Of Cover Letters and Other Truth Telling

I'm applying for a new job because my current job is like a vampire for my professional self-confidence.  Every shred of skill, ability and attitude I have honed over the past 15 years of my professional career has almost been drained away by the past 160 hours of my work life.  I took this job because it was a timely opportunity and it was something I thought I could learn how to do, but things are not progressing as I had hoped they might.  Thankfully another opportunity came up that's a better fit for me.  And I have to get out before I lose myself in the trees instead of continuing to develop forests.  I'm good at developing forests - and apparently not so good at learning how to groom the trees.  

For me, the hardest part of applying for jobs is the cover letter.  I grew up in a culture of women where you were to be demure, you were to deflect complements, and you were not to speak highly of yourself in any way.  You were not to express your true opinion because "if you don't have something good to say, don't say anything at all."  So unless you were talking about how good the Jell-O salad was, you kept your mouth shut - or you just kept shoveling food in your mouth until it was the appropriate time to get up and help with kitchen cleanup. (I've wondered on more than one occasion if this is not the root cause of many a church-lady's plumpness.) Voluntary kitchen duty for me has more than once involved "mistakenly" disposing of someone else's hot mess of a potluck dish then disavowing all knowledge about where the rest of it might have gone. 

So writing about myself in a way that places my abilities, talents and experience in a positive light has been a difficult task I have had to learn during my last semester of graduate school. I've had to shed my genteel upbringing and learn how to write about myself in ways I'm not used to.  It has helped me to put myself in the shoes of my mentors, to think about the things they would say about me and my work.  It has also helped me to let go of the control I feel like I need to have over every word I write.  The letters that have won me the interest of prospective employers have been the ones I've fired off quickly, where I've written eloquently about my passions, and the ones where I've treated my abilities and talents with (Yikes!) the most honesty.  


I still shed complements.  I still deflect glory - but only because I work with other women who can only take credit indirectly.  They're also the ones who make the best potluck dishes.  And every Southern woman worth her salt knows that silence is actually the best complement you can give a cook during any meal.  The other one is not refusing to take home leftovers.