Cover Letters from Hell
Attached to every résumé is the obligatory cover letter. Composing one, it seems, has a Difficulty Rating of 11, since that's where we find the most tortured prose ever set to paper. For example:
"I expect the position to pay commissary to that of its value, as well as to the performance completed."
Or, decode this:
"It is my desire to develop and generate the revolving scheme to filter to the consuming public in."
What follows are dozens of examples gleaned from these efforts, to amaze and horrify you. It's an ever-changing gallery of mangled syntax, misbegotten diction, and unedited effluvia. Here in the post-literate era, new specimens arrive often. We track the newest batches in our email Newsletter, to which you can subscribe.
But first, why are cover letters so often awful? We see two huge reasons:
1. A writer uses pseudo-legalese because he lacks confidence in his authentic voice. From undergraduates trying to ace our Creativity Test, to MBAs immersed in BizSpeak, tin-ear applicants feel they must inflate their prose, diligently combing the thesaurus to select — sigh — precisely the wrong polysyllabic clinker.
Imagine, if you will, two roommates at Thesaurus U.:
"I aspire to obtain a beverage. The vending machine is where my path leads."
"I wish to accompany you, since I have assembled a myriad of coins."
"I possess coins, as well. Let's embark."
2. Many people fail to understand the mission. Hey, kids, it's attached to a résumé. You don't need to explain what you're doing, to repeat what's in the résumé itself, or to explain why résumés exist. You want a job. (Let's see: that took four clear, direct, one-syllable words.) The actual mission of the cover letter is to call attention to yourself, to separate yourself from 500 other applicants, to showcase the personality attached to the credentials.
And yes, there are 500 other applicants. Okay, maybe not for that coveted hostess position at The Olive Garden. But statistically, it's harder to get a job at Killian & Company than at Southwest Airlines, which is, in turn, arithmetically harder to get into than Harvard.
Applicants often write to an abstract "Sir/Madam," instead of to a human being who has just disposed of 12 other résumés that morning. They might start with the non-starting "My name is ______," which provokes us to ask "Are you highlighting your name to impress us with your celebrity status?" Or the pointless "attached is my résumé" which is a big Duh. Even worse is Mail Merge Slippage, where a name, or company name, inserted into the text fails to match the name of the recipient. (Nobody proofreads. Most cover letters have at least one spelling error. Welcome to The Olive Garden.)
Good news: An error-free letter is now so freakin' rare that the minimal care required to send a letter with zero defects, combined with a few crisply written simple declarative sentences, will, alone, guarantee a respectful reading of a résumé. Maybe even secure an interview.
Doesn't anybody read Strunk and White in school any more? If you haven't, get a copy of the Elements, so you can study it closely, especially Chapter 5. Click here to order a copy.
As we promised, more of our best (?) cover letter excerpts:
"I'm looking for work because even though my company was profitable last year, this year they are expecting a large defecate."
"Skills: Microst word, excel, and power point. Mulitaks person, public speaking, and surveying.
Professional Associations
Chairwomen of Studnts Teaching Awareness and Responsibility organization
Responsible for research of all 10 event topics, coordinating all campus chiarpersons."
[Editor's note: Despite the many obvious limitations of SpellCheck, isn't it worth at least a try ... for instance, while you Mulitaks with the other chiarpersons?]
"Objective: To work in a challenging environment that allows me to use my imaginatiation.... Education: ______ Collage." [Editor's note: Does attending "collage" involve sleepover seminars where you decoupage pictures cut from Teen Scene magazine?]
"Who's better to spew out incite, than a college senior ... ?" [Editor's lament: We don't have the "imaginatiation" to make up stuff like this.
"The colors red, blue, and lavender are those that I identify with the most. I feel they accurately describe my personality. I choose red because I turn red when I get embarrassed ...." [That "red" thing must come up daily. We pulled the plug on this because you get the drift; the subsequent "blue" and "lavender" explanations didn't substantially improve her employment chances.]
"What better way to grow then by highering someone that brings the West Coast charm to the Windy City?" [Editor's question: is "highering" related to "lowering?"]
"I'm not intimated by your internship; want to be apart of your fun atmosphere ..."
"I also have a degree English which serves me well in editing text for poor grammer or typos."
[Immediately after we first published this one, in Newsletter #17, we got calls and letters asking if it could possibly be real. Yep. She's a freelance web designer from Alabama, and we saved the original, as we did with the following, an all-time CLFH turn for the verse:
Twas 4 weeks after Christmas
And all throughout Killian and Company
Human Relations pondered over
Who would be the next intern/employee?
[Not a promising beginning, poetry fans. Try tapping your toes to this next stanza. It's a major challenge, since every line has a different number of syllables.]
