November 6th, 2023 to November 12th, 2023
Honestly, this week has been super helpful for me. As someone who finds the workforce intimidating and has only worked one (not superb) job, it was something that needed to be explored, especially as I will be applying for summer jobs very shortly before Thanksgiving. In addition to this particular assignment of creating a cover letter, I am also meeting with the Career Center next week to create a resume.
I took a lot of important information away from this week, including major exploration, career exploration, and of course, the cover letter. Within the articles we read for Thursday’s class, The Muse’s Guide to Cover Letters and Alison Green’s How to Write a Cover Letter to Get You a Job, I found some great takeaways that I’ll share here now.
- Essentially, a cover letter displays your skills and experience in writing, rather than just as a data point, and helps recruiters know your personality before the interview. It goes along with other application materials, and is a helpful supplement.
- Include the “why” for your application, especially within the first paragraph. Clarify why you want a job there.
- Consider what you will bring to the position and/or company. It’s more like, “Why would you be great for the job?” and not, “Why would the job be great for me?”
- Keep in mind the job description and the company’s mission statement, perhaps using similar wording as those documents. Don’t keep it word for word, though. Make sure to add your own individuality and how they apply to your skills and values.
- Have a strong introduction and conclusion that emphasizes the following points above.
- Use previous work examples to illustrate your skills and qualities. Show, don’t tell! They can see your “data” in your resume.
- It’s okay to go beyond just your work history, especially when you’re “showing, not telling”. Personalize it, and keep yourself grounded in reality with everyday examples of your personality, skills, and qualities.
- With tone, consider keeping it warm and conversational when applying to jobs in a majority of fields. It won’t work for every field, but when it does, it helps to highlight who you are.
- Use it as an opportunity to explain anything that might be confusing or less than ideal to a hiring manager. Provide context! This part is really helpful, especially if you’re in the process of changing career paths.
There are so many more tips and useful things brought up in these articles and during class, but these are the points that really stuck out to me and helped me understand what a cover letter is and it’s purpose. I’m actually really looking forward to writing mine, as I’ll be using it to apply for a job I’m really looking forward to, and really hoping I get hired for. This is also really great practice, as we’re essentially writing cover letters as preparation, and not many other freshman get this practice experience. Plus, we’ll have at least two other sets of eyes looking at it before any actual recruiters or hiring managers do. Taking this class is actually such a great opportunity in this regard!
Below, as a useful catalog and tool for myself, and perhaps for all of you, I will paste my own “Career Freewrite” that we did during class on Tuesday, as I think it solidified what I’m looking into majoring in. It helped me realize that I believe I’m getting onto the right path here at Muhlenberg, and if it doesn’t work out, I can always step off and redirect.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what I want to do with my life. I know that to some extent, I like working with camps and, despite my introverted nature, I like working with people, being a leader, and finding solutions to problems. Since I’ve been talking with Jason, I’ve become more interested in the administrative side of camps, which I suppose could go into Human Resource Management or Training & Development Specialists. So, I’m thinking that the job opening I’d be applying to for my cover letter would actually be as a camp counselor, since I’m applying for that very soon. I think with Public Health, I’d want to work with the community or again in administration. I think administrative roles are a good fit for me, but it’s getting that experience that’s important to get there, which also involves lower level work first and foremost. Then with English, I would be interested in exploring journalism through that avenue or even publishing, and I guess design? I’ve always been a fan of layouts and graphics. In general, I think I’d like to start really broad so I can explore a bunch of different avenues and start working to find out what I’d like to do. I think it’s really hard when I’ve only been in one low-level job to figure it out, but it was a more journalism-geared job, which I actually really enjoyed that part. I had a great time with that. Working with people is also important to me though, in spite of my intrinsic nature. I think it’s probably going to take a lot of exploration to figure out my life and that kind of stuff, especially if I want to keep working in camps. Maybe even Sustainability Studies could be an option… I swear, the more I explore, the crazier it gets. I think of all of the options!
My useful links for this week
Write to you all next week! Only one more week until Thanksgiving break, and then it’s crunch time…
