Summer stretches before us, with all its potential for meeting research and writing goals. But if you’re going on the faculty-job market for the first time — as a recent Ph.D. or an advanced doctoral student — now is also the time to start drafting, or fine-tuning, your cover letters.
For an early-career academic, the primary challenge of writing a cover letter is that you are very much writing about your future prospects, not your actual experience or achievements (both of which may feel relatively slim at this point). Promise is what a good cover letter sets out to reveal. The goal is to convince your audience that you are ready to step into the role of faculty member.
As Ph.D.s, we have focused our careers on graduate education and career counseling. If you’re about to be a job candidate, what follows is our best advice on cover letters. If you’re an adviser, we hope you will share these tips with your doctoral students. First, a few basic rules of thumb about the genre:
- Your cover letter shouldn’t just rehash your CV. The former is about your potential; the latter lists all the evidence that you can marshal as proof of what you have to offer, if hired.
- Resist banter and sycophancy. Clarity in prose and careful editing are essential in a cover letter, as is avoiding effusive language (“I would love to teach on your incredible campus”) and over-praising your advisers (“the honorable Dr. Smith, my adviser, shared with me her expertise on …”). Such writing tics make you sound like a student and undermine your projection of yourself into the faculty role.
But shouldn’t we wait for the job ads? At this point, you might be thinking, “I’ve heard that it’s important to tailor a cover letter to the particulars of the position/institution. Can I even write one before the jobs in my field are out?”
Yes, you can — and should — begin to craft paragraphs on your research, teaching, and service commitments. In fact, you can’t accurately convey your promise in a cover letter until you have devoted time to setting out your research agenda and teaching goals. Once the job listings are posted in your field, you can modify the paragraphs to fit a particular opening. (In a fall column, we’ll offer tips on how to tailor your cover letters to the faculty job, the department, and the institution.)
But writing a draft of those sections now can help you articulate your professional goals for search committees and yourself. The two pillars of an academic cover letter are teaching and research, and this summer you should develop two substantial paragraphs on each. Breaking down the letter writing in this way — before job announcements are out — can also help with the anxiety that many candidates feel about having to craft the “perfect” letter from scratch in response to an especially desirable job posting.
Your research promise. Aim for two paragraphs here. The first should balance a concise statement of your research interests with a description of your current project (the dissertation, for A.B.D.s and new Ph.D.s). Remember that your readers will need some context to understand your project and why it’s important and compelling. Usually your second paragraph touches on your publication plans and future goals — what is sometimes called a research agenda.
One challenge of writing about your research at this early stage of your academic career is that you are so invested in the dissertation that you struggle to see it as part of a larger body of work (which typically has yet to exist). For a broader perspective, think through the following prompts as you write:
- What larger questions does your work engage with in your field?
- If you have worked on multiple projects, is there a theme or thread that connects them? How would you articulate it?
- What makes this research project exciting to people in your field who don’t share your specialty?
- Is there a bold claim about your work that you would like to make in your cover letter, but feel nervous to do so?
- What might make this project interesting to a broader public? Who might be part of that public, and what would their investment in the work be?
Your teaching promise. These two paragraphs should summarize (without listing, as you would on your CV) the teaching you’ve done, give your reader a sense of your learning goals for the students in your classes, and discuss the kind of courses you’d like to teach (you may have a few versions of these).
In reflecting on your teaching experiences, try to answer the following questions:
- What do students gain from your teaching? From taking courses in your field?
- Which courses — gen-ed, introductory, and specialist — are you best positioned to teach?
- How do you connect with the diverse learners in your classroom?
- How do you leverage technology in the traditional classroom or in online spaces?
How much should you mention service? Another category of work that some candidates include in their cover letter is service to the institution, the profession, or the public. There is some debate over when, where, and how you should mention such activities in a cover letter — or, indeed, if they should be included at all.
With the right framing, however, your service and publicly engaged work can underscore and support the claims you are making about your promise as a scholar:
- With institutional service, pick and choose examples carefully to emphasize your promise as a faculty leader. You might mention serving on your doctoral department’s admissions or curriculum committee or on a universitywide group.
- Public scholarship can be framed as part of your scholarly agenda when it’s closely connected to your core research. If it’s not, frame it pedagogically as part of your teaching statement.
- If possible, connect those service experiences back to who you are as a researcher and teacher, as aspects of the scholarly promise that you’re attempting to demonstrate. (For example, if you have published an op-ed in a mainstream publication, that underscores your ability to speak to audiences beyond your field about newsworthy issues related to your work.)
You might wonder if you should wade into current hot topics — such as the use of generative AI in the college classroom or the political fights over campus DEI programs — in a cover letter. Don’t feel you must do so simply to check a box. If one of those topics is relevant to your work, include it in the letter. Or, for example, if you have served on a departmental or campus DEI committee, go ahead and mention that. But don’t waste precious cover-letter space on generalized opinions of those issues.
On a related note, we recognize that many job candidates will find it tempting to employ ChatGPT or other AI tools in writing their cover letters this year. Indeed, some candidates, especially those with anxiety about writing, may find those tools helpful in conquering the blank page. But, again, preparing cover letters and other job-market documents is not simply about turning your CV into a narrative. It is a process of self-reflection, synthesis, and analysis, and in that, AI is likely to be more of a hindrance than a help. We therefore recommend exercising restraint in using AI to write your cover letter. Certainly anything generated by AI will require multiple rounds of intensive editing.
Get a few critiques. Once you have assembled these paragraphs into a template of a cover letter that you are comfortable with, you should start seeking feedback on the draft. Often it’s reassuring to have some low-stakes input before your faculty committee reads your application materials. Approach someone on your campus — in the career office, the dean’s office, or the writing center — who can let you know if you’re on the right track and provide helpful suggestions if you’re not. A recent Ph.D. of your program who has been successful on the job market can also be a helpful interlocutor.
And although we all know that faculty members can be difficult to corral in the summer, your cover-letter draft can spark a conversation with them about your forthcoming job search. This can be a good time for conversations about your career goals and preferences (in terms of institutional type and geography) as well as other factors that may affect your search (such as a partner’s career).
Cut yourself some slack. It’s not easy to draft or tailor a cover letter. You will spend a lot of time worrying, “Am I doing this right?” Just be conscious of the need for self-care while preparing job-market materials. The job-search process often stirs up unwieldy feelings of not having done enough during graduate school, or not having done it quite right. It can be tempting to compare yourself to others in your program, and those comparisons can cause anxiety and even strain friendships.
Remember that scholarly identities are unique, that all candidates have strengths and gaps, and that there is a sizable element of chance in all of this. Go gently on yourself — and, if you can, on your fellow candidates, who are probably having similar feelings of self-doubt. Focus on your achievements and on the promise of what you are uniquely suited to offer in any given faculty role.
