Lesson 7 - Cover Letters - CIS 58.57 Efolio

LESSON 7 - COVER LETTER & FINAL DRAFT PORTFOLIO

lesson objectives

lesson overview
cover letter or
advertising your services
final portfolio registration

lesson overview

Ready or not, we're wrapping things up. This week you'll look at Cover Letters, and concentrate on putting the finishing touches on your Portfolio and Resume.

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cover letter [employment track]

The purpose of the Cover Letter is to create a personal introduction of yourself to a specific potential recruiter, interviewer or hiring committee at a specific company or agency. The letter also outlines your concrete plan of action in regard to getting an interview at this particular company. It states when and where you can be reached, and when you will make the next contact to confirm that your Resume has been received by the proper person.

Don't depend on a Cover Letter to do the job your Resume and Portfolio should be doing by themselves. Your Resume and Portfolio should have clearly and concisely displayed:

contact info
job objective
skills and qualifications
self promotion

Your Cover Letter should NOT attempt to fill in gaps, or clarify fuzzy, or incomplete areas in your Resume or Portfolio—it SHOULD be the 'icing on the cake' that will encourage the recruiter to take a closer look at your Resume ... NOT a slice of the cake itself.

If your Resume and Portfolio are weak, and you try to depend on your Cover Letter to make up for this, you may create a situation where you've promised a hearty meal with your Cover Letter, and then served up a tiny snack with your Resume and Portfolio. You don't want a recruiter to feel let down, or disappointed once she or he gets to the Resume and Portfolio.

In addition, in large companies, especially if there is a hiring committee, copies of your Resume are made to be circulated among the members of the committee. The fewer pages you have, the better. As almost always happens in life, items that should stay together get separated. For instance, the person making the copies forgets to make copies of the cover letter and only copies of the Resume get passed around... so the Resume HAS to be able to stand on its own.

Do not place a Web page version of the Cover Letter in your Portfolio Site. This defeats the purpose of the Cover Letter, and is generally a BAD idea. The Cover Letter is completely temporary, and should be customized and personalized for each employment situation

Let your Resume and Portfolio provide the crystal clear presentation of your Job Objective. Let them take care of your Self Promotion, and save your Cover Letters to do the personal introductions that you need on paper, in specific interview situations.

"You only get one chance to make a good first impression"...the cover letter. If a blank screen in Word stares you in the face, or you're thinking, maybe, that it's much easier to write java code or design an attractive sewage treatment site, don't despair. Use this week's resources to find information and samples of effective cover letters online. Let them help you get started.

For the class you can just develop one cover letter for us to view. In real life you will obviously want to have more than one "template" which you can modify so it will be specifically focused on the job for which you are applying.

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advertising your services [freelance track]

Especially when you are first starting a new business, a key factor in your success is your advertising. And while you may not be a marketing major, you probably have some pretty good answers to these questions:

Who should you target with your advertising?
What do you want to tell them?
What is the best way to communicate with each of them?

Do you have to do it this way? No, after the class is over, if you have a better idea, then go with it. However, this is what I want to see:

A Web page which is printable onto a single page of 8 1/2 x 11 paper which simulates what you would want to send out as your initial advertiser or flier.
In fact, having the copy as a Web page which will print onto a single page is a good idea anyway. It gives you the opportunity to go both ways: You can print it for a mailing, and you can also point anyone you wish to the Web page.
You have 2 choices for page content and layout.

You can format it as a "flyer", designed primarily to grab people's attention and offer a little, concentrated information

You can design it as a mass-mailer, providing relevant information, with more details, and maybe some enticing offers

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final portfolio registration

For most of you the initial 2 weeks devoted to portfolio construction was enough to get the site up, but probably wasn't enough time to polish it. If you still have any dangling ends, this is the week to get them done.

Whatever number of pages you have been able to complete, make them sparkle! It's better to have a small, attractive electronic portfolio that works, than a large site riddled with errors or omissions.

And, yes, spelling and grammar count - even when you are online.

Upload the final versions of the pages you have developed for the class, after you complete all of those special finishing touches on your work.

When I review the final versions of your portfolio sites next week I will use a similar grading criteria and questions that you used during week 5 when you did your self-evaluation and classmate evaluations. One difference is that my evaluation will carry a significantly larger number of possible points (100 for Resume and 250 for Portfolio) --so this project is half of your grade for the class.

You may view the grading criteria details by clicking on see details in the Final Draft of Portfolio Site Homework listing.

By the end of this week you want all of your pages to include the corrections, enhancements and embellishments which are the result of the critiques and your hard work.

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