Match
with the Practicum You Want:
Five
Secrets for Standing Out in Your Cover Letters
by John T.
Carlsen, Psy.D.
If you are like most practicum
applicants, you will overlook one of your most powerful
tools: The Targeted Cover Letter.
Unsure of exactly how to present your qualifications
effectively, you might feel tempted simply to copy the sample
letter you received from your training department and focus
your energy exclusively on preparing for interviews. Unless
your sample letter was developed by a highly-skilled writer,
however, this strategy places at great risk - of selling
yourself short, overlooking the qualifications that
distinguish you from other applicants, and coming across as
simply One More Generic Applicant. Unfortunately,
standing out from your competition during an interview is not
the greatest challenge you face:
You first have to make sure that
you get one.
What makes your cover letter so
important? Without the benefit of supporting application
materials (i.e., a personal statement or a description of your
training and professional goals), it stands completely
alone. Thus, it not only has to carry all of the weight
in making a good first impression on your prospective
supervisor and training staff, but also convince them that it
is worth their time to schedule an interview and learn more
about you Clearly, the fewer opportunities you
have to capture your audience’s attention, the more you must
capitalize on making the most of each one you do have.
Furthermore, standing out on paper
is much more demanding than standing out in person because you
have only one opportunity to make your pitch. So, you
must get in, grab your reader’s attention, say what you have
to say, and get out while they are still interested in what
you have to say. You will not be
present to modify this first impression or correct any
mistakes. so you must communicate clearly and
accurately. Most importantly, you must remember that you
are writing to psychologists, not accountants or sales
directors, so you probably want to pay extra attention to how
you come across on paper. You The more you can "flesh
out" what makes you an attractive applicant, the better your
chances of receiving an invitation for an interview.
To improve your chances of getting
an interview, therefore, you owe it to yourself to take some
time to step back and become more actively engaged in
composing your cover letters. Ideally, this strategy will help
you to attract three or four (or even five) interviews so you
have some choices about which site best suits your needs and
interests. Rather than simply giving in to temptation and
passively leaving your fate in the hands of selection
committees, therefore, you can influence the outcome
substantially.
Your best strategy involves
creating a master or prototype cover letter that includes all
of your best material and then tailoring it to fit with each
particular site. The following guidelines will get you started
and keep you focused as you compose and refine this important
document:
1. Start with
a focus on your reader and gradually shift throughout the
letter to a focus on yourself and
what you want. One of the biggest turn-offs I experience
in reading the average cover letter is an opening sentence
that begins "I am writing to apply for your 2005-06 practicum
program". Although this is true, it is a rather abrupt way to
begin a letter, especially in something so delicate as
clinical work. Remember that one of the most important things
a therapist can do is establish strong rapport from the start.
This is true even (especially) with supervisors and mentors. A
far more effective opening is "Thank you for your willingness
to review my application for your 2005-06 practicum training
program." While the difference is subtle, notice the emotional
reaction you would have as a reader if the letter writer
created this tone of warmth and respect. It is not unlike the
impression you make when you always remember to refer to
professional psychologists as "Dr. ________". There is
a reason people earn Ph.D.’s and Psy.D.’s, and it’s not that
they like to pay off large student loans. The time to become
more familiar is after you have been invited to do so, no
earlier. Start out as formally as possible and maintain this
formal tone until the other person indicates that you may
shift to become more casual.
Say something in the first
paragraph about why you would like to train at this site
and/or work with this supervisor. Take some time to find out
more about the site, the supervisor(s), and the training
program before you write your letters. Go beyond reading the
description of the practicum experience in your school’s
materials. Track down a student or two who has trained at each
site in the past. Ask him or her to describe in detail what
he/she liked about the training, what he/she wishes he/she had
known about it ahead of time, and what sets this practicum
apart from others. I am constantly amazed by how little
applicants know about either me (as a supervisor) or the site
where I provide training and supervision - especially given
the number of students I have supervised in the Chicago area.
Thus, nothing impresses me more than someone who has done a
little research about me and my approach to
training/supervision and about the kind of population we serve
at my center.
2. Tell
selection committee members enough about yourself and your
qualifications to peak their interest, but don’t tell them
everything. (Make them invite you in for an interview to
hear more about you and what you have to offer.) Open your
second paragraph with a statement that your background and
previous experience have prepared you well to benefit from the
training they offer. Then, give at least three specific
examples of what you have done and how each sharpened your
skills, build your knowledge, or broadened your exposure to
different clinical situations. (You can spread these three
points over the second and third paragraphs.) The more
specific you are, the more clearly your reader will be able to
see the goodness-of-fit between your training goals and what
their site offers.
The reason I suggest three examples
is that this number presents you in three different dimensions
(Ironically, cognitive psychology has demonstrated that the
average human being can retain 3.5 chunks of information in
short-term memory. So, you should have good luck in having
committee members keep you in mind between reading your
application and meeting your for an interview.) The more
general your statements, the more difficult they are to
remember. Concrete examples, on the other hand, create clear
pictures in the minds of your readers.
Choose your three main points
carefully to show as much about you as possible. For example,
your first point could be about how volunteering to staff a
crisis telephone hotline exposed you to the range and depth of
problems clients face. Your second could be how your
racial/ethnic background has influenced your perspective on
clinical work in a particular way. Your third could be about
the reason you want to learn psychological testing in an
inpatient environment or how you would use en emergency room
rotation to sharpen your skills in making sound clinical
decisions. In short, the more specific your examples, the more
clearly you will distinguish yourself from your competition
(other applicants) and the more convincingly you will show why
they should want to train you.
3. Tailor your
prototype cover letter to each different site. Make
explicit connections between your training needs and what they
have to offer. From your research about the site, summarize
the three or four main characteristics about the site that
attract your attention. These can include 1) what specific
skills and knowledge you want to gain during your practicum
year (especially as it is related to the kinds of unique
experiences you can get at each site), 2) how working in this
setting will broaden your exposure (e.g., working in a
community mental health center exposes trainees to how clients
present in acute episodes of their illