A Recent Cover Letter

Hi Issac,
I have not experimented with cover letters in my past job search efforts. Of course, I did try to tailor each letter to the academic institution and specific position. Now that I have a full-time gig, I would probably be a little more daring in terms of experimentation if I were to go back on the market.

I have a few questions about your cover letter. First, why do you write: “As those of you reading this probably know, I believe higher education’s use of adjunct faculty is often misguided.” Are you sure that everyone who reads your letter will probably know your views on adjunct labor? Why are you sure? I can’t recall the circumstances under which you left James Madison, but sometimes if the terms of departure were not rosy, it is best not to remind people of your views. On the other hand, if you were well-liked and your views on adjunct labor were met with support, then I think it’s fine/good to remind people of who you are and what you stand for.  

Your cover letter makes you sound very busy. Perhaps you sound a little more busy than you want to sound. Maybe include a specific list of publications and leave out the business of recently getting into publishing. That’s a lot of work: will you be able and willing to focus on teaching and research if you get hired? That’s what I would want to know as a search committee member. Share the publishing/editing activities after you are hired. That’s my 2 cents.

Finally, I get a little cranky with people who use words in their cover letters that I have to look up in the dictionary. You say: My “pedagogical” approach is only slightly different from my “andragogical” one, for example. What is an adragogical approach? How is this going to clarify things for the committee who wants to know how you teach? You don’t have to use buzz words, but some clear and specific and concrete examples of your teaching style would help.

Good luck!

Isaac, I commend you on your earlier postings that generated much discussion on the use of adjunct professionals in academic institutions. However, your approach to use that topic to gain employment with various institutions may be risky, in my humble opinion. I agree with “pterodactyl” and his/her comments and questions relative to honing your cover letters to the specific job qualifications and skill sets to the position being advertised. One has to remember that our industry of education is overwhelmed with people seeking academic positions and selection panels are engaged in yeoman efforts to fairly select the best candidates from 100s of applications for a mere one of two positions being advertised. These selection panels are doing this as an ancillary duty as many are department chairs, full-time professors or administrators. These poor soles are often reading applications where the person is falling short of the qualifications for the job posted; may be an over qualified candidate; or, may be an extremely qualified professional seeking the position. Your approach here, although refreshing but not complementary of your talents, may not measure up to a highly qualified candidate who is “tailor-made” for the same position you are seeking. Therefore, I would not endorse using your exemplar letter for a selection panel to decide your candidacy for the reasons previously stated. Offered with respect, sir. Cheers!

I would not want to hire someone for a writing position who thinks that “never mind” is all one word, and who misuses “as such”:  It does not mean “therefore” or “hence”.  Worse still, the letter provides the reader with no concrete evidence for supposing the writer has “walked the walk” or “talked the talk”.  Moreover, the injunction, before the letter, to “enjoy” suggests that the writer has an inflated view of the value of his own writing. Assuming that this article manifests his abilities and experience, the writer has provided every reason for me not to hire him.

If hundreds of applicants apply for the same position then such nitpicks will determine which applications can be dumped early on in the search. The OP would do well to heed the advice of  the “negatively critical” faculty who realize that applications are first sorted by the small but glaring errors. A hiring committee member might even reach the conclusion that grammatical mistakes and lack of relevance to the institution reflect the writer’s work ethic and intended commitment to the position, if hired.

Hypatia, we are kindred spirits.  That misuse of “as such” as a conjunctive adverb seems to be epidemic at the moment, and it drives me nuts as well!

Poor soles? Oh dear.  

I wonder if that was what this was about.  I also enjoyed the coment about how folks critique each other!

Hilarious!  If universities wanted to hire actual writers instead of careerists and conformists, you’d get a job, buddy!  As it is….I’ll be interested to hear how it goes!  Good for you. 

You did the right thing by trying to stand out.  Two thumbs up…

This letter was obviously a letter of honest self-evaluation, which I admire a lot.  It does, however, sound defensive in places and self-important in others, which could cause the hiring committee to take a step back.  When I’ve been on the hiring side, I’ve looked for brilliance, but also a certain humility and interest in learning in the workplace.  So, if I were editing this letter, I’d shave down a few of the chips and increase the focus on what you could contribute.  Also, you might tell them why someone with such excellent experience would be interested in a 1-year contingent position. 

