The bridge between your resume and your first contact with the school is your letter of interest. It is the entrée into the portfolio of materials in your application, materials that, in addition to your letter of interest, include your resume, your personal statement, and your references.
The materials you submit should cover all the basic search committee inquiries regarding you as a candidate. They should address the fundamental questions: who, what, where, when, how and why.
Who are you? What professional experiences have you accrued? Where have you been employed? When were you employed there? These questions are answered in your resume. How were your ideas about education formulated and what contributed to those ideas? These are answered in your personal statement.
The “why” is answered in your letter of interest. WHY are you interested in this particular school?
What attracts you to it? What do you know about the school? What makes you think your experiences and skills will fit the
needs of this school?
Your letter of interest is also a place to reveal what you know or have learned about the school to which you are applying. It is where you can include such statements as, “I noted on your website that…” or “Your institution’s reputation as …. resonates with me because…”
Your letter of interest is a good place to connect experiences you have had elsewhere with the search requisites. Statements like, “My experiences as a (fill in the administrative role here) at Academy X prepared me for your position by…” help the search personnel better understand your qualifications for the position they seek to fill. This can help the search committee better understand what your past positions have specifically required of you.
A cover letter need not be long. One or two pages suffices. It need only be long enough to explain what drew you to this school, this search, and this position. It should be long enough to demonstrate that you have done some preliminary research on the school and thus know a little about the institution. It is a formal letter (even in electronic form)
and should therefore include: the date, the address of the recipient (be it the head of the search committee, the name of the search committee consultant, or the person doing the administrative search), a salutation, the body of the letter, a closing paragraph, and a signature.
Proofread, proofread, proofread. Nothing makes a search committee member cringe or complain faster than a grammatical or syntactical error in your writing. Have someone else read your letter for clarity and correctness. Avoid jargon or “edu-speak.” Make certain you have used the correct name of the institution to which you are applying. (You would be surprised how often cut-and-paste techniques in cover letters include the wrong name of the school.)
Finally, remember that the letter of interest is a window into who you are as an educator and as a member of a professional community. Like the personal statement, it is a place to express yourself in an authentic, compelling way.
