Writing a successful covering letter

Guest post by Mark Green

 A covering letter is vital to applying for work experience, paid internships, graduate vacancies and increasingly, for part time jobs. You're normally asked to provide a covering letter alongside your CV when applying for a job. The importance of a covering letter with job applications is great, it is a chance to showcase your writing style and give your application a personal feel, which is something you would stuggle to convey through a shorter, concise CV.  Before I came to university, I had never written one before.  The first time I had to properly 'sell myself' was in my personal statement. I didn't know what to include, or how formal it had to be. The tips below should give you an idea of where to start when writing one.

• Most obvious, but still necessary to mention; tailor each application to the job you are applying for.  You may have much valuable, transferable experience, but it is crucial to emphasise the specific skill-sets you have developed from your previous work experience. For example, if you are applying for a part-time job at a local supermarket, whilst still studying, it would be best to stress how you have developed your interpersonal skills in the past.
• Try to get as much background information about the position you are applying to as possible.  It may be time consuming, especially when you are applying for lots of jobs at the same time, but that little bit of extra research about the current developments of a the company, or the industry that they are in  will help you stand out compared to other candidates.   
• Avoid merely repeating what is in your CV in more long winded ways. A covering letter is an opportunity to give the employer more insight into your motivations and the extent to which you want the job. Another reason not to just repeat your CV is that the cover letter will often physically be attached to it!
• Be clear and concise. Although specifications on the length of a cover letter may vary from job to job, it is generally custom to keep a covering letter to one page. Make your points eloquently, you're essentially advertising yourself.  Employers will often have tens of applications to read and will not appreciate 2-3 pages of you waffling on. Just because you write more on a covering letter than another person does not mean you must want the job more. Quality, not quantity.
• Proofread your covering letters.  You may be applying for several jobs at once and as a result become a little lazy in your writing and editing.  But ultimately, the covering letter will hold sway as to whether or not you get an interview, so it is vital to present a professional appearance.  If only there was some sort of cost-effective software that automatically proof-read your work for you...

Hopefully these tips will give you a hand in finding that flexible part time job or that dream internship. Best of luck with the job hunt!

Have you ever committed any covering letter blunders? Leave a comment below.

Top essay writing tips

Guest post by Mark Green

 When it comes to essay writing, there are probably three groups of students. The first group, a strange bunch, enjoy the whole essay writing process. They enjoy finding and reading their references, as well as having a sense of satisfaction after ordering their piece of work and checking it over.  The second group, which is the position most students tend to occupy, are those who enjoy certain aspects of the process. For instance, they may enjoy the chance to express their opinion, but really despise the mechanical aspects to it.  The final group seem to hate essay writing altogether, to which I would probably ask why you decided to do that specific degree!

Despite these varying experiences, there are some golden tips which most of us can follow that will ease the pains of essay writing...

1) Don't leave it 'til the last minute - This may seem to be a pretty straightforward one, but it is ridiculous how many students keep putting off an essay just because the deadline seems so far away.  You ease the guilt of a deadline that is four weeks away by thinking to yourself, 'oh well, I did attend the lecture and seminar this week, I've worked really hard recently...'  Keeping on top of your reading and doing a little of the essay each day/week can easily put a stop to the all-nighters in the library.  A nervous breakdown in one of your university libraries at 4am, surrounded by soul-destroying energy drinks like 'Red Trojan' and 'Blue Electric' is hardly ideal.

2) Set yourself realistic targets - Try and break down your essay into reasonable chunks.  Trying to dedicate a block of five hours to write solidly isn't realistic.  Cut it down into more bearable and probably more enjoyable chunks.

3) Active note taking - Depending on the required word count and the style of the question, you may be faced with a great deal of reading to do.  You'll find yourself taking notes from books, journal articles, blogs, maybe even videos.  It is extremely important not to copy everything you read word for word, as you may be susceptible to losing marks for lack of originality.  Read an argument; put it in your own words.  You will understand it more for yourself, which is even more important if the essay is a topic you could revise for a later exam. 

4) Answer the question - It may seem a bit patronising, but it is true.  Many students will see an essay question, and then write everything they know about it in order to fill up the word count, without answering the actual specifics of the question to achieve your desired mark.  On a related note, don't be afraid to challenge the question.  If you don't agree with the statement in the question, why not?  Define it in your own terms and justify why you are doing it.

5) Use Scholarly to help you!  Need a programme to quickly and accurately proofread your work for you?  We can do it.  Are you stuck for ideas of what to read next?  Not a problem.  Have you got a 5,000 word limit but you still find yourself 2,000 over the limit with a day to go?  Give it to us; we'll assist you, no issue there.  We are here to give you a hand and leave you to the debating.

Leave a comment below with your top essay tips!

The evolution of writing

 

Academic writing is painful. I discovered this the first time I had to face writing an essay as a 4^th year undergrad on exchange in London. Outside of the English speaking world, the academic essay is mostly an esoteric art form that is the domain of researchers and academic hipsters. I had never seen anything like it.

There was all this hassle of keeping your paragraphs as tight conceptual units within the greater scope of your argument, with their own internal structure, then having to back up anything you said with what other people had said before and this absolute obsession with not using someone else’s words without attribution. Pile up on top of this dealing with the formatting, keeping to the strict word length, and writing in “the language of science” and you can see it was not an easy year. But I learned the system, and became a better writer and a better communicator because of it. [...]

Read more...
(Guest post on The Literary Platform)

We met this chap the other day

 

Nick Clegg visited the Electric Works last week to see for himself what the dotforge programme has to offer (photos just in).

We had a nice chat about how Scholarly is going to take writing to the next level and empower everyone to write better, faster. Ok, essentially we pitched to the Deputy Prime Minister. Claim to fame!

Coding hard

After three very intense weeks of workshops and customer development, we have finally reached the development stage.

Given the limited time at our disposal, we are working towards the Scholarly product vision incrementally by taking on one feature at at time.

We are already working hard on rolling out our first feature: Reference Discovery. This should be most helpful for students writing their dissertations or researchers. The functionality is straightforward: upload your draft / paper, click a button and you will be presented with relevant references to the subject area, your specific topic and related papers to those already cited.

Our beta sign-up is live, if you would like to help beta test Scholarly, don't hesitate head over to the form!

dotforge

Scholarly is moving to Sheffield!

Scholary has been accepted as part of the summer cohort of the dotforge accelerator.

For the next 13 weeks we are going to give everything to make Scholarly happen.

Scholarly is born!

Our mission is to give everyone the power to write better, faster. We doing this by developing software for computer-assisted authoring of documents, bringing Natural Language Technology to market to provide automated proofreading and assistance much beyond grammar and spelling. 

In our collective history, we have gone from hammer and chisel to papyrus, from printing press to typewriter and from there to computers, which now automatically check your spelling, punctuation, grammar, and to a certain degree, style. Why don’t they also check your structure? Why don’t they tell you “it’s a very clever thing you’re saying there, but somebody said something similar before, look, here’s a reference”, or “that paragraph has five different ideas in it, you might want to split it up, like this”? How about, “you need to get rid of 2000 words, so I suggest you cut this, this and this”?

The technology to deliver this is mostly available and ready for prime time. 

Writing is an act of communication, and communication is perhaps the most human of traits. We aim to use the technological know-how and wealth of knowledge resources of an increasingly interconnected world to augment the human capacity for written communication. We want to help everyone write better, faster.

Join us in our mission at www.scholarlyessay.com