Write the cover letter or emails you'd LIKE to send to a prospective employer here

In My Humble Opinion
1

We all have things we’d like to ask them or to say upfront in a cover letter. What are yours?
A couple of mine:

"Dear _____,
With regards to your position of ____ posted in ____, before I write a cover letter and print off a CV on resume stock* I wished to inquire as to two facets:

1- When you say “competitive compensation package”, with whom are you competing, please? Would the fuller more accurate phrase read ‘competitive with similar tenure track positions at adequately funded institutions of similar size and mission’, or ‘competitive with similar positions in 1983’?

2- Do you actually intend to fill this position or is this a ‘Mormon Prom Date’ CV flush? (i.e. I spring for a corsage, a limo, and a French bistro, you daub on the lip stick, show some cleavage, shake it like an epileptic Chihuahua for a couple of dances and even giggle encouragingly when I not too accidentally put my hand on your knee, but really you know the whole time you aren’t putting out afterwards because you’re saving yourself for the candidate you’ve already chosen and just doing this to satisfy institutional requirements)?

I intend no offense, but having encountered both of the above (and in fact a couple of variants on each) I’m really to the stage where I don’t want to waste a blue pill when there’s no chance of Happy Ending.

Sincerely Yours,
Jon-n. Sampiro, Late of Weokahatchee, Sagittarius, etc.

*Seriously? You’re, like, not familiar with the concept of electronic applications?

2

Also for the cover letter:

Please only contact my present supervisor in the event you need the manic ramblings of a bipolar-on-her-best-day narcissistic bitch with early onset Alzheimers. If you do contact her, please let me know what she said because dependent on exactly what moment you caught her and what the room temperature was and how many cups of coffee and how many doughnuts she’d eaten that morning she either told you that I am the greatest specimen of my profession, if not humanity, ever to exist and can probably raise the dead by whispering the word “Mantovani” softly in their left ear, or she told you that I am to sloth what Mt. Rushmore is to Lincoln likenesses and probably responsible for bird flu. This is not to dismiss the possibility that in her “all those drugs she took in the '60s and '70s have finally found her” perenni-haze she got me mixed up with Glenn Campbell, thus explaining her critique that I haven’t really done anything useful since releasing Southern Nights, or she might be crying because she thinks you’re her niece who disappeared in 1987 and somebody finally saw that Unsolved Mysteries and gave you her number. Whatever the case, I have no doubt you learned more about her three brilliant and brilliantly successful children who never ever visit or call her (and in all three cases it’s because they happened to marry really terrible spouses and not because of any personal failings in the relationship) than you ever thought possible.

3

To Whom May Concern:
Please, please, please, please pick me.

Sincerely,

IVORYTOWERDENIZEN

4

Instead of the “corporate culture” dance late in the interview process, where I don’t want to appear as someone who isn’t willing to put in the hours, and you don’t want to scare me off with your death march environment, can you please just tell me up front how many hours people work in an average week, and a release-deadline-on-Friday week? Because I’m at the point in my life where no amount of money is worth 80-90 hour workweeks.

5

here is my “joke” letter of recommendation I wrote about a colleague student trying to get a tenure-track job as a professor:
Dear Dr. ______,

It is with angst and trepidation that I write to warn you against hiring ______ as a formal member of your department. I came to know ______ early in his graduate training as a compulsive gambler, promiscuous graduate student, and highly unscientific research assistant, and feel indemnified to inform you about his behavior in this capacity. Over the past six years, I have restrained ______ from numerous felonious acts, and feel I have successfully prevented him from creating a national catastrophe. After witnessing to his daily insults to the profession, I left ______ University, mostly to escape from his daily threats. In this regard, you can witness his psychopathology and lack of insight first-hand, in that he insists on having collaborated with me since moving to ______.

______ has failed to integrate himself as a productive and instrumental member of any research team, and I consider him to be a generally disorganized and schizoaffective individual. As an intern, he brought shame to his department, unwanted pregnancies to his classmates, and countless police actions against him on behalf of the Commonwealth. ______ is one of those rare individuals who is neither suited for institutionalization nor incarceration, and may very well run amok in the dynamic confines of your department. To be sure, he covets my wife, boasts an imaginary relationship with my children, and has an unquenchable desire to become a starting fullback for the ______.

