ISO tales of (cover?) letters (or similar!) that worked against all odds

September 6, 2024 6:21 PM

Basically what it says in the title .. can you, could you spare a moment to, share stories of inquiries, cover letters, requests for interviews, application essays, etc and their circumstances that somehow worked even though you , or one, might have thought there were only slightly better chances for the applicant, or inquirer, than a snowball would have in hell ?

Doesn't have to be just job applications.. journalists reaching out to leads , etc etc .. it's all good so long as common denominator is you thought you had long odds or you responded to someone who probably thought they had long odds.

I'm guessing the sorts of things this could turn up might have, you know, an above average amount of heart and sincerity, and what not.. let's see : )

posted by elgee to Human Relations (8 answers total)

Not sure if this is quite what you're looking for, but maybe a decade ago (when you could put out a job announcement on Twitter and be hopeful about the response) an editor tweeted that he was hiring a writer with the note "primary requirement, you are funny." I sent a cover letter that just said "Dear Mr. [Name], I am funny." I did follow up with my resume, but I figured if he wasn't amused by that, we wouldn't see eye to eye on what constituted funny writing. He was, we did, I got that job and eventually wound up replacing him as editor.
posted by babelfish at 6:55 PM on September 6 [6 favorites]

I googled "unique cover letters that worked" and found this
posted by foxjacket at 7:11 PM on September 6

There was a story posted on the blue many years ago about someone who wanted to work [somewhere] and basically knew the name of the hiring manager who they would want to work for so they bought the hiring manager's name as Google AdWords, figuring the hiring manager would google themselves from time to time like anyone else. So the ad was basically like "Hey Joe HiringManager, I do WorkYouHirePeople For and I'm great. You should hire me. Here's my resume link". And sure enough the hiring manager eventually googled themselves, saw the ad and hired them. Here it is.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:03 PM on September 6 [1 favorite]

This is a promotion story and not an applying story but it felt like a long shot and I'm proud of it.

I am a woman who works in a medical-adjacent, helping people field with kids, and I specialize in a particularly vulnerable population. A few years ago, I was approached to apply for a promotion and got it. I was sent an offer, which was a pay increase from what I had previously been making. Every single person I knew was pushing me hard to ask for more money, because that Is What I do. I overthought it and spent too much time researching similiar positions or what other agencies are doing and trying to get proof for my counter offer but just couldn't do it that way. Here's what I ended up doing: I wrote my counter offer and a note saything something like, "Part of my job is advocating our agency's clients, and if I don't advocate for myself right now by asking for a higher salary, how can you trust me to do that part of my job?"

It worked.
posted by Ideal Impulse at 8:44 PM on September 6 [9 favorites]

I wrote to a very high-profile woman in my field who had mentioned on Twitter that she was looking for a new X. From Twitter, I knew she might be receptive to this approach, so I wrote

Dear M, Just saw your tweet. I am undoubtedly underqualified, but in the spirit of underqualified white men who apply anyway, here's my Google scholar link and CV.

She replied You win for best email opener. I got the job, and we worked well together from day 1.

(If I remember right, she told me later she spit out her coffee. I thought, if nothing else, I'll make her laugh! )
posted by Dashy at 9:07 AM on September 7

On the academic job market, my spouse was not going to apply for a job at a particular SLAC because two years prior they'd interviewed him and turned him down. He happened to be talking to a friend, a professor in the same discipline, about what applications he was sending out, and mentioned skipping said school. His friend happened to know that the entire (small) department had turned over since his last interview and urged him to apply.

We've been here for sixteen years.
posted by jocelmeow at 1:58 PM on September 7

I was so tired of writing cover letters for law jobs I thought I was going to cry. I was at risk of missing all my deadlines. Finally I figured I would write a “fuck it” cover letter. It was something on the order of “you want to know how important law is to me? I did a lot of criming and I’m not in jail and am now in law school! Thanks lawyers! Let me be one of those lawyers for someone else.” My friends were *begging* me not to send that cover letter. I did, however, and got a really impressive funded offer. I thought I was absolutely sunk - I found out as I was submitting I had misread the deadline so my material was late *and* mildly insane. But I still got the offer!

I think people get bored with the traditional letters - if you hit someone who is interested in what you’re saying, there is more of a chance than you think.
posted by corb at 4:41 AM on September 8 [1 favorite]

Also found this one: https://youtu.be/KAmEsI8f0es?si=dHR_qaumdrNVu6hH
posted by foxjacket at 10:06 AM on September 13