The Brutally Honest Cover Letter You Wish You Could Send

Dear Dream Company,

Please hire me. No, really, it’ll be the best move you make all year. If you take a chance on a kid with huge dreams and crazy determination to make them come true, I will personally make you eggs and coffee every morning, chauffeur you to work, and give you shoulder rubs when you’ve been hunched over your computer for too long. My resume and a letter of recommendation are attached, but here’s what you really need to know.

I’ve spent the past four years interning at Companies X, Y, and Z, where I soaked up everything my intern ID card gave me access to: the daily rhythms and routines of each company, my boss’s favorite Kardashian (this is important, I swear), and which person in the office had the magic touch to fix the printer when it jammed. I can do research for your next big project, file your expense reports, and fetch you a mean cup of coffee. I got this intern thing on lock, and I’m ready to take it to the next level: a full-time job.

I was 13 when The Devil Wears Prada came out. It’s an impressionable age, and the message stuck: in order to succeed, work hard… and then work even harder. It’s not enough to get a copy of the unreleased Harry Potter manuscript — get three copies and deliver them with a smile. And damn it, know the difference between blue and cerulean. Some people say that Anne Hathaway is my celebrity doppelgänger, so if you’ve ever wanted your very own Andy Sachs, here’s your chance. I’m ready.

When my mom graduated college in 1986, she sat down with a phonebook and cold-called all the companies she wanted to work for. She got a job as a software engineer more or less instantly, and out-earned her father during her first year out of college. That world doesn’t exist anymore. Instead, you could be whip-smart, well-educated, and over-qualified, and still not land a job. As of last year, 32% of 2011 and 2012 college grads didn’t have full-time jobs. That means that searching for an entry-level job has become a nauseating process where no one is really sure where they’ll end up. And that scares me.

I’ll wrap this up now. The sooner you finish reading this, the sooner you can bring me in for an interview, right? I’ll even remember to iron my blouse and print my resume out the night before so I can be polished and prepared for you. This will be the beginning of something fabulous, I promise. So call me.

Best,
Hannah