Clinically, ______ is easily diagnosed, yet hard to maintain on any behavioral program or medication regime. Were you to allow him to interact with students or clinical patients, you will soon see that he is poorly prepared and incompetent with nearly all aspects of psychological assessment and intervention. His clinical training appears to have been a complete waste of time, save for his ability to scam an excellent and influential group of past supervisors. ______ displays an innate ability to maximize his idle time, keep abreast of football scores, maintain a relatively flat stomach, all the while showing no dedication towards learning. He has consistently worked to deteriorate any clinical skills he may have amassed, whether through binge drinking or masquerading as an undergraduate on weekend fugue states to distant college towns. I understand ______ has amassed an extraordinary amount of parking tickets, traffic violations, and misdemeanor offenses, and I imagine he will be incarcerated prior to being able to leave his current residence. On a positive note, ______ has recognized the exceptional nutritional value of Snapple. Unfortunately, even this relative strength is obfuscated by his need to hoard bottles and compulsively seek other recyclable objects during nocturnal departmental walk-abouts.

______ is recognized by his students, colleagues, and departmental administrators as an clear danger to himself and others. As his past colleague and supervisor, I have benefited from a restraining order being placed against him, and he has been a detriment to every imaginable facet of my existence. I strongly urge you to heed these words wisely, as the life you save may be your own.

I will say a prayer for you.

Sincerely,

Dr. ______

6

Dear _____

Thank you for taking the time to look at my resume. Please note that nothing in it is relevant to your industry. I would not be applying if not for the fact that the recruiter has tried unsuccessfully for three years to fill the position, and that you have rejected people far more qualified then I am. Bob, the recruiter, feels that unless he get a certain number of warm bodies in front of you, he will lost the assignment, and since I lost the game of darts to him, I was chosen to apply.

I are pinning our hopes that you will be laid off before the interview, and someone reasonable will conduct it instead.

If you were to actually look at the resume, you would see that I have all of the qualifications which you are looking for, just in a slightly different industry. In the States, you could have hundreds of qualified candidates, and I can see not wanting to expand outside your base, but since you are looking for an bilingual Expat American with 20 years of management experience in Japan, and you’ve already rejected both of the people who actually meet your experience, most normal people would recognize the situation.

If you are going to actually do the interview, can you spend 26 seconds looking at the resume first, so that since you are going to be rejecting me anyway, we don’t waste either of our times?

Best,

TP

7

Dear Prospective Employer,

When you ask for current writing samples, and I send you newspaper clippings from the day before yesterday, and you ask for something more recent, just what is it you want? Do you want me to link to the SDMB Pit and Pit you?

I can do that. Yes, I can.

8

Dear Employer,

I am going to surf the Internet on company time. This is because I am going to do the work you expect me to do extremely quickly and extremely well. If you want to hire someone who is going to do a slower and shittier job, but surf the Internet less, that’s your decision, I guess.

9

waves at MsWhatsit Hi, sis!

Dear agent:
It is nice to know that you’re looking for someone (two different someones, actually) to join my team. Sadly, I’m already in it and I don’t think my employer wants me to take three jobs for three salaries, even if I probably would be able to pull it off.

Btw, is there any reason you’re looking for that now? I ask because they should have joined several weeks ago, when I did…

Yours truly,
Nava, enjoying her new job.

Dear prospective boss:

Could you please define “flexibility”?

I’m a morning person and highly efficient at my job, if your notion of “flexibility” involves “staying late every day whether I actually have work to do or not”, you can kiss my ass. All of it. I want both cheeks completely covered, pout up boy!

Yours truly but not really,
Nava, very happy that her current bosses aren’t like that.

10

On a related note, a guy I knew in college was so pissed at getting a rejection letter from a corporation he had applied to, he wrote an “I reject your rejection” letter and posted it on his dorm room door. Full of stuff like “your pissy company isn’t good enough for the likes of me” … etc.

Somebody took it off the door and mailed it.

11

Reminds me of this girl, rejecting Oxford Uni.

12

Thanks, Sampiro!

I teach graphic design, and a number of my students are working on their resumés/cover letters.

They’re all getting a link to yours.

Hey! I’ll format it like a real letter and project it in front of the class. Think they’d believe it?

13

A selected paragraph:

In the exit interview with the previous employee in this position, which of the following categories did he or she best fit?
a) Holding back cheers of glee at getting out of this soul-sucking job at last?
b) Holding back expletives and what he/she really wanted to tell you about your management while managing to mumble the usual platitudes about looking for new challenges, under the strain of following the “don’t burn bridges” platitude?
c) Holding back tears due to being fired for being unable to meet your unreasonable expectations and unstated goals?

