3 mistakes to avoid when writing your next development cover letter

One of the job-hunting topics we get asked about the most from global development professionals may surprise you: the cover letter. In this age of LinkedIn and artificial intelligence, are they still necessary, and if so, how can you craft one that can actually make a difference in your application? “It's a chance for candidates to really stand out by creating something that is unique that tells their own story,” said Caroline Korda Poole, a development career coach and founder of Centered Career, during a recent Devex Career digital event. “And they matter if the application asks for it, and they don't matter if the application doesn't ask for it,” she added. In many cases, cover letters are still expected, and in some, they are mandatory, said development writing expert and founder of ParadiseScribe Kathryn Harper, who joined Korda Poole to offer Devex Career Account members advice based on their work helping development professionals optimize their job applications and find the roles that best fit their interests and skills. No matter the technical requirements of any particular recruitment process, “a cover letter, if nothing else, is an unrequested writing sample that it is a way to convey to your reader, a hiring authority, or a recruiter that you can tell a story in a compelling way, and anything that can make you stand out is going to be to your benefit,” Harper said. Below are three things they advised you to not do in your efforts to create a standout development cover letter. Drop the ‘I’, at least to start When thinking about how to approach your cover letter, it's important to keep the focus on “what I'm going to do for you,” Harper said. In other words, why you are capable of solving the problems the role is meant to address? With this in mind, “Please don't use the letter ‘I’ in the first paragraph, at all,” she said. For example, avoid starting off with lines like “I am so excited about this opportunity.” An “employer doesn't care if you're excited. The employer wants to know what you bring to the table right off the bat,” Harper said. Instead, consider wording along the longs of “Thank you for the opportunity to submit my credentials for this role, which would leverage my X, Y, and Z skills,” she added. “I have joked with clients [and] students in the past, if we did a word cloud on your cover letter, we don't want to see ‘I’ right there in the middle,” Korda Poole added. Don’t rely on AI Korda Poole and Harper also spoke about the role artificial intelligence should play in your cover letter writing. While both acknowledged the fast-evolving nature of AI technology and its impact on the recruitment process as a whole, they were skeptical about its usefulness as a go-to tool for most development professionals writing cover letters. “The operative word for AI is assist. Not do, but assist, and maybe support [or] help. But ultimately, the cover letter can only be written in your voice and can only tell your story because AI doesn't know who you are and doesn't care,” Harper said. Recruiters for some professions, such as engineering, may be more receptive to cover letters that are created with AI assistance, Korda Poole said, but “if you're expected to be presenting or writing frequently, then, to Kathryn’s point at the beginning, this is a writing sample, and it's great to show your original voice,” she said. Address it to a person “It's really important to address your cover letter to a human being, and that's pretty easy to do. So ditch to whom it may concern, or dear sir, or madam, or dear hiring team,” Korda Poole said. This may seem like a small detail, but it’s a way to show that you’re serious about your interest in a role and “show you go the extra mile,” she said. To find out who to address a cover letter to, “they're going to give you breadcrumbs in the job description and tell you ‘this position reports to the CEO’ or ‘this position reports to the executive director,’” Korda Poole said. Finding the names can usually be done by searching for the job title and organization on LinkedIn. Harper concurred and added that addressing your cover letter to somebody likely to read it aligns with one of the key principles of a strong cover letter, which is to “write for the reader, and not write for yourself.” Ready to stand out from the crowd and get noticed by the recruiters who matter most? Update your Devex profile and start connecting with top global development recruiters now.