Here's some excerpts from the cover letter I used for my current role as technical writer. I was coming from a product management background and had no formal content role experience, so my strategy with this cover letter was to tell the story of how content has been my superpower throughout my career and demonstrate how I have been doing this job all along.
Note: I can't speak for my employer as to how this cover letter contributed to me getting the job, so please take this as illustrative purposes only!
I believe the best experiences emerge from the creation of meaning. When you understand something, you can connect to it, and when you connect to something, only then can it hold value.
I’ve spent a decade facilitating communication: between companies and the people who interact with them (users, regulators, authorities), between teams (operations, engineering, legal), between individuals and their families or communities (couples making life choices, families dealing with difficulty, customers engaging with local businesses).
As a product lead for early stage startups, much of my work revolved around creating systems and guidelines for other people to follow: I wrote detailed product requirements for developers, compiled product compliance notices for legal professionals to review; summarised data protection regulation to be applied to all aspects of the customer experience; designed content strategy frameworks to enable creative teams to ensure clarity, cohesion, and consistency.
Through this experience, I discovered (and had it affirmed by others in both formal and informal feedback), that conscientious rigor and systematic thinking were my prominent strengths, present in all the work I did. I came to realise that the work I most enjoyed doing was motivated by establishing clarity and creating meaning, and that the medium through which I usually achieved this was writing.
I am a systems-minded person, passionate about designing things that facilitate scale, whether it’s reusable patterns, processes and workflows, or hiring guides; I believe that efficiency comes from not just improving technology, but improving communication. With this in mind, I recently decided to transition away from product management to apply my skill set and innate qualities to roles that focus on using content and design practices to build and scale projects, and the teams behind them.
Although the majority of my professional experience has been in startups, I have worked on projects that have required me to master highly technical concepts and complex regulatory subject matter, from mapping out information architecture integrating multiple APIs and technical endpoints, to navigating data protection and financial regulation frameworks to devise and document internal processes and design compliant customer experiences. I apply a methodical, detail-oriented approach to every task, while working within the constraints of the project – however tight they may be (I once designed, tested, and launched a fully-functional feature in less than a day).
Here's some excerpts from the cover letter I used for my current role as technical writer. I was coming from a product management background and had no formal content role experience, so my strategy with this cover letter was to tell the story of how content has been my superpower throughout my career and demonstrate how I have been doing this job all along.
Note: I can't speak for my employer as to how this cover letter contributed to me getting the job, so please take this as illustrative purposes only!
I believe the best experiences emerge from the creation of meaning. When you understand something, you can connect to it, and when you connect to something, only then can it hold value.
I’ve spent a decade facilitating communication: between companies and the people who interact with them (users, regulators, authorities), between teams (operations, engineering, legal), between individuals and their families or communities (couples making life choices, families dealing with difficulty, customers engaging with local businesses).
As a product lead for early stage startups, much of my work revolved around creating systems and guidelines for other people to follow: I wrote detailed product requirements for developers, compiled product compliance notices for legal professionals to review; summarised data protection regulation to be applied to all aspects of the customer experience; designed content strategy frameworks to enable creative teams to ensure clarity, cohesion, and consistency.
Through this experience, I discovered (and had it affirmed by others in both formal and informal feedback), that conscientious rigor and systematic thinking were my prominent strengths, present in all the work I did. I came to realise that the work I most enjoyed doing was motivated by establishing clarity and creating meaning, and that the medium through which I usually achieved this was writing.
I am a systems-minded person, passionate about designing things that facilitate scale, whether it’s reusable patterns, processes and workflows, or hiring guides; I believe that efficiency comes from not just improving technology, but improving communication. With this in mind, I recently decided to transition away from product management to apply my skill set and innate qualities to roles that focus on using content and design practices to build and scale projects, and the teams behind them.
Although the majority of my professional experience has been in startups, I have worked on projects that have required me to master highly technical concepts and complex regulatory subject matter, from mapping out information architecture integrating multiple APIs and technical endpoints, to navigating data protection and financial regulation frameworks to devise and document internal processes and design compliant customer experiences. I apply a methodical, detail-oriented approach to every task, while working within the constraints of the project – however tight they may be (I once designed, tested, and launched a fully-functional feature in less than a day).
[Closing remarks about availability etc.]