The staff in their cubicles, all snug in their chairs
While visions of lunch in Chi-town were their only main cares
The big boss in his office, and me still at Miami
Both nervous and wondering: our hands remained clammy
[We discreetly edit out any references that might humiliate a person or institution, but since there are two Miamis (Ohio and Florida), we left this one in. They can each cringe, and pray it's from the other one. Heh heh heh.]
When out in the mailroom there arose such a clatter
Employees from all over crowded to see what was the matter
Back in my apartment with a smile laid back
I knew once they'd opened my letter; there was no turning back
[This stanza falls into the category ... no, strike that. This stanza lurches drunkenly down the basement stairs of the category Rhythm, stumbling into synchopathology, a word we just made up.]
The sun on the streets of busy Windy City
Gave the luster of midday to 322 S. Green
When, what to their letter reading eyes should appear?
A girl with some spunk, and evidently no fear
[Nor ear.]
As Ivory goes along with a substance called soap
Everyone looked at each other with a small gleam of hope
"It's time to stop letting all the normal folk dance
And open our eyes, and give this chick a chance!"
[We'll stop here, although it goes on, and on, and on, and on for some time. Get a long little doggerel? We'll spare you the Yoda-like "Graduating college she is!" because we would get all clammy. Again.]
"Hi! My name is ____, and I am a senior at ____ University. For my one Advertising class we are select and present an agency, within our groups, to the class in which we find interesting.... Such information that I would need is
1) How your departments are broken down? ["From reading cover letters?"]
2) Who is the executives and how moving up the ladder is achieved?"
[We will omit, out of mercy, questions 3 through 7.]
"Today is the first day of my life... Last year was a tremendous year for personal growth, insight and maturity. I courted that growth... This year I want to "take the world by storm." I want to make a film. I want to be the producer or the director, which ever will put me in the middle of all the creativity and decision-making.... I am terrified of the all-out approach I sense in my spirit. However, I am not scared enough to let it stop me. I will go and push and strive until I have reached the finish line. I will sacrifice anything but my God (morals) and my family. Pride has no place in my new life. I will be striving for perfection."
"I also want to obtain a deeper understanding of how Advertising firms." [Ahhhhhhhh, no comment.]
An all-time classic sent in by a CLFH fan from the great state of Michigan, where the cyclical nature of the automotive industry leads to a lot of job switching. It's yet another example of why you must never rely on spell-check to catch all your errors:
"I am seeking a new position as i have recently been laid."
[We wish her the best of luck in her career.]
"May I ask you for spending a little moment in looking at some of my interesting facts?"
"[My] proven record of successful brand building ... demonstrate[s] my ability to perform in a fast paced environment. Originally from Vietnam, I also offer expertise in the following areas:
- Asian cuisine: I deliver Nem, in-box or out-of-the-box,
- Traditional massage: I satisfy Client above their expectation,
- Karaoke singing: but also a lot of listening, listening and listening to Client.
Would you like to taste any of those, please feel free to contact me on my email address mentioned above."
"Strong writing abilities. Able to analysis data and problem solve." [Editor's note: Thirteen file this into please put.]
"Another reason [you should hire me is] your web site is very unfriendly and may sway some clients into not working with you. People use websites of companies such as yours for research and your website thinks that it is witty, but comes off very dull and cheezy." [Editor's note: This is the first entry in a new category we call "Insult Your Way to the Top!"]
"I will be able to input your agency with a wide and nouveau perspective in the creative field."
"I need real world experience and after reviewing your web site I get the impressing that your company believes in maintain a lax work environment while efficiently meeting the needs of it's customers (right?)."
[We replied to this college senior, on an ill-advised rescue impulse, gently suggesting he get some remedial help with his writing, since he had an error in every single sentence of his three-page letter. His furious four-page reply included some amazing stuff, such as]
"...you should be straight forward and ... simply state that your company is seeking a grammar teacher who lacks creativity but knows how to properly write a letter and knows exactly where to place punctuation. If your company takes such a serious position towards proper grammar then I think you guys are in the wrong profession. I believe even the leader of this country that we live in lacks proper grammar yet he is still our leader. I can assure you that he leaves grammar and punctuation to the proper authorities such as his receptionist or grade school English teacher. ...I am not precisely sure why you choose to take such a stance perhaps because you have nothing better to do, or maybe because you have personal insecurities that seep out and you feel the need to degrade or target others based on stupid little infractions to make yourself feel better, I don't know what the case is ... if I am out of line please let me know but if I recall properly your companies web site is not the most professional site there is. If you guys are trying to project a laid back yet hard working image through your site and request the same from prospective employees then you should not be so prudent about minor infractions such as punctuation and grammar.... (I reread it before sending it and it states my point clearly and unless you lack the mental capacity to make out the meaning without having exact and precisise grammar maybe you should seek a new proffsion, I hear this country lacks alot of grammar school teachers perhaps that would be a better fit for you) In conclusion I have indeed made many mistakes in this e-mail many on purpose and many accidentaly I did not have the time nor the patientce to deal with it I will leave the grammer checking to the professionals such as yourself." [Editor's note: although his response fascinated us, you can understand why we no longer reply to the Differently Stable.]
