Will you proofread my cover letter?

This is a job that calls for excellent writing skills. When that’s a requirement, it seems to me that there’s some conflict in asking others for writing help.

…ok…

Post it anyway. Sounds like you need a few attaboys from our club.

thank you!

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am excited to apply for the position of Researcher I-II at NCCD. I believe that my extensive research experience and academic writing skills uniquely qualify me for this position.

In college, I applied quantitative research methods in a variety of settings both internal and external to the classroom. For my undergraduate thesis, I conducted a quantitative investigation into the subsurface structure of a secondary fault scarp and published my findings in my university’s digital library. More information about my senior project and other research I have been involved in can be found in my resume.

Working as a freelance writer has broadly exposed me to the methods and tools of qualitative research. It has given me the opportunity to learn how descriptive and inferential analyses can be used to derive meaning from qualitative data for the ultimate purpose of informing policy. Writing research proposals has taught me that designing qualitative studies is itself a fine-tuning process that ideally leads to focused research questions yielding valid and statistically-significant outcomes.

I thoroughly understand what good research requires, and I am ready to make my knowledge valuable to society as researcher at your organization. At NCCD, I will collaborate with team members to implement studies based on socially relevant research questions and communicate their findings in actionable reports. I am prepared to offer my services in exchange for $30,000—$40,000 a year.

Thank you for taking the time to review my application. I am united with NCCD in its humanitarian vision, and I would be honored to work on your team.

Sincerely,

You need to provide the nationality of the applicant and the business.

Language is key.

Off hand, a good opening seems to be:
“My extensive research experience and academic writing skills uniquely qualify me for this position as RESEARCHER I–II.”

Can you provide more info about the key roles/responsibilities too. A quick glance has me wondering about the order in which you’ve presented the info.

From the “major duties and responsibilities” section:

Assist with research design and hypothesis development.
Assist with instrument development, including focus group or interview protocols and surveys.
Assist with data collection, including developing system data-sharing agreements with agencies,
developing download protocols, and transferring data to NCCD. Assist with collection, entry, cleaning,
and checking of survey and interview data, with supervision.
Assist with conducting data analysis, including coding and summarizing qualitative data, completing
basic statistical analysis, assisting with inferential data analysis and statistical models, and compiling
reports on pre-processed data sets with SPSS or SQL.
Assist with report writing and conducting literature reviews.

I’m basically trying to emphasize that my education and background have prepared me to do all of these things. I’m a little worried that I don’t mention why I’m specifically drawn to this organization enough, though.

Perhaps I should switch the second and third paragraphs since they don’t mention quantitative research methods anywhere in the listing.

I wouldn’t start the price negotiation in the cover letter, so I would remove the “I am prepared…”

But when he applied previously for another position with the same organization, they requested that a statement of the salary range acceptable to the applicant be included in the cover letter.

I think the first letter is fine as it stands. The pertinent particulars I assume are in the resume’.

@stanleybmanly Ah, I didn’t realize that.

Thank you all for your feedback!

@trolltoll, you don’t mention having any expertise in using data analysis software such as SPSS etc. This is not easy software to use. They appear to want someone who has a thorough knowledge who can help their researchers. I have a basic knowledge of SPSS, but if I was seeking guidance for a research project, I’d want the support person to have a thorough understanding of how to use the software to help me maximise what the software can do to get the most from my data. And they want someone who can help to establish, develop and manage data sharing protocols. Do you have this expertise?

What about coding expertise? Have you ever been involved in projects that draw on quantitative or qualitative data and the coding of that data? This is discussed in the ad. You need to show you have this expertise. This looks like a very specialised job.

I’d also make sure your response demonstrates the level of education you’ve acquired. If I were the organisation, I’d be looking for someone with Masters at the very least, and preferably tracking towards obtaining a PhD in the criminal justice field.

Unfortunately I have no SPSS experience, otherwise I definitely would have mentioned it. I am confident that it is a skill that I can acquire and I would be more than happy to learn it on my own time if they would provide access to the proprietary software. I do have extensive programming experience which I mention in my resume, so I am not a stranger to software-facilitated data manipulation. I think that my most important asset is my physics background, which has given me a lot of technical knowledge and skills. Moving from a hard science mindset to a social science one is something I should be capable of, as long as I make the effort.

They seem to offer training programs, so I have hope that my lack of specific types of experience will not be automatically disqualifying. At the very least, I hope I give the impression that my lack of specific experience will not be an impediment to my success in this role.

To be frank, I don’t think they want to employ someone who has to skill-up. They specifically say they want someone who has knowledge of the child welfare, juvenile justice etc. field.

And SPSS is a very sophisticated piece of software. Yes, you undoubtedly could skill-up to use it efficiently, but why should they pay you while you do that when they can employ someone who already has that skills and is an experienced user?

I’m not trying to bring you down here. I am just not seeing evidence of the skills they clearly ask for in their job description. I don’t doubt you could acquire the skills, but they obviously want someone to expedite and produce efficiency within their researcher’s analytical work. They need someone who is already skilled.

Well, fuck. So much for my budding self-confidence and wary optimism.

perk up.

I am up-perked! I may have found another opening for a better-fitting position at a different NGO, this one focused on environmental conservation. They say that the ideal candidate has grant-writing experience, and they require two writing samples with their application.

From posting: “The ideal candidate will also have experience with nonprofit organizations, a background in grant-management and general fundraising/development, basic social media skills, and be comfortable participating in broader scope of the Academy’s multi-disciplinary work in the sciences, arts, and letters.”

As a way to gain experience, would it be a good idea to make up a grant proposal for a hypothetical project, and submit it with my application as one of my writing samples?

I suspect @Earthbound_Misfit has some relevant insights on this topic.