Example cover letters and CVs

Professorship at a University of Applied Sciences (FH)

“Is it possible to act as link between academia and industry, between research and application, while at the same time work intensively in academic teaching? In order to answer this question, I was looking for contact with FH professors, who shared their insights into the profession with me. What attracted me most about their descriptions of life as FH professor was the fact that direct contact with the students is being given more weight than at a university.”

To draw attention to what follows in your application, you don’t need to do anything brash. Small tweaks to the expected flow of a text can already do the trick. Here, the first sentence was simply turned into a question for the reader, thereby actively involving them in what will happen next. After binning twenty letters all starting with “I hereby apply…”, the reader will hopefully pick up their reading glasses after this starter.

This paragraph also avoids another pitfall: information overload. This typically looks like:

“I hereby… My previous experience/ skills in A,B,C… as well as… make me the ideal candidate for a position which requires in particular D,E and F at an employer which is well-known for G, H and I.”

After reading such a sentence, you’ll find it hard to remember even one of the many facts. The disordered information snippets are becoming one big blur in the reader’s mind.

In the example paragraph at the top, only two pieces of information are provided after the opening sentence:

1. The applicant did her homework and actively contacted professionals in her target field. Implicitly, this indicates that the applicant could identify these professionals and get in touch with them.
2. Her TOP 1 priority when choosing this profession is contact with students. This argument is not watered down by listing lower priorities here as well in a futile attempt to misuse the first paragraph for a length-best-of list.

Without overloading the opening paragraph with information, the reader should already have a clear picture of a proactive person who knows what the job entails and is passionate about the specific challenges of this job.

One more detail about these few lines: the applicant refers to colleagues of the readers. Although it is an anonymous reference, it still lifts the applicant out of anonymity. Even stronger would be to mention someone the reader knows by name, e.g. “During a discussion with your colleague Dr. Kulinsky, my positive impression of working in your company was reinforced.” In this way, the reference person becomes a lively part of the letter in support of your application, making it harder to ignore. Such a reference can be placed at various points in the letter; however, the beginning is the most usual place, as it’s a very important point and might spare your application from the looming threat of the bin.

Sales representative

“I had my first experiences in the service industry while working for my parents’ catering company. Personal contact with customers was always my utmost concern. Back then, the reason was simple: I could increase the tips I received by being friendly.

Today, 15 years later, I graduated with a PhD in microbiology. The joy of working with people, giving advice, and working in sales has stayed with me at all times.”

The first paragraph is an excellent example of how to capture attention with an unexpected start to the cover letter. A brief childhood story is told. As such, it is certainly unusual enough to keep the reader from falling asleep. At the same time, the example closely relates to the position, forming a nice link and giving a sympathetic insight into the applicant’s personality. Again, the story is by no means overloaded with information; the only fact explicitly stated is the work in the parents’ business. All the information is conveyed indirectly by the picture of the applicant that is invoked in the reader’s mind:

– an entrepreneurial and service-minded family background,

– business sense developed from early childhood on,

– combining own financial interests with customer satisfaction,

– open enough to give (innocuous) details about the private background,

– creative person who dares such unusual entry paragraph.

The reader is involved in this letter from the very beginning on.

Patent examiner at the European Patent Office (EPO)

“When my mother asked me as an eight-year-old what I would like to become, I sternly told her, “I want to become a patent examiner.”

What makes this claim so outrageously unbelievable? It´s probably the fact that at this age it would be inconceivable to find attraction in a job with such an unusual constellation of tasks and underlying interests. And even though LEGO is now, after producing “The Hobbit” and “The Superhero”, also marketing “The Scientist”, it still seems impossible to design “The Patent Examiner”. So, like the children of today, I was kept from reaching such a positive judgement about the patent field back then.

However today, as an adult, I could give such a determined answer. Yes, I do want to expose myself to new intellectual challenges on a daily basis. Yes, I do want to work in a highly international environment. And yes, I do want to work myself into a new field of expertise at this point in my life. I want to become a patent examiner at the EPO and be a critical, fair and knowledgeable counterpart to the innovators of today.”

Here is an example from the field of ‘suicidal’ yet successful beginnings. An application to a public body full of lifetime employees who do nothing but check patents for validity all day. The applicant has the nerve to write in a creative tone, as if she were applying for a position at a School of Journalism. Why on earth?

The reason for such a ‘risky’ approach lies in a fundamental principle:

“Write risky applications when the situation is precarious; write careful ones when feeling secure.”

This sounds counterintuitive, to say the least. However, writing an application is quite different from most other activities in our lives. When driving a car, you should be careful when the roads are insecure, while you should only drive faster under good road and weather conditions. The normal scenario when driving is to arrive safely. The penalty for failure can be death in the worst case, while the benefit of a riskier driving style is to save only a few seconds.

When applying for jobs, the opposite is true. Most of your lovingly crafted applications will not lead to an invitation for a job interview, let alone a job offer. The penalty for such a failure is low; the ‘loss’ is just a couple of hours of your time. The prize to be won, on the other hand, is great – the much-sought-after job offer! This is the reason for this ‘counterintuitive’ switch in how the risk of an application is handled, compared with most other activities.

Average applications from average applicants for average positions might have a success rate of 1-5% in securing a job offer. When applying for positions at highly popular, internationally active employers like the EPO, it can be assumed that the chances of success are far below 1% for all but the best applicants. So what do you have to lose? A boring start to the cover letter will lower your chances to exactly 0%; you simply won’t emerge from the sea of applications. A “risky” start, as depicted above, has a small chance of giving the reader just that bit of a mental tickle to put your application on the small pile for further processing. The only risk is that an anonymous clerical assistant responsible for the presorting thinks you are a bit weird. Who cares?

At the other extreme of the spectrum are applications that are “secure”: you have a fair chance of receiving an invitation because you fit the job description extremely well, or because you already have a foot in the door by knowing an insider. In fact, these are the really risky ones, as you now have something substantial to lose. In this case, the challenge is not cocking up! If you’re unlucky, there is just this one notoriously frustrated, nagging person on the committee who vents his anger at your application because he dislikes your face. The rationale behind writing a boring and error-free application is thus to prevent fuelling this person’s negativity.

So, example 3 might give the applicant a 90% chance of being sorted out in the pre-screening phase. Great! Much better than the 99% for a boring application!

A note on writing style. The last paragraph of example 3 places a typical triad of arguments into separate sentences, rather than packing them into a single one such as “Yes, I want A, B and C.” This stylistic device aims to build suspense, hammer home the points and make them more memorable. Again, the author stays true to her risky-creative style, as such figures are usually found in advertising or political speeches. But there is no reason against trying to stand out with such a structure, as long as it fits the overall text and does not make it too elevated for a cover letter.