By the way, did you get the interview?  Job?

I recently participated in a search for a choral conductor.  The candidate we offered the position to was a straight talking, honest musician who clearly did not answer our questions with what he thought we wanted to hear.  Instead his responses were blatantly honest and gave us pause to think about our own expectations and assumptions.  This was quite refreshing.  Your letter takes a similar approach and I hope that your straight talk will be appreciated by the members of this particular search committee.  Best of luck.

A wise man on my dissertation committee offered me this advice when I was searching for a TT position: when you’re courting search committees, think of it as just that–a romantic relationship.

What he meant was that the very same dynamics that come into play when one is, well, “playing the field,” are also present when one is looking for full-time academic work.  Search committees want to be wooed, sure, but they’re like the beautiful prom queen or the dreamy captain of the football team or, to use a more academia-friendly example, Indie-queen Zooey Deschanel (feel free to substitute whomever you like here).  The point is that while you want your cover letter to convey your qualifications, your eagerness, your availability, and your sincerity, you also have to convey to them that “hey, whether or not you bring me to campus, wine and dine me, or even offer me the job, I’m going to be just fine with or without you.”  That, I believe, is precisely the attitude or the ethos common to most of those who succeed in attaining a tenure-track position.  “I like you–I really do.  But whatever happens with ‘us,’ I’m going to land on my feet.”

Your letter, on the other hand, comes off a bit…frustrated.  You’re clearly someone with several impressive accomplishments and abilities (heck, I’d love to have my own CHE blog), but your prose is dripping with this attitude that you deserve far, far more than you’ve received and dammit, it’s high time some beautiful, available search committee chair recognized it.  You basically have the right idea–you’re going for a kind of outsider-positioning, right?–but this pose is undercut by a palpable sense of anger and alienation.

I wish you the best of luck, I really do.  Most of us do realize, I think, that just like high school romance, the process of getting a TT gig is pretty much one big farce.  (If you ever sit on a search committee, you’ll learn it’s a miracle that anyone ever gets hired in this business.)  But check your frustration at the door, so to speak, and play their game just long enough to get a steady date.  Then, well, things get a lot more interesting…       

Hi all. This week, I was offered a tenure-track position at a junior college near Richmond, Va. It was with a different cover letter, but one that also took some chances (though it wasn’t as brash). Planning to write about getting that job for next week’s post.

I think what Prof. Sweeney’s letter illustrates most clearly is the random element of cover letters. Beyond checking for typos, grammatical errors, and internal sense (and making sure you’re sending the right letter to the right address), what do experts, readers, and well-wishers agree on? Not much. Personally, I found the letter to be somewhat, in modern slangy parlance, “douchey.” But others insist that what I see as “douchey” is really what makes the letter “good.” And that’s the ballgame, isn’t it? All it takes is one reader to think the letter is good, and Sweeney wins.

I went for the unusual in one cover letter I wrote–the chair of the search committee played in a band, and I mentioned looking forward to seeing the band play. I suppose, to paraphrase Chief Dan George in “Little Big Man,” sometimes the douche works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Isaac, care to share thee cover letter that helped you land that job?

Your posted one got me to thinking I should change mine up. I keep a basic sense to mine and tailor it to what the college is looking for. Should I announce my strategies upfront? I already think my cover letter is too long, but it states what I’m looking for and what makes me different. I was told “short and sweet.”

Congratulations! I think we’ve all been pulling for you.

I applaud the urgent and earnest desire to break away from staid boilerplate cover letters. I agree with others that this specific approach is a bit off-putting. When we’re sending these out, we need to communicate that we can write and teach effectively, which is not necessarily akin to Trump-esque bombast.

