- Find a position or use a position you’ve put on your Huntr board and write a cover letter for that position in a Google doc or gist. Reference these cover letter resources as well as the session to complete your cover letter.
This cover letter is not the same as the real cover letter, design wise. I had my cover letter keep the banner at the top for synergy between my resume and cover letter design. Was not able to port this into Google Docs, however all of the verbiage is the same.
- Review your cover letter with a peer some time this week. What feedback did your partner give you? What next steps will you take to make your cover letter even stronger?
Feedback given from peer review
- Okay, I am super interested in Livongo as well! Coincidental to say the least.
- Love your opening paragraph. Tying in personal experience and concluding the paragraph with a connection to the company, and how you would fit right in, is perfect!
- I would actually chop out that first line in your first paragraph, and instead, start off with your second sentence about your mom's disease. Way more catchy upon initially looking at your cover letter.
- I would change "Turing School of Software Engineering" to "Turing School of Software & Design" since that is the "official" name
- LOVE your mention of Travel Tracker (I'm not as proud of my finished project LOL). Great connection made there.
- Is accessibility something Livongo focuses on, or is it something that you feel strongly about and how to bring onto the team? ( just curious about your approach here )
- Your third paragraph can be trimmed down a little! That first sentence is a bit long; I'd reframe by expanding upon your second sentence and ditching the intro sentence. Something like "An opportunity to change the world for the better exists as a developer on Livongo's team." (I don't know, something poetic haha)
- Nice mention of the Fortune 500 part, shows you've done your research!
- I would add a follow-up sentence to "Livongo's innovation and powerful mission has changed the way that healthcare is delivered and changed healthcare history" to explain how you know this to be true.
- As a closure for your cover letter, it might be a good idea to circle back to what you said in the beginning about being close to home. Maybe you could mention how you imagine a Livongo product (generally, or if you can find anything specific on their website) could directly impact your mom's life.
Overall, super engaging cover letter! There are some solid points made and I appreciate how you dug deep into a project and referenced accessibility. I think the first paragraph gets the reader interested, that second paragraph is strong with content, and the third paragraph brings it all together. There are a few parts where maybe some synonyms could be used to replace words such as "develop" and "change," especially in the third paragraph. GREAT JOB!
Also, I know you have previous experience as a developer doing backend code, do you think it would benefit you to advertise yourself as a full stack engineer rather than a front end web developer? I don't know why, but generally I've been more impressed when people refer to themselves as engineers rather than web developers (that's probably just my biased preference, but worth a mention).
Hope this feedback is helpful; let me know if anything is unclear :)
What steps to implement?
- Implemented shortening the sentences to make it more concise with the same impact.
- Change Turing to it's proper title. Oops!
- If you were to apply to this position (and you should!), how will you customize your resume for it? What other next steps would you need to take here?
- I changed some places in my resume to reflect having back-end experience as they liked having a more well rounded software engineer with tech stacks that I still feel comfortable with working on a professional level in the back end and focused on user accessibilty as this was a "If an applicant has this skill, it's a plus!".