The Cover Letter

The job advertisement had been open on Daniela's laptop for nine days. Assistant Educator, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. Responsibilities included leading school groups, designing family activities and "communicating science to visitors of all ages". The deadline was Friday at midnight. It was Wednesday, and she had written ten versions of her cover letter. She hated every one of them.

Daniela was twenty-six, from Monterrey, with a degree in biology and two years' experience as a guide at a small science center in Texas. She had moved to Washington in January and was renting a room from a retired newspaper editor called Margaret, a tall woman of seventy-four who read three newspapers every morning and corrected the spelling on restaurant menus with a pencil she kept in her bag.

On Wednesday night, Margaret found her at the kitchen table, staring at the screen. "You look like someone who's been fighting with a sentence," she said. "Ten sentences," Daniela replied. "Actually, ten letters." After a moment, she turned the laptop around. "Could you have a look? Please be honest."

Margaret put on her glasses and read in silence. The letter began: "I am a highly motivated, passionate and results-driven professional with excellent communication skills and a proven ability to work both independently and as part of a team." It continued in the same way for a whole page. When she finished, she took off her glasses. "It's perfectly correct," she said. "There isn't a single mistake in it. And I have no idea who you are."

Daniela felt her face go hot. "That's how you're supposed to write them," she said. "I looked at fifty examples online." Margaret nodded. "So did the other three hundred people who applied. Imagine the person who has to read all those letters. By Friday, they will have read the word passionate four hundred times. Tell me something only you could write."

So Daniela told her. She told her about the day a nine-year-old boy at the science center had refused to touch a snake, and how she had spent twenty minutes sitting on the floor with him, talking about why snakes don't have eyelids, until he finally put out one finger. She told her how she had translated the center's dinosaur signs into Spanish on her own time, because half the families who visited spoke it at home. She told her that she had wanted to work in that particular museum since she was eleven, when she had seen its giant squid in a documentary.

"Write that," said Margaret. "But I can't write about a snake in a formal letter," Daniela objected. "Formal doesn't mean empty," Margaret said. "It means clear, polite and well organized. You can be formal and still sound like a human being. Keep the structure, lose the cliches. And never use three adjectives when one true story will do."

They worked until one in the morning. Margaret crossed out "highly motivated" and "proven ability" and "dynamic environment". She made Daniela replace "I am passionate about education" with the story of the boy and the snake. She changed "I would welcome the opportunity" to "I would very much like the opportunity" and then, after a long discussion, changed it back. The final letter was shorter than any of the previous ten. It still began with "Dear Hiring Committee" and ended with "Sincerely", but in between, for the first time, there was a person.

Daniela sent it on Thursday afternoon, a whole day before the deadline. Three weeks later, she was invited to an interview. The first question the panel asked her was not about her degree or her experience. A woman with gray hair smiled and said, "So tell us. Did the boy ever touch the snake?"

She got the job. On her first day, she bought Margaret a red pencil and a card. Inside she had written one sentence, with no adjectives at all: "Thank you for asking who I was."