The problem here is that you use a terrible cliche a couple of times which, in my opinion, is one of the worst issues in freshman writing. EVER. But what do I know? I’m just a graduate student. I feel as though the committee is supposed to go “ooooo” but really, having participated recently in a search for my campus’s new dean, it makes me go “barf.”

ctaylor32: ever heard of irony? you don’t imagine portiacoelhi would actually invite the blogger to campus, do you?

Can anyone honestly say they are surprised by this?  I guarantee you that virtually every SEC, Big 12, Big 10, and Pac 10 school has a booster like Mr. Shapiro lurking around (maybe without the giant ponzi scheme…).  College athletics as an amateur spectacle has been a joke as long as I can remember…the only difference is it seems like 20 years ago people basically acknowledged the real situation (players brought in to play big-time sports regardless of actual academic merit or pursuits) while now they are all required to pay lip service to the “student-athlete” ideal…knowing full well that in most big programs, the student part isn’t even 10% of the equation.

SMU still hasn’t recovered from its death penalty 25 years ago.  It’s a shame the NCAA hasn’t taken the opportunity one time since then to re-send the message despite the very public shenanigans that give college athletics a bad name.  And it is a shame because in most sports other than men’s football, basketball, and baseball … money isn’t nearly as big a part of the problem.  This isn’t to say violations haven’t occurred elsewhere, but nearly all of the high-profile cases involve football and men’s basketball.

What’s on television?

No.

Or spin their teams off into a professional minor league and let the NFL deal with all of this nonsense.

Agree. I wish I had a similar magic wand to make the obsession that faculty have with publishing in expensive for-profit journals with “high impact” factors go away and get them to only submit their manuscripts to open access journals. But it’s the same problem – those who are being judged have to play to the benchmarks established by those who do the judging.  If you don’t like the SAT obsession, reform the admissions departments; don’t blame the high school counselors and students.

What is the purpose of college education? Is it a stepping stone for getting a job or for knowledge?

The original colleges were for the acquiring of knowledge. Very few people went to college, as opposed to today where it seems everyone wants to go to college.

Today you have liberal arts schools where students are encouraged to learn. My daughter goes to William College which uses the 4-1-4 system. There is winter intersession where students are encouraged to take courses that they might not have considered taking.

For job training then it is important to go to those institutions where students can be trained.

My wife is from China. She has relative who has degree in Computer Technology but having a hard time getting job that is relevant. He was offerred job as telephone answerer answering general questions. How important was it getting college degree in Computer Technology if the job he has isn’t even related to the degree?

My wife has friends whose children have similar experiences. There is one child who has degree in biology but the only job available was a salesperson for real estate. What a waste!!!!!

The problem in China isn’t the degree but the job prospects. There are too many college graduates but too few jobs. The number of jobs that are being created is low in comparison to the number of college graduates evey year. It has been estimated that there will be around 6.6 million newly minted college graduates in China in 2011.

http://www.econmatters.com/2011/07/college-graduates-too-many-in-china-not.html

Look at the following

Indeed, China is the largest developing country in the world far from being fully industrialized, and lacks the necessary infrastructure to properly place these highly educated young people. The nation owes much of its GDP (and therefore new jobs) to the manufacturing, industrial, and exporting sector, which mostly have more openings for blue collar workers instead of white collar jobs. There are simply more of them than jobs that they are qualified for, and the lack of affordable housing also has contributed to the “Ant Tribes” formation. Furthermore, due to the imbalance of social and economic development between urban and rural areas, ‘’Ant Tribes’ are clustered around major coastal regions like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, whereas rural areas, especially in the western regions, where work environment can be difficult, have a much higher demand for college graduates.

It therefore seems that China simply doesn’t have the number of jobs available.

In regard to the idea that “The original colleges were for the acquiring of knowledge,” this is an a-historical fantasy based on 19th century quarrels over educational policy in Great Britain.  Higher education, whether in Roman times or with the foundation of European universities in the middle ages, was vocational — the latter trained theologians, church and secular lawyers and administrators, and doctors.  Early American colleges were for the training of ministers and lawyers — later doctors.  They required large amounts of “liberal arts” because professionals needed to master the Latin (and later Greek) language and culture in which knowledge was expressed and professional life was carried out at the time.  At the same time, knowledge of classical languages and literature became a very strong social class marker. 

