A reader writes in:
What information can a cover letter provide that isn’t already provided by the other materials, the CV in particular? The latter lists AOSs, AOCs, publications, and past courses actually taught. If schools also require a research statement and/or a teaching statement (depending on how important research is), what’s left for the cover letter to do?
The most common answer I’ve seen is that it allows search committees to assess “fit,” and/or to assess how likely the candidate is to stay, if hired. But these both seem like dubious reasons for requiring cover letters. “Fit” is nebulous, and requires a lot of time and effort on the part of applicants. I also increasingly worry that, in practice, it’s used as excuse to toss a bunch of applications that committee members find irritating, as part of an (understandable but still probably objectionable) time-saving strategy. It also seems impossible to assess how likely a candidate is to stay–not to mention that the only reason anyone ever cites as one you can give that shows your willingness to stay is that you have family in the area, which is a help only rarely (unless your family lives in the northeast or in California, I suppose) and is also frustrating if you don’t particularly care whether you live close to family.
The other thing I can imagine a cover letter doing is explaining certain otherwise puzzling features of your application. If it isn’t plain from your CV that you fit the desired AOS or AOC, maybe you can explain your fit in your cover. But does that ever work? There’s also a question whether explanations of puzzling features of your application might tend to be too personal, or make you look bad (I haven’t published much because I’ve had a high teaching load in temporary positions, just had a baby, have been depressed, had a parent who was sick, etc.).
So, most generally: what really is the point of a cover letter?
Here's are my quick answers.
First, cover letters are for determining whether someone bothered to read the job ad carefully and learn anything about your institution. Job ads often state particular things the committee is looking for (particular courses to have taught, etc.). When a cover letter reads like a "boiler plate" letter that the candidate indiscriminately sends to every school, not even mentioning things emphasized in the job ad, it can make the candidate look lazy. Then, if this is combined with the candidate not giving any indication that they took the time to research your school, it can make the candidate look like they have little interest in working at your institution in particular.
Second, cover letters are for determining whether the candidate understands the kind of job they are applying for, and whether they share the values of the institution they are applying to. As a guest recently mentioned in discussing application mistakes, it looks bizarre when a candidate applies for a job at a teaching-focused institution with a 4/4 teaching load with a cover letter focusing primarily on their research, publication record, and future publication plans.
Finally, on these notes, my guess is that search committees use cover letters to infer things about the personality and/or character of the applicant. Is the applicant conscientious and diligent? Do they pay attention to detail? Are they self-absorbed? Etc. As I've said before, search committees are not just hiring scholars: they are hiring people. And, generally speaking, they want to hire people who will succeed and contribute positively to the department and institution. While some readers may chafe at the idea that personality or character should play any role in hiring, my spouse came out of a top program in the science of hiring–and I've learned from her that the science is pretty unequivocal: personality and character can be very good predictors of future performance. For example, the Big Five personality traits are among the most validated and reliable constructs in all of psychology, having been demonstrated to be valid across cultures and replicated in study after study. Some of the Big Five have in turn been shown to be strongly predictive of job-performance and advancement. Conscientiousness, in particular, has been shown to moderately-to-strongly predict academic and workplace performance–and I would be willing to bet that many people who have hired in academia will attest as to why. Full-time faculty jobs are incredibly hard work: they require balancing a wide variety of competing tasks (e.g. full teaching loads, service commitments, research, etc.) far beyond anything grad school prepares you for. When it comes to succeeding at balancing such a demanding variety of tasks on a daily basis, a number of facets of conscientiousness are vital: day in and day out diligence, persistence, showing up on time and prepared for meetings, and so on.
I understand why candidates might not like search committees trying to suss this information out from cover letters–and in fact am not sure myself whether cover letters are good measures of such traits. I just figured it might be good to give this reader (and others) some idea of "what the point of cover letters" is for search committee members. Whether they have a good point, and whether they are good measures of anything, are not issues I can settle. But I think it may be important for candidates to better understand the function(s) they in fact play.
What do you all think, particularly search committee members? Have I correctly described the functions that cover letters play in evaluating candidates?
Leave a Reply