Reports of recent attempts to circumvent the traditional resume and cover letter route may be greeted with a sigh of relief by some students and job seekers, yet I wonder if this is truly to the advantage of either the applicant or the employer. A cover letter serves many purposes. It allows the job seekers to fill in the gaps, mention relevant experiences that don't belong on the resume (i.e. coursework or shadowing experiences) and serves as a valuable writing sample. Additionally, it proves your interest and qualifications for a job's specific duties in a way a tweet cannot - and it allows the employer to decipher your actual level of interest. Fact of the matter is, a well-written cover letter takes time and consideration in a way that a tweet just does not. I can just imagine hiring managers shaking in their boots at the prospect of receiving thousands of 140-word job applications that lack much of any substantive information.
That being said, I think their is a future in non-traditional cover letters, specifically online videos or posts that contain the same general message as a cover letter (why it's in the best interest of the employer to hire you). But more on that in another post . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment