Mailbag Monday: What Should Go On a Writer's Cover Letter?
Sunday April 6, 2008
Reader Ivana E. is searching for a career writing position, and wonders what kind of accomplishments a writer should list on their cover letter in place of the usual sales figures and numerical data. As she said, it's hard to quantify writing achievements. I suggested that she focus instead on touting her published clips and citing any editors that have used her services multiple times.
What's your opinion? How do you, as a writer, toot your own horn to potential employers?
Comments
I am searching for the right “marketing” materials myself for my writing. I have a website, www.JLWonline.com but aside from that, I cannot figure out the best course of action to “attack” editors and publishers.
This works for me :
I write a proposal stating what exactly I’d like to do with the website in question and how I can contribute to do either of the following
– Make more money for the website/business
– Save their time or effort
– Take away the pain points if any( for most websites, content is a pain point and that is why you and I hope to earn a living by writing content)
I also mention a like dollar amount( i keep this open to negotiation) as monthly retainer and add that I would strive to do a great job on the site. I sometimes even pull a fast one like ” It’s unfair if you let this initiative from my part go waste if you didn’t even want to check my services out for free!”
60% of the times, I get a prompt response back to let me know what’s on their mind.
Voila Merci!
You’ve got some good advice. I also try to express my eagerness about working on the project.
Aswin, that’s so thorough. No wonder you have such a great response rate.