The first few letters I attempted to add a few phrases that I felt described me and perhaps contained just enough wit to make me stand out from the crowd. But after running them past my mother, I was told to leave them out. It would seem that these cover letters are all being read by the most robotic bureaucrats who cannot compute anything beyond the form. This cannot be true. They are just people like you and me, reading e-mails and looking for real people themselves. Surely it would put a smile on their face to read a cover letter which didn't sound as though it could be created by a cleverly written computer program (wait, maybe I should get on making one of those, then I wouldn't need a job).
Why is it only this kind of correspondence which turns us into mindless drones? I say we throw off the shackles of cover letter hypocrisy and tell our potential employees how we really feel! Perhaps a well-placed haiku would more accurately express my desire to write for a particular publication, or a witty equation can prove that technical writing is the gig for me. Join me, my unemployed brethren, join me in the rebellion against insincere 'Sincerely's and desperate 'I look forward to hearing from you's! Together, we can overthrow the boring, the tedious, the soul-stealing rules of cover-letter writing and type once more on the keyboard of candor!
Who's with me?
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