Comments on: The One Cover Letter Trick That Will Get You Noticed

By: Andy Burkhardt

Andy Burkhardt — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 15:42:08 +0000

I loved the post you wrote and how you frame the cover letter as letter to your colleagues in the future. Putting yourself in the frame of mind will help you as your writing, but hopefully will help when you get the job too! Thanks for your insight.

By: Veronica

Veronica — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:54:58 +0000

Andy, this is a really helpful post. I’m on a search committee at the moment and your advice is helpful. I would modify it a bit and say we are interested in “you”–the job candidate–but what we’re most interested in learning is how you’ll fit in with us. If you’ll pardon the pingback, I wrote a post about cover letters at the start of our committee’s evaluation process last fall. I always like to think of cover letters as letters to your future colleagues. Try to write the kinds of things you would want to know about the people you will likely be working with for the next few years. https://freelancelibrarian.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/dear-future-colleagues/

By: Vera

Vera — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 21:10:16 +0000

Thanks Andy for this post – I’m in the middle of writing a bunch of cover letters and this comes in quite handy!

By: Andy Burkhardt

Andy Burkhardt — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:22:28 +0000

Amanda, I’m glad it was helpful! And it doesn’t always fit everywhere when you’re making it about them, but if you put yourself in the mindset of how do my skills match their needs and how can I show my value to the work they’re doing, it really shows up in the cover letter.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:01:16 +0000

I really appreciate that you illustrate how to make the cover letter about what you can do for the library with examples. I’ve seen this advice a lot but sometimes it’s difficult to figure out how to actually do this. Your post helped this click for me, so thank you!

By: Andy Burkhardt

Andy Burkhardt — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:12:48 +0000

Abigail, sorry I didn’t quite mean that they were dense and lazy. I said that a bit more for effect. I’ve been on a lot of search committees too, and I was poking fun at what you alluded to in your comment: that search committees are overloaded and overwhelmed. It’s so much work being on a search committee, that if a candidate makes some of the connections for you as to how they’ll fit with your organization it eases the burden of committee members. Those ones, like you said, are the shining ones that jump out at you from the bland and impersonal applications. And your point is a good one. Search committees have a lot of work to do. If you can do some of that work for them your application will stand out. Thanks for the comment.

By: Abigail

Abigail — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:38:08 +0000

Hint: Please don’t assume the hiring committees are all dense and lazy–it will come through in your letters. I’m sitting on four different search committees at this point and I’d like to think I don’t resemble that remark. Overloaded and desperately hoping for a brightly shining candidate amongst the bland and impersonal form letters is closer to how I feel.