{"id":14,"date":"2023-02-24T07:36:53","date_gmt":"2023-02-24T07:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sheent\/?page_id=14"},"modified":"2023-02-24T07:36:53","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T07:36:53","slug":"getting-that-cover-letter-to-bite-a-little-better","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sheent\/getting-that-cover-letter-to-bite-a-little-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting that cover letter to bite a little better."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>So we continue our path on getting that cushy tech job again in a terrible tech market. 4 months of applications and no job offers yet. I appear to have hit my primary stumbling block. I lack any long term job experience and I (of course) don&#8217;t have a CS degree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Employers seem to be more picky these days. Most companies want more than 10 months experience so my last job doesn&#8217;t count. Other companies could have over looked that but the lack of degree gets me booted after that. No experience, no bachelors, no job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what&#8217;s a guy to do? I spent my time feeling sorry for myself but I gotta do something eventually. I&#8217;ve been picking the brain of anyone I can get to sit down with me. My most recent advice has been over my cover letter. I&#8217;ll be honest, my resume isn&#8217;t the most storied out there. I need my cover letter to shine to get any attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How I start is I get a skeleton of a cover letter that just talks about the job. The roles, the requirements, the mission etc. After that, I go in and fill in all the details with my own experience. A bit of a call and repeat. This gets a focused letter with my answers for the jobs need. Really focus on the specifics of what they&#8217;re looking for. Have a response to the company mission. Have an answer to the job duties and how you can be a success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What I had been doing in the past was more of a form letter, swapping out names and job titles where needed. This is likely obvious to some, but this was a very ineffective method. The downside is I&#8217;m only applying to a handful of jobs this way. Of course 100 form letters are probably worth 1 really good one so this probably isn&#8217;t much of a downside anyways. I guess I had to get over the mental hump of spending SO much time on one application, when maybe I&#8217;ve been wasting my time already and the slow method is going to pay off. *fingers crossed*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a new method I&#8217;m trying for the last week so hopefully, I&#8217;ll start seeing some fruit soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wish me luck<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>-Tyler<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So we continue our path on getting that cushy tech job again in a terrible tech market. 4 months of applications and no job offers yet. I appear to have hit my primary stumbling block. I lack any long term job experience and I (of course) don&#8217;t have a CS degree. Employers seem to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13209,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sheent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sheent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sheent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sheent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sheent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sheent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sheent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14\/revisions\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/sheent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}