How Tailoring My Cover Letter Helped Me Find A Job I Love | Job Seeker Success Story

While we are happy to share resources and tips, we think the larger Idealist community is brimming with good ideas and steps for finding your dream job. Below, Tes Cohen, a Program Coordinator at Futures and Options shares her experience job searching, explains what she was looking for, and how tailoring her cover letter to a specific role helped her land the perfect job.

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Ever since high school, I dreamed of joining the Peace Corps as a means of engaging in meaningful grassroots community development abroad. After graduating college, I did just that, working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Costa Rica. Upon returning to the states, I connected with an organization I had collaborated with in Costa Rica that runs cultural exchange programs to Cuba. While rewarding, the role was more sales-oriented, and I always knew I wanted to get back into the youth development sector that I found so fulfilling as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Looking for a change

Though it was intimidating to think of the sheer number of people applying to jobs amidst our current economic climate, I found Idealist to be a great starting point for my job search. An important step in any job search is to identify a target list of organizations (and then share it with everyone you know in the hopes of scoring an informational interview with someone!). What I love about Idealist is that by perusing the postings, I discovered organizations with missions that were aligned with my passions and skills.

When I came across the posting for Program Coordinator at Futures and Options, a small nonprofit that empowers youth through career exploration and work-readiness training, I was ecstatic. My mom is a career counselor, so I essentially learned interview and resume writing tips by osmosis. In my cover letter, I made sure to include this personal anecdote. I also added details about my time in the Peace Corps, as one of the staff members at Futures and Options mentioned their own Peace Corps experience in their site bio.

Tips for getting through the job search

Last month, we were hiring for another Program Coordinator, and it was fascinating to be behind-the-scenes of a job search that I myself underwent. Thinking about what worked for me and what we were looking for on the hiring side, I’d like to offer two pieces of advice:

• Tailor your cover letter. If we receive a generic cover letter with no mention of how the person’s experiences related to our organization (let alone a cover letter that doesn’t mention the name of our organization, period!), we probably won’t even open up the resume.
• Be specific about how your past experience relates to the job opportunity. We cringed when someone who was a teacher didn’t even mention it in their cover letter (meanwhile, they included details that were irrelevant to the open position). If you have jobs/volunteer experiences that relate to the job (which you should!), make sure to spell them out in the cover letter.

And of course, the #1 thing to keep in mind when writing a nonprofit cover letter, is that you should absolutely, 100% make clear your excitement for the role. Craft a thoughtful cover letter (and resume!) with absolutely no grammatical or spelling errors, send it out, and if it’s meant to be, you will receive a call to meet in person and can wow them in the interview... Good luck!

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About The Author | Tes currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She works as a Program Coordinator at Futures and Options empowering youth through career development and will soon be starting NYU’s MPA program part-time.