iarforner

Hey Woody, the PR person doing your AMA is kinda obnoxious.

Little personal story about that cover letter thing:

I've been at my most recent job for 3 weeks now. After years of waiting, I have finally landed my dream job and could not be happier. It was only after I was hired that I found out that I almost didn't get a job because of one thing - my cover letter.

I was recruited by a staffing agency for a position and they basically coached me through the interview process telling me how to form my resumé and a couple buzz words to throw in to my cover letter. I did this with great success.

When I sent them my cover letter, there was one sentence that was a bit grammatically complex. It was very complete and very coherent, but a bit obtuse for formal business writing. I openly admit this. About a week after I got the job, one of my bosses (who had minimal say in the final decision) came up to me and said, "Hey... I have a bone to pick with you. That cover letter you sent us? Yeah... there was one sentence that just didn't have a verb."

I had been a writing tutor for over 2 years and had attained a pretty keen eye for this sort of thing, so I openly rejected this possibility. I pulled up my copy of the cover letter and showed it to him. Not a flaw. He was confused, so he showed me the version HE had. That one sentence that was a bit complex? The HR person at the recruiting agency edited the sentence so that it was not a complete thought at all. It wasn't a sentence.

I found out that because of this ONE thing a internal email was traded between some of the powers that be, and I actually started a step behind in an interview, because some dumb fuck HR person edited my cover letter, and caused ONE SENTENCE to have a grammatical error. Because of this, I had to fight my way through extra difficulty in my 3rd interview. Obviously I brought enough to the table that I was safe, but one single fuck up almost cost me the job.

To extend the story, I told my father about this. He has been a president/branch manager/executive/etc for upwards of 20 years now and he himself said, "That's actually really scary. If I get a cover letter from somebody and there is so much as a spelling mistake, then I will throw their application out. If they can't take enough time to concern themselves with their cover letter then why should I trust them to concern themselves with the job they are applying for?"

TL;DR Anybody who tells you that cover letters are unimportant is a fucking idiot. When mine got messed up in translation, it almost cost me a shot at my dream job.

Man... you guys are such cut ups.

Don't encourage me... I'm just a hack.

Stop making it such a big deal. Your question pretty much makes the answer obvious.