Oh, oh! Pick Me!

I've written before about the hindrances of cover letters. The script of what one has to say leaves little room for sincerity, or at least a recognizable way of communicating it. Because each one must include promises of how much we would love to work here or there, it's hard to tell one potential employer that they are your first choice.

There's something about forced politeness that makes everything sound less enthusiastic than you actually are. Let's face it, when you are scripted to say, "I would be great for this position, I look forward to hearing from you," it's hard to make sure that they truly understand that I would be awesome for this position and I'm crossing my fingers that I hear back soon. Because you can't write that. You have to be eager but not desperate. Available but not at such a loose end you appear undesirable. Seriously, the fine points of the art of flirting are more easily understandable than the rules and regulations of cover letter enthusiasm.

I find that the hardest thing is to try and follow all the rules without just washing myself out, or, conversely, trying to make myself stand out without turning a potential employer off. Because you never know who is on the other end of that cover letter, especially when sent through an e-mail. You don't know their opinions on exclamation points and a little humor.

So crossing my fingers, toes and eyes that I can type with sincerity, and that whoever reads my cover letters can read with a little as well.

Cover Letters: The Silent Killer (of Humanity)

Having now written innumerable cover letters, I have become a slave to turning my unique thoughts and qualifications and sanitizing them down into the same boring old script. Because God help us if we write something funny or words someone might actually say in real life!

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?