for several bilingual positions,
and in which case, I do think there’s more
allowance for sure.
Or, so you’re saying if it’s a job where they’re going to be relying much more on
speaking verbally with somebody in person, writing doesn’t matter as much, then…
It doesn’t matter as much, I think it’s, it’s tricky, it’s worth getting your cover letter and your resume
reviewed by a native English speaker.
Because you don’t have the ability to do a first impression at that point in person.
And so if you’re looking at tons of letters,
those things do matter.
And they do, I mean, I do think there are allowances depending on the on the job but ultimately,
like that also shows your attention to detail, it shows your thoroughness, like
your ability to find somebody to review it for you,
and the fact that you did that, all of that matters, and it’s going to show in your cover letter, your resume.
Yeah, I totally agree.
It’s like, how much effort did this person put into it? That’s part of what you’re looking for.
So make sure you’re writing the cover
letter specific to the job.
Look at the job description as you’re writing. Make sure you’re making a case for yourself on the actual skills
and experience they want for that position.
And whether you’re a native speaker of English or not, ask someone to proofread it for you.
They can look for things like typos and
grammar mistakes,
but then they can all so tell you if something isn’t clear.
They can say I don’t understand what you mean by this.
Then you’ll want to change the wording.
You want to make sure the person reading your cover letter knows exactly what you mean.
If you’re in college, visit the career center for advice.
I have a feeling they have resources for you, people who can help you do your cover letter or resume.
What do you do with your cover letter if you’re just starting out?
You don’t have much experience to draw from.
And then for a student that has very little experience, you can highlight all kinds of things.
So a lot of students will only think about work experience as relevant to a resume.
But most students have some kind of volunteer experience, or they’ve had a summer job,
or they did an independent project somehow, they tutored a friend’s child, they babysat.
So anything that you can pull out of your experience and relate some of your transferable skills,
which transferable skills are skills that you may have gained in babysitting,
and aren’t directly related to doing administrative work in a law firm, but there may be some connection.
So it’s how you frame it and again, making a case for why it’s relevant to the position.
Frame it.
Think of important past experience and what skills you needed or developed in that experience.
Then do what we’ve already said.
Get specific about those skills with examples, and write them into your cover letter.
Taking time and carefully writing your
best cover letter and resume
will give you the best chance of landing an interview.
In the next videos in this course, we’ll go over how to prepare for the job interview.
There are real and concrete things you can do to prepare and impress that will make a difference.
If you don’t do them, the interviewer will notice and will likely not choose you for the position.
For my non-native students, we’re going to get to your English lesson in just a minute.
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Now, let’s go over some of the idioms and phrasal verbs you heard in these interviews today.
Laura used two phrases.
“Connect the dots” and “make the case”.
Connecting the dots literally is an exercise that children do to practice fine motor skills
and following numbers in a sequence.
But in an idiom, that means to see the bigger picture from details, or to relate one idea to another.
Let’s listen to how Laura used it.
So don’t expect the employer to
interpret your resume the way you want it interpreted or
to read a cover letter the way that you
want them to read it.
You have to connect the dots for them and make a case for why you’re the best candidate for the position.
She said ‘you have to connect the dots for them’,
don’t leave it up to the employer to figure out how your experience relates to what they want.
Connect the dots for them.
Make those connections clear yourself
and not open to interpretation.
She also said ‘make the case for’.
This phrase means to convince someone of something, to give you reasons,
to make a strong argument for someone to choose something. In this example,
you’re making the case for an employer to hire you.
You’re convincing that person that they want to choose you out of all of the applicants.
Let’s listen to Laura’s example one more time.
So don’t expect the employer to
interpret your resume the way you want it interpreted or
to read a cover letter the way that you
want them to read it.
You have to connect the dots for them and make a case for why you’re the best candidate for the position.
Cindy and I both used the phrasal verb ‘to stand out’.
What makes the cover letter stand out for you?
A cover letter that stands out to me is one that has been personalized for the job and for the role.
Can you tell what it means?
It means to separate from something.
In this case, all the other applicants.
You want to stand out from all the other applicants because you want the job, you want them to notice you.
But maybe there are times when you don’t want to be noticed.
You just want to blend in.
Then you could say I don’t want to stand out, I just want to be like everyone else.
Let’s listen to the example one more time.
What makes the cover letter stand out for you?
A cover letter that stands out to me is one that has been personalized for the job and for the role.
Later, Cindy used the word ‘tons’ idiomatically.
If you’re looking at tons of letters, those things do matter.
A ton is 2,000 pounds.
So, Cindy said if you’re looking at tons of letters, meaning cover letters,
of course she doesn’t literally mean she’s weighed the letters. She means a lot, many, many, many.
This is how we use this word; it has nothing to do with physical weight, but rather, quantity.
For example, I get tons of emails every day.
Another way I could have said that was “I get a ton of emails every day”.
‘A ton of’ and ‘tons of’ mean the same thing.
They can be used interchangeably.
Don’t be afraid to use these expressions in your own everyday English.
That’s it and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.