What are cover letters for?

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?

Comments

[for candidates]

Hi Marcus
Your post focuses on what cover letters are for from the perspective of the search committee members. They also serve valuable functions for the applicants. They are a chance to highlight things in the application package that are most impressive - and deserve to be said again, so they are not overlooked - and also things that are most relevant to the job.
"I recently published a paper on ... in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science".
"I have taught bioethics several times, including to nursing students ..."
"I am currently collaborating on a project on ... with Donald Davidson"
"I completed my undergraduate degree at a state university in Missouri and I have a good sense of the challenges and opportunities of teaching at ..."

[not a search committee member]

This is a really interesting topic. I've never been on a search committee, but can contribute some anecdotal evidence about the value of different types of cover letters. Of the jobs I've applied for over the years, there was no significant difference in success (in terms of a first round interview) based on whether I used a boiler plate cover letter or a very tailored cover letter (where I discussed things like how I'd teach specific classes). If anything, I've gotten slightly more interviews from apps with boiler plate letters, especially when the job was for my AOS rather than "Open."

[a philosopher]

Although writing cover letters is very draining and takes a huge amount of time (sometimes 3-4 hours each), I find it one of the best parts of the application process. Unless it's an open/open job at a top research school with no real needs that's obviously just looking for The Best(tm) candidate, I write a custom letter. This letter will mix-and-match parts from other letters, but will include new material that specifically addresses whatever needs are noted in the ad, plus whatever else I feel is relevant given what's on the department's website and what I know of the place. Since I just don't apply to a job if it's a stretch, I always have *something* to say in these letters about how I address the department's needs. This spiel typically feels genuine to me and is a nice opportunity for self reflection and contextualization as well.

Perhaps there isn't "really" a point to all this, in some final cold analysis of how a job search "should" be run, but from my perspective, as a candidate, the point is pretty clear: it's my chance to make my own case for why I'm a good fit for the job. Despite the energy and time this takes, I'm glad for the opportunity.

[LM]

Is it a good idea to specify certain philosophers that you'd be interested in collaborating with?

[Amanda]

LM: This question is asked a lot, and of course, one answer is there can't be one answer because some faculty like it, and others don't. But overall, my recommendation would be against doing. I'm welcome to hear other perspectives, but from what I've seen the risk is higher than the reward. Many philosophers see it as sycophantic and off-putting, others worry about you taking over their classes, some see it as pretentious, others thing to themselves that they just don't have the time or desire to collaborate with a junior faculty member, etc. For all these people, it would annoy them quite a bit. For those who like it, I don't get the impression they like it so much it would be a major advantage.

[on the market]

I have heard from enough folks at this point that unless it is explicitly a teaching school, then research should always be discussed in pretty serious detail in a cover letter. I don't mean I've heard you should drone on about your dissertation, but you should certainly discuss your research past and present in some detail. Are you saying this isn't quite true, Marcus?

As far as tailoring goes, whenever I find myself doing it, I can't help but feel as if it sounds insincere. It's not: but if I was on a search committee and some one says, "I would enjoy working with the Philosophy Club," I am not sure I'd believe them. So can we really trust that search committee members won't find MOST of what goes in a cover letter off-putting? This leads me to the thought that Cover Letters are there just so that you can trip up, make a mistake that annoys some one, which allows the pile to shrink.

[a philosopher]

I'm only a job applicant myself, but it just seems silly to me. What are the odds, if I name specify faculty members I might work with in some way, that the person reading my cover letter thinks "ah, yes, very good, that collaboration sounds great", vs "what? that's a stupid collaboration to suggest, for zillion reasons X, Y, Z, ...". I feel very safe in assuming that if I did this 100 times, I'd get the second reaction at least 90 times, probably more like 95-98. It takes a very special set of circumstances for substantive collaborations to work, and usually they have to arise organically.

I think I mentioned specific faculty once so far in my applications, and that was because the job ad seemed to me to be asking for a pretty demanding overview of how my work would complement the department's existing programs. And I did not say I was interested in collaborating with these faculty, I simply situated my own work w.r.t. theirs.

[Marcus Arvan]

on the market: yes, always discuss your research in a cover letter. You just don’t want your letter to focus so overwhelmingly on research when applying to teaching focused institutions. Some people do this and look completely out of touch with the kind of job they are applying to!