COVER LETTERS

Q102: We all know the reality of life for people in transition year (in secondary school). Well, an essential module of that year is a thing called "Work Experience." Now, some kids have never experienced work in their lives and a lot of them look forward to lives where they will never have to experience toil. To gain that all-important work experience commission from a company it requires - apart from golfing buddies of Dad's or other buddies of Mum's or a network of friends - a letter to someone requesting a placement for a week or a month or two. So why are so many of these letters riddled with bad grammar, nil punctuation and bad expression? Is that a sign of how these kids are going to be when they grow up? Will they be good employees or is there something else at play? On the line from Fortify Services here's Rowan Manahan; welcome back to the show Rowan.

Fortify: Hey Scott ...

Q102: Have you come across what I have just described in the business that you are in?

Fortify: Well not at the work-experience level, but otherwise? A million and one times, yes, ab-so-lutely.

Q102: And what's going on there, why are these letters so bad?

Fortify: OK, using your example: your classic, pimply, 16 year-old who is sponging off his or her parents ... the kid may not be all that enthused about the work experience and is expressing that lack of enthusiasm with this slapdash, careless approach.

Q102: You mean writing the letter just to get mummy off my back?

Fortify: Pretty much. It's akin to writing the "Thank you for the lovely socks Granny" letter after Christmas. "I'm doing this under severe protest here. I don't really care what it looks like and whether it's representing me well or not."

There is less reason for that to be happening in the case of a 26 year-old, who is no longer sponging off their parents and yet I see the same carelessness at that level. All the time. It is extraordinary to me that someone who is trying to position themselves for, even an entry-level job (straight out of formal education), where they are trying to distinguish themselves from a herd of 100, or 200 or even sometimes 500 applications would be so sloppy! I'm sure you are deluged in Q102 with unsolicited CVs and applications. To try and mark yourself out from that crowd - you don't want to be doing that at the bottom of the food chain - with typoes, formatting errors, grammatical errors, really fundamental stuff ...

Q102: And Rowan, how reasonable is it for the person who is reviewing said pile of letters to take issue and point these errors out with a red pen and say, "I wouldn't hire this kid because ..."?

Fortify: If only they would take as much trouble as to have a red pen. How reasonable is it to chuck that letter or that CV into the bin, in my professional opinion?

Q102: Please do.

Fortify: Highly reasonable. Case in point: I'm sitting here working on behalf of say, one of the big law firms in town and it's that time of the year when all of the young graduates are applying, looking to get an apprenticeship with my client's firm. Thousands of applications flying around the city and coming across my desk every year. And you know what? The first spelling mistake I come across, and you are in the bin.

Q102: Wow ...

Fortify: I don't care if you are a rocket scientist, I don't care if you are Albert Einstein, I don't care if you are Perry Mason with a PhD - you are in the bin!

Q102: Well that always assumes, Rowan, that you are able to spell all of those words yourself ...

Fortify: Weeeeell ... (laughing) one always hopes ... But look, there's a couple of very simple things you need to think about here, no matter what level you are at. You mentioned the work experience situation. Use your family, your parents and spread that net wide. Make sure that you are writing to somebody who is waiting for your letter, if not with enthusiasm, at least with knowledge that it is coming. Many companies are not happy to take a work experience kid, they don't know what to do with them, there can be insurance issues, it can be a case 8 times out of 10 of the kid making the coffee and doing a lot of photocopying.

At every level - the NET! The internet is groaning with information on this subject. There's an excellent piece (laughing) written by myself. It's an extract from my book. It's on recruitireland.com and it's on the subject of ... the perfect cover letter.

There's no excuse for this kind of sloppiness any more. Your cover letter is supposed to be representing you - it speaks on your behalf to a potential employer - so take a bit of trouble over it. You've got a grammar checker on your computer. You've got a spell checker on your computer. And you have friends and family who are interesting in helping you. If you want to represent yourself well in writing, you have to sweat a little. Call in the cavalry. Don't know where to start with a cover letter? Ask your parents! Can't spell to save your life? Use the spell-checker and call on your brother or sister to proof-read your effort. But don't, DON'T send out something that might as well be written in crayon on the back of an envelope and expect anyone to take you seriously.

Q102: Rowan Manahan from Fortify Services, food for thought as always ...

Fortify: Have a good evening Scott.