Also, what is the average length of employment for each candidate in this position previously?

14

Dear Employer,

Please just read my resume. We both know cover letters are a waste of time, for you and for me. I’m making up B.S. and you know it.

Sincerely,
Me

15

Dear Mr. X;

It is with literal electrical shocks of delight radiating through my loins that I write you regarding the advertised opening for a whatever. I am crying tears of exhilaration all over this god-damned keyboard, do you understand, at the opportunity you have released into the world, and which has settled so near my feet, like the first fluttering robin of spring. As a whatever with 5 years of experience who is currently actually doing the job that you’re hiring for, I am very excited to oh my god holy jesus did you stop reading already. Did you not even get to the fucking end of this paragraph where I finished lying about how happy I would be to do this awful job for awful people? You did. You fuck. You motherfucker.

Not only are you not going to hire me, not only are you not even going to interview me, you aren’t planning on sending me that little god-damned 20-word letter that says “Fuck you, and fuck your stupid resume, we don’t want your bullshit at our terrible company,” are you? Don’t lie to me. Are you? My god, you’re not. You’re just going to go on about your business like as if you didn’t just make the mistake that’s going to be the opening scene of the Lifetime movie they’re going to make about my life. Our lives. I want you to understand something. You don’t throw out my letter that I for some reason and somehow spent like two hours on. You don’t reject me. I reject you. With a rag soaked in kerosene. I will burn down the building you are in. I will burn down the building you move into after this one. Wherever you go, for the rest of your life, I will be there, and I will be burning down the building.

Who are you going to hire, anyway? I’m embarrassed I even applied, I’d be embarrassed to work there, and you’re telling me I don’t even get in the door? George Plimpton’s back in the workforce and can’t get enough of the lovely cocktail of boring and horrifying you’re serving up? I would love to meet whatever Hogwarts professor you’ve got coming in, with what qualifications, who wants to non-suicidally take a job like this from a person like you who writes the same sentence twice in a row in a job description. Nice work, by the way. Really brought the best out of me. Got those juices flowing. Four sentences, and two in a row are the same. And then the last sentence just trails off without finishing. “If interested, please”? What, the job you’re trying to fill includes the responsibility of telling you that your sentences have to have words all the way until the end? I’m going to kill you. I’m going to start my own company, and it’s going to be a company that hires other companies, and I’m going to hire every company except yours, and then I’m going to kill you.

Your website sucks, and you spell your name like an asshole.

Please keep my resume on file for any future opportunities!

Sincerely,

Tonight it begins
(please see attachments. Open them… yourself.)

16

I can’t stop laughing. :P:P:P:P:P
Dear Sir or Ma’am.
Note that I am using English, as I am an American citizen and do not speak Spanish. I realize Mexico is literally a tortilla-throw away from here, and it’s understandable that it’d be nice not to discourage the, um, "tourist"s. But when you actively hire lazy-ass, terminally-late women-with-6-kids-who-won’t-get-off-the-phone-with-whichever-baby-daddy-they’re-trying-to-hump-more-money-out-of-this-week and turn experienced, hard-working people away because they don’t happen to be related to anyone in your company, then I feel I must protest.

Note that I am turning this application in late, but that’s ok, because I know YOU won’t bother reading it anyway, as it’s not in Spanish.

Seriously, congratulations on speaking two languages, but you get a freaking F for assholery.

-Signed, La Guera

17

Dear Sirs or Madams:

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

18

“I have long been looking for a position where I can use all of my talents and enjoy a long and rewarding career, and until I find it I think you would pay better than my current employer.”

19

Dear sir or madam:

Let’s get some questions out of the way right now.

Q. Why do I want to work for you?
A. Because you’re hiring and I need a job to pay my bills.

Q. What is my greatest weakness?
A. Giving potential employers a reason not to hire me.

Q. What’s my greatest accomplishment at my previous job?
A. Beyond showing up and doing my work? Guess I don’t have any.

20

I literally laughed out loud. :smiley:

Q. Please include your salary expectations.
A. Fuck you, that’s why! We both know this is just a game you’re playing - you know what you pay for this position - you’re just hoping I’m so wet behind the ears I’ll undervalue myself. Jerk.