Rob Alderson explores the dreaded, hateful Cover Letter

3 min read

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12 highlights

  • For a while I toyed with “Hello,” but I couldn’t work out how to punctuate it – Hello, (impatient), Hello! (needy) or Hello: (maniac).

  • Applying for a job—even a dream job—sucks. But of all of the unpleasant hoops we must jump through to present ourselves to our potential employers, it’s the dreaded Cover Letter that really takes the biscuit.

  • In the job description, you breezily requested a CV and “a short, relevant cover letter.” (It’s a good job you added relevant because I was going to send some poems and a crowd-pleasing tagine recipe).

  • It’s the same pressure I feel when writing an online dating profile, only this time nobody’s horny.

  • Having read it 17 times, I think I’ve understood your mission statement – “To drive strategic progress through data-led insights.” Well, great news – I have been passionate about driving strategic progress through data-led insights since I was a boy. Many an evening, the neighborhood children would gather round to play data-led insights and we’d all drive progress until our mothers called us in for tea. What I’m saying is, cut me, and I bleed data-led insights.

  • I like that you’ve not told me what the actual salary is, and just coyly put “competitive” as though that means anything to anyone.

  • I like that you’ve not told me what the actual salary is, and just coyly put “competitive” as though that means anything to anyone.

  • I like how you’ve framed the holiday allowance as a big-hearted favour rather than a legal requirement. Fun!

  • In fact, you used the term “fun gang” three times and your COO’s Instagram handle is @workhardplayhard. The only thing I enjoy more than driving strategic progress through data-led insights is spending my Friday night pretending to have fun at a sticky-floored table tennis bar with my colleagues.

  • You also asked for “a few sentences about me as a person.” That’s not as straightforward as it sounds. Do any of us know our true selves? Is it ever possible to sum up the complex multitudes of our character in a pithy paragraph?

  • So there we are. In conclusion – because nothing says grandiose finality like “in conclusion” – I am pathetically in need of this shitty job.

  • I’ll shake your hand firmly (but not too firmly) and make eye contact (but not too much eye contact) and have prepared some smart questions for that bit at the end when you lean forward and say, “Well, is there anything you’d like to ask us?”

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