How to write a CRACKING cover letter

Dear Sir/madam 

I don’t think I’d be very good at the job you are advertising and here are just some reasons why: 

•  I spend far too much time on the computer. The world of work does not require anyone who knows how to write a decent summary and don’t even get me started on databases. I mean when did you ever actually have to use excel after school? I don’t think knowing how to freeze panes on a spreadsheet has ever been useful to me during my working career so thanks for that ECDL.

•  I’m too friendly for my own good. If you need someone in customer services to be rude and ignorant then I definitely am not who are looking for. Please and thank you? Who needs them, this is a dog eat dog world so there is no need for niceties.

• If you would like to hire someone who sits around and dosses all day I’m afraid that am totally unsuitable for this role as I actually tend to ‘get the job done’ as they say.

• I will sort through and fix things as I am very methodological but who needs things to organised in this day of age. The very idea seems ludicrous.

• If you want someone who always misses deadlines and is absolutely pants at time management then sorry I’m not that girl. If I can get things done a few weeks in advance I will do so.

•  I know that lying and cheating is the name of the game but I am honest and truthful down to a tee.

• Another great reason why I am totally unsuitable for this job is that I am too enthusiastic. So if it is dull people who make watching paint dry seem more interesting who you require I’ll just jog along shall I?

Thank you for not considering me for this position even though it took me absolutely hours to fill out my application form and I will not even hear back from you in the slightest. 

Well wasn’t that fun? So much fun in fact that we shall just have to go and repeat the process about 56 hundred, million, trillion times. YAY!!!

*NB* please note the sarcasm do not actually write your cover letter like this 

We regret to inform you that...

"You are very employable just not to us"

"You were too honest"

"We are unable to progress with this vacancy at this time"

I didn't have enough experience

Or my favourite, that I was too enthusiastic.

Well I'm terribly sorry but I wasn't aware that being honest or enthusiastic was a bad thing.

Although the most frequent excuse on a rejection e-mail that I have received, and let’s be honest they are excuses (sometimes or in my experience most of the time,they are just looking for an excuse to not hire you) was that they were lots of successful applicants and the competition was fierce.

Well in that case if you have 50-100 applicants for 1 job and they are all equally as qualified, the choice of who gets the job is based on pot luck. With a large percentage of the job interview being perceived by your body language and visual appearance  does it really matter what you say?

At a career day that I attended at my university they said that what you say only has a 7% impact on the whole job interview experience. Although once you put your foot in it it’s very hard to back pedal and you can normally tell (well at least I can) when the turning point comes and you can wave the job goodbye.

So from this rant you can conclude to be able get the job  you need to say exactly what the interviewers want to hear. By this point they have (you would hope) read your CV and they know everything  that they want to know about you,  during the interview (in my experience) they just want you to amaze them with your knowledge about their company (and  if that involves quoting their website word for word then go for it) and it’s just a chance for some good old ego stroking. 

Pot luck that is what all your hard work has come down to, if you are not on the top of your game for the 45 minutes in which you are in the interview room, well then you are doomed.

Yes I am bitter and I have a pile of rejections to prove it.

How NOT to do job interviews

Having now had some experience in job interviews I thought that it would be a good idea to share some of my advice.

Firstly when you find yourself lucky enough to have landed a job interview make sure that you don’t research the company, don’t be tempted to go onto the businesses website, it pays to be ignorant. If the interviewers happen to ask about what you know about them just smile and nod, umming and ahhing is also a good choice.

Another solid piece of advice for interviewees is to always turn up really early; it keeps whoever is interviewing you on their toes and more often than not results in a nice cup of tea while you wait. Although sometimes this will result in awkward scenarios in the staff kitchen but isn’t that what life is all about? One awkward scenario after another. 

During the interview it always helps to be one of the following; either desperate for the toilet or really really hungry. Both is also advised as it makes for quite the interesting interview. Although if you do need the toilet so badly that you are on the verge of wetting yourself, maybe you should have gone before you left the house.

It helps your case if you can exaggerate things ever so slightly, now I don’t mean lying through your teeth á la Rebecca Bloomwood in Confessions of a Shopaholic who claimed to be fluent in Finish, but you could suggest that you know how to fully use say a computer programme even if you have only ever used said programme once in your entire life. However this may come back to bite you if they give you a task to do, a task that involves using Excel. Having put on my CV that I had had a lot of experience in this programme ‘they’ may have thought that this was not a big ask however what I failed to mention is that I had not used in Excel  since year 8 which was, it suffices to say, quite a while ago.

If for any reason you have a bad interview I have found solace in talking to the local shopkeeper, for about an hour to be exact. If the person behind the counter is unable to recount your life story after your meeting, then you aren’t doing it right.

*I would strongly advise you NOT to take any of what you have just read as serious advice

*Everything here is based on real events