"At school he is a student of advertising, on the streets of Chicago he is a student of culture and memes..." [We interrupt I-learned-a-new-word-this-semester to provide a color commentary: the whole letter was printed in a jagged red House font, over a solarized black and white picture of not much, which made reading it a 20-minute struggle. But you have to give him this: for a refreshing change, the new word was not "semiotics."] "... this is Advertising, finding that elusive why. Charles understand the nuances of culture, the relativity of trends, the impact of memes. Interpretation of this cultural coed is what drive our business.... He is all of us and one of us, he is the Cultural Chameleon." [We dated a cultural coed once ... but we just can't remember if she drive our business ...]
"... But that's the past. I've given them a year of my life in a minimum security work camp and I'm nearing work release status where I'll be for the next 15 months or so... I need to connect with open-minded people like myself! My crime was a 'non-violent, victimless' one. I'm hoping this letter is reaching people who have or do smoke weed ..."
"A résumé is the fabric that makes the person. Now, I must combine those fibers and project them so you can discover a little personality beyond the framework." [The accompanying résumé was printed on fabric, which helps explain, but not justify, the preposterous assertion of the first sentence, or the mixed metaphors of the second.] [My résumé] ... will speak volumes of inexperience, however, I think perhaps you will find that it also speaks multitudes about a girl that is ambitious, eager, and very much determined to land a job in the industry and work toward upward mobility."
[This next isn't exactly a cover letter excerpt: it's the first line of a speculative ad layout submitted by the would-be copywriter who submitted the fabric-printed muddle above. The ad is for champagne.] "You feel the crisp, aged taste permeating in your mouth."
"Looking for a full creative person for your team? ... Deep Studies on movies. Prepared for the totally unexpected advertising and Selling Blasting"
"I am getting to my goal, slowly but surly."
HI
MY NAME IS EUGENE
I'M FROM UKRAINE, AND WERY INTERESTING ABOUT PROFI ADVERTISMENT...
I HAVE SOME INTERESTING AND ABSOLUTELY NEW IDEAS (for example about car brands)... BUT IN OUR FUKING (sorry) COUNTRY ITS UNREAL TO DO OWN BUSSINESS... MAY BE YOU WANT TO WORK WITH US ? ITS WILL BE REALLY GOOD...
BEST REGARDS !
eugene
"I want to expose my creative ideas for a good agency not just that the agency is good rather to build a image of quality. I know no in this selfish and risky world will give the chance until I prove my quality that too in free of cost. Thus, I am offering you this small note of request to give me a break by providing projects of
a.Creating concept for T.V Commercials
b.Print media
c.Hoarding
I would like to do first three project for you without any payment or salary. Just to prove my creativity. This is to win your confidence to give me a Just to prove that I can add wing to your agency to fly and reach the height of success. Though it may sound big but I believe in myself and have enough confident to win your trust on me by my work. This will give both of us to understand better."
"It is through the innovational process, as well as media, that the features of an image can be highlighted and brought to the forefront for the consumer viewing." [We would translate this, but it sounds better in the original Gibberish.]
"I would like to start learning from a pronoun company and I feel as if Killian & Co. Advertising will give me the opportunity I am looking for." [Editor's note: no chance, babe. Pronoun companies are for wussies. We're an adjective company.]
"I am a motivated, self-igniting person who greatly entertains the challenges of bettering myself and the performance of work that I do."
"My objective in a career is to find a professional position with a company with standards and respect for all of their clients and employees. Where I can work hard and see the results of my help, determination and success in my position taking place."
"I have been on Sabitcal for a while." [Side effects of Sabitcal may include dizziness, brain cramps, and bonehead spelling errors. Ask your doctor if Sabitcal is right for you.]
"I have a plethora of tenured skills which I know would benefit your clients/organization."
"That I offer my services at all, you may take as a complement, since I am one of the new wave of workers more interested in the quality of my work than the new fangaled fast buck concepts of the past few years."
Editor's note:
We're trying to collect enough samples to bring this to book length. (We're getting closer, having been featured on some national media recently. Traffic to this page has gone through the roof.) Everyone, it seems, has a juicy example or two in the files.
Especially college instructors. True story – many college teachers have told us variations of this story: they red-pencil and downgrade students for glaring errors in grammar, usage, spelling. Students go to the Dean to complain. Dean reprimands the teacher for being hard on tuition-paying future donors. Teacher (not tenured) shuts up, fumes, then collects samples to send to us.
Maybe students send incoherent gibberish to potential employers because nobody ever told them not to. That's a scary thought.
If you'd like to share some ugliness from your files, send it along; we'll happily credit your contribution. E-mail to CLFH, or snail mail to Cover Letters From Hell, Killian & Company, 322 South Green, Chicago IL 60607. Thanks!
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