In response to the overwhelming demand among students who have begun applying for internships only to realize with dismay the vast number of cover letters they’ll need to write, several of the professional societies have banded together to co-host a cover letter auction event. Tomorrow in Bissinger, students will be able to bid on .pdf files that can be downloaded and submitted on Handshake and external application websites. Some of the highest value letters, which feature nice formatting, tales of how the author resolved internal conflict, and addresses of companies students are actually interested in are expected to sell for over $100, a few meal swipes, and three months of Chegg.
When asked how they wrote enough cover letters to host this event, the hosts stated; “Oh, we didn’t write them. We have some typewriters in the back, brought in some pets, and just let them walk all over the typewriters for a long long time,” one of the presidents told us. “Filtering out the illegible letters took a while, as one of our cats kept trying to slip their terrible letters back in,” said another club’s secretary who was covered in scratches. “She didn’t like it when I told her that her letters were terrible.” When asked how the typewriter sheets would be turned into .pdf files, she replied, “we have one phone with CamScanner and a strict deadline.”
The Career Center was pleased that people were enthusiastic about cover letters and glad that the event was promoting their use, but were less pleased when they found out about the quality. When we showed them one of the first letters in the lineup for Saturday, they responded “I think it needs to highlight your strengths as it pertains to this role specifically.” The paragraph that was supposed to explain the how candidates had succeeded in roles nearly identical to the one being applied for started with “weljsdf aifwoeiev” before the font changed to Windings. We have no idea how that was accomplished on a typewriter.
University administration is very supportive of the event. The event is expected to increase job-placement rates due to the fact that as long as recruiters don’t read the letter, they’ll be impressed that one was uploaded. It should be noted that this advice came from Off the Press’s own recruiting chair and does not necessarily apply to other organizations. We recommend reaching out to the hiring manager to ask them if they plan on reading the cover letter. If that doesn’t work, just show up at the office and give them the resume and cover letter yourself, as it significantly increases the chance that your cover letter will not be read.
Off The Press’s entire remaining advertising budget will be spent on procuring these coveted cover letters for our editors and writers so you can expect some stiff competition. It is for this reason that you will no longer see our business cards and posters soliciting news tips via QR codes around campus, but you can still expect our fine journalism every week. Hopefully there is not a donor to the school interested in purchasing any of the letters we want, because they would, of course, out bid us. Internally, we decided it was safe to assume anyone who had enough disposable money to put their name on a building without spray paint is most likely not in the market for cover letters.
Off The Press is a satirical Opinion column written and organized by Off Center, often used to joke about current Stevens issues and campus news. It is currently organized by Off Center President, Matthew Brantl.
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