Re: Cover Letters
I have written a lot about job applications over at Space Australia, but one of the most enduring questions I keep seeing is ‘how do I write a cover letter?’
Regardless of whether you are applying for an academic job or an industry one, the cover letter is easily the most misunderstood part of the application. Many think that because applications are so extensive, a cover letter is no longer required in the days of online applications.
Some things to bear in mind (especially in the English-speaking world, but goes for most professional settings):
The cover letter will probably be the first thing the selection committee looks at. It should compel them to read the rest of your application.
The cover letter should indicate you have taken thought and care in preparing your application for this job specifically.
The cover letter should demonstrate your ability to communicate professionally, clearly and formally. It should be written as a letter, not as you would write an email.
The cover letter should not repeat the content of your application.
Letter-writing 101
For those who didn’t suffer the indignity of having to practice formal letter writing in 1998 by writing a letter to then-incumbent British Prime Minister Tony Blair, this is how you write a general letter to a selection committee:
Header: Address of the person you are writing to on the left (so it would show through the window of a hypothetical envelope). On the line below, right-aligned, is the date on which you write the letter. Use the LaTeX command \today to avoid embarrassment. Technically you should also include your address in the header, but this seems to have fallen out of practice as for a word processed letter, both addresses should be left-justified and this takes a huge amount of space.
Salutation: Dear <name of person doing the hiring>. If the person doing the hiring is Professor Y, then the salutation is ‘Dear Professor Y’. Not ‘Hi’, ideally not ’To whom it may concern’ and especially not ‘Dear sir/madam’ or ‘Dear sir’. People have generally got out of the habit of using a formal salutation with emails, but for a cover letter it shows professionalism and gives the impression you took care to investigate who was doing the hiring (i.e. not writing ‘Dear Sir’ when the person doing the hiring is a woman).
Content: see below.
Ending: I always end with ’thank you for considering my application for this role. Kind regards, <my name>’. There are some technical rules around certain salutations being combined with specific sign-offs, but the rules are considered old-fashioned outside of highly formal communications and nobody is going to whip you for using the wrong one.
Cover Letter Content
Your cover letter should be treated as though it is the first part of you application packet that the hiring committee is going to read. It should state what application materials you include, who you are, your qualifications, your current role, and information specific to the job you’re applying for.
A new cover letter should be written for each job you apply for, regardless of whether you are applying to industry or academic positions. Do not recycle a generic cover letter.
I will dissect one of my cover letters for a successful application:
Paragraph 1: Statement about application
please find attached my application for the role of Research Associate in the gravitational wave group at UWA. Also included is my current CV and publication list.
I state what position I apply for, the group and institute I apply for, and what other attachments I have uploaded. This is important just in case something doesn’t upload, the committee can contact me. It also indicates I have read the job ad and know what position I am applying for.
Paragraph 2: Who I am and my qualifications
I have received approval to graduate in December 2019 with my PhD. My PhD thesis was titled ’The origin of Galactic antimatter’. I have a total of eight refereed publications, four of them first author. I received my BSc in physics and math with first class honours from the University of Auckland in New Zealand in 2015, and I completed my PhD under the supervision of Associate Professor Roland Crocker at the Australian National University. My current position is as an Associate Lecturer and researcher in physics at the University of New South Wales Canberra where I work alongside Dr Ivo Seitenzahl. I have over seven years of teaching experience (graduate and undergraduate) and have mentored undergraduate research students.
Indicate the qualification required for the job you are applying for. If you need a PhD, you need to state you have it, the title of your thesis and your supervisor. I also indicate the number of refereed published papers I have authored (which is needed for an academic position). I don’t include my h-index because having a h-index of 6 is not particularly impressive and may actually hurt my application. I also state what my current position is as it is relevant to my application for a research position, and that I have teaching experience as I am applying to a university department with a teaching focus. Because I have a research position, I will also be expected to supervise students, so I mention I have experience here.
If I had impressive grants, I would mention them here.National-level funding. Not winning something in High School or department-level grants. The university level grants can go in your CV. Nobody needs to know you were dux of your high school or head boy/girl if you are applying for a PhD, or industry job unless you are coming directly out of high school.
