Amy Middleton Loves New York

First off, thank you to everyone who has given me nice comments about the cover letter presentation I did. I’m glad it’s useful! I want to give you another example of a way to frame your experience when writing a cover letter.

When listing required software or skills, many job descriptions focus on the product rather than the candidate:

• Must have deep understanding of Omniture.
• 3-5 years’ experience w/ Photoshop.
• Must know MySQL.

Naturally, when responding to such statements, our emphasis is on the product as well:
“I have a deep understanding of,” “I have experience with,” “I know how to use…”

We are better off focusing on the value WE bring, not the value of the tool. To illustrate, here is part of a chat I had with my roommate today:

Becca: how do i say i understand the value of a rigorous and aligned assessment
without saying i have a testimony of it?
me: what is the value?
Becca: rigor and alignment ensures that you are assessing the right things and can get the most useful data out of it
me: For the past 2 years, I have been using rigour and aligned assessment to get useful data and meaningful results.
or
By using rigour and aligned assessments, I have helped my team extract useful data which we have used to improve our success rate by 23%.
(obviously i don’t know what i’m talking about here.
please don’t let that distract you.)

The point is, you have to convey value, not just demonstrate loyalty. “I’m a fan of the product” is stronger as “I accomplish ___ by using the product.”

Returning to the chat:

Becca: by focusing on rigor and alignment in assessments, i’ve been able to more than double the efficacy performance of my corps members over the past 2 years
me: i’d hire you!
Becca: yes!
Becca: how do i say this so it makes sense:
Focusing on the data gleaned from rigorous and aligned assessments has allowed me to almost double my corps members’ effectiveness over the past two years from about 30% in the significant/solid range by end-of-year last year to about 55% currently.
me: first pass:
Focusing on the data gleaned from rigorous and aligned assessments has allowed me to almost double my corps members’ effectiveness over the past two years (from about 30% in the significant/solid range by end-of-year last year to about 55% currently).
Becca: i like that
parentheses
magic

I hope that is helpful. Just remember, if you are a fan of a tool, you probably also rock at using it. Communicate the value and not just your enthusiasm, and your cover letter will be stronger for it.