The Green-Yellow-Red Cover Letter Preparation Plan
Cover letters are hard. You have a page to convince a hiring manager that they should bring you in for an interview. Just like your resume should change for each job application, your cover letter needs to adapt as you apply for different jobs. If it seems like an insurmountable project to craft a new letter from scratch when your work history remains the same, I suggest following these steps to make sure your letter is tailored to the position and stands out.
- Check out the job posting for the list of required/preferred qualifications. Some employers will list these qualifications as bullet points or a chart. Others may write paragraphs with a heading like “Who You Are,” or “We’re looking for someone who can…”
- Open a new document in your favorite word processor. Make a table with two columns. Copy each qualification from the posting into a cell in the left-hand column. Review your left-hand column and determine how your experiences and skills match with those listed.
- If a qualification is easily satisfied by information in your resume, highlight it in green. For example, if a bachelor’s degree is required and an applicant has listed their completed bachelor’s degree on their resume, there’s no need to repeat that in the cover letter. Highlight the left half of that row of the chart in green, make a quick “see resume” note in the right-hand column, and move on to the next qualification.
- If you don’t have a qualification (for an applicant with no grad school experience, that might be “PhD required”), highlight it in red and move to the next qualification. If you’re seeing a bunch of red for required qualifications, this might be a good time to evaluate whether this is a good job to apply for today, or if it’s a better choice to plan ahead and try set a goal to gain those experiences or skills in order to apply for a similar job in the future.
- If something is hard to describe in a resume, or if you feel like you need a paragraph to elaborate on something, highlight it in yellow. The yellow highlighted qualifications will be the parts of your story that you emphasize when you write your letter. You can use the right-hand column to jot down a sentence or two describing how you meet that qualification, and you can edit those sentences later when you write the letter.
- At this point, you’ve done some pre-writing, and you’re ready to start your cover letter. You can follow guidelines like the ones Career Services posts on their web site to write the letter itself. As you incorporate different fields that are highlighted as yellow in the qualifications document, change them to green as you write so you know you’ve covered them. You can also make little changes to your resume at this time to better reflect the language in those yellow sections of the qualifications.
This way you’ll know that if an employer prioritizes a specific experience or skill, you are bringing that information to the forefront of your application. It also ensures that if you are covering all the qualifications the employer is looking for. As always, it’s smart to make an online
appointment
with Career Services if you would like a second opinion or have questions.