If I were to apply for an industry position, I would probably remove the bit about publications and instead highlight project management and software development experience. Instead of teaching, I would mention leadership. I would ensure to include words that link to the key competencies required for the job (e.g. if it was ‘experience in C programming language’, I would say that I have experience working with a large C codebase for real-time signals processing).
The main thing is to be truthful (do not inflate your experience - I only include refereed publications, I don’t add my conference proceedings to that number), to highlight ‘good’ statistics (i.e. not including metrics that look mediocre compared to your peers, like h-index in my case), and to state the things that make me qualified for the position.
In my opinion, only the past five years of experience are really relevant. If you are more than 2-3 years out of high school and applying for something that requires a university degree, your high school credentials are not important.
Paragraph 3: Specific experiences relevant to the job
I have significant experience in signals processing and multiwavelength followup of transients. In particular, my expertize pertains to heavily background-dominated data from the INTERGRAL space telescope. I also have extensive expertize in high-energy and theoretical astrophysics, and physical modelling of astrophysical phenomena.
I leave the typo in there to be totally truthful. I got this job despite the typo, but I do not recommend ever having typos.
The job I was applying for was in signals processing and multimessenger astro. I highlight what expertise I have in the job area. This is despite the fact I have no experience with gravitational wave data. Before I wrote my application I narrowed down what technical (not astro specific) skills I had that were transferrable. Do /not/ say “I have no experience in blah but am excited to learn”. Instead say (if it is truthful - do NOT lie here) “I have experience in x and have developed <transferrable skill> that I can apply to <thing you want to do>”.
Paragraph 4: Rule of three
Firstly, I have a strong academic and research background in signals processing and multiwavelength followup observations with optical and gamma-ray observatories, with strong collaborative ties in these fields both within Australia and beyond.
I have substantial experience in software engineering and the development of software to both analyse astrophysical data and to develop physically motivated models of astrophysical phenomena, including GPU acceleration and the use of machine learning techniques.
Finally, UWA has an exceptional track record of producing exciting cutting edge research in astronomy, especially in the development of low-latency pipelines for GW detection and is home to world renowned experts in the fields of gravitational-wave detection, optical and radio astronomy. I believe my experience in gamma-ray astronomy would complement UWA’s existing expertize. UWA provides an exciting environment with a strong commitment to diversity in which the proposed research can be carried out, as well as the opportunity to contribute to supervision of students, teaching and outreach within the department of physics and astronomy.
In this section I indicate several things: I read the job ad thoroughly, I have thought about how I would fit in and why my skills are needed, and that I have done some background reading about the group and the university. Sometimes in this section I mention people in the department I am applying to by name if I think I could collaborate with them. The three bullet points are what I use to indicate I am not just slamming together a generic application, and I have actually thought about what doing this job could entail. It requires doing background reading and research, trawling through department and university websites and reading things like mission statements. The upside of this is that my application is now highly tailored to the job. Using three gives a fairly nice rhythm to the letter as well.
And that is how I write a cover letter, which comes to one page (just over if you include formatting).
Note how I do not repeat the content that would be in my research proposal or CV, except for a very brief mention in my three bullet points. I aim to make the selection committee invested enough from my application to actually read the research proposal.
Mileage may vary with this kind of template - it took me a while and a lot of looking at other people’s applications to get to the point I feel confident in writing cover letters. So don’t take this advice as the only way to write a cover letter. Get examples from people who have been successful (and, if I dare say so, unsuccessful) in job applications to take a good look at what they are doing and not doing.
There are also some other bits of advice floating around that you can take or leave. I personally do not mention anything about family, citizenship, gender or anything else, however I have heard people advise that if you are applying to the same institution as your partner to mention it in your cover letter so the university can get wheels moving regarding spousal hires. I would take this advice with a grain of salt, especially for PhD and postdoc applications (it is only really relevant for tenure-track positions, and even then be very cautious). Regarding citizenships and visas, this information is communicated privately with the university via your application form: the person doing the hiring does not need to know this information as it is technically confidential with HR (to this end, do not attach your visa as one of the application materials. HR will contact you privately to get it).
Good luck with your applications - I have my fingers crossed that you get the jobs you are applying for.