With the rise of modern languages and science, utilitarians in the 19th century tried to reform higher education to better meet the needs of the modern world, and conservatives defended a focus on classical languages and literature as better meeting the needs of the British Empire as a “modern Rome,”  based on 19th century fantasies of a Graeco-Roman inspired government by letters-loving aristocrats rather than ambitious technocrats from the lower orders.  Hence the ideal of education for education’s sake — aimed at those who would never actually need to work for a living, but might condescend to lead and administer the country for the good of all.In the Chinese case, one of the complicating factors is that the number of each major at each university each year is still centrally determined, so this sort of input-output analysis goes on informally all the time.  I have been involved with Chinese higher education ever since I was a Chinese language major studying in Taiwan in 1970, and both the sociology and politics of education in China is very different from the US.

Yes, it used to be.  I remember that 60% approximation from a book from the early 1970s* — referring to the 1950s, to counter the argument that “it didn’t used to be so bad.”

Maybe there have been some changes in the demographics and (certainly) the methods, but human beings are human beings.

*The book was called *Wad-ja-get?*.  It was out of print for years, but now I see a revised edition is available.  I’m sure there are many other sources that would show this as well.

Your hypothesis seems to be describing whether rich students are more successful, not more frequent, cheaters.  That would probably be much harder to study, although given the previous research it might be possible to get both groups of students to openly admit not just whether they cheated but whether they were caught at it.

and yet, there are differences in cheating that parallel the differences in inequality in each state. If it were solely a matter of culture, there would not be this relationship. I agree with you that there are individual differences in morality but we should not discount other variables (even surprising ones) that may have an impact.

Read the paper before making such a comment. It is well written and does not overstep the evidence.

So your support for the just world hypothesis should trump data? That is true laziness.

If there are correlations between two things, why *wouldn’t* you want to know that?  It can help you intervene more effectively.  For example, if levels of trust correlate with amount of cheating, then universities in states with high levels of distrust could do things to increase trust (like honor codes or whatever).  If all we think is that students are “lazy”, and we have no idea what caused that laziness, we’re more limited in what we can do.  Why would we purposely avoid knowledge?

Sounds good but why are you spending valuable time and money to intervene based on a correlation? You won’t be managing the finances long if you create policy based on what might be true but might also be completely false. In summer months both consumption of ice cream and drownings increase proportionally. Guess by banning ice cream sales in July and August we will slash the numbers of drowning victims, sounds like good policy as well.

IMHO… Students cheat when they know they can get away with it, has little to do with money. While income disparities may make different forms or levels of cheating available to some, I believe it has more to do with the integrity of the system in elementary and secondary education institutions, and the impact that coddling of the cheating student has on the individuals academic ability and growth. 
Instructors/teachers are pressured to “pass” students, at any price, just to keep their jobs. It also has a lot to do with teachers not having the time or resource to teach other than to the test (due to the weight standardized testing carries). If a student is caught cheating, are they disciplined with an “F”? no. They might go visit the principal, write an essay, maybe have a chat between the parents and teacher. But then again, all the student has to do is cry abuse or discrimination, or some other keyword and the teacher is “investigated”. 
In any case, the “F” student passes, and the trend continues into college. (they can cheat by paying someone to take their entrance exams, ACT, & SAT tests too) and into the work force.

I tend to believe that the research Fischman cites is very real. I also agree that the media has distorted the real picture. Here are my reasons for cheating:

1. I believe the material is irrelevant to my life; it doesn’t matter.
2. Expectations are unrealistic and I won’t do it, but I still want the grade.
3. I see the moneychangers (via the media) make vast amounts of money for something that contributes nothing to society, and I want mine too.
4. We don’t see the cheaters going to jail. I conclude the odds are in my favor.
5. The glorification of wealth makes me feel small and insignificant. I want to impress the world.
6. Money buys everything – influence, nice things, a gated haven, travel. It doesn’t buy happiness? I’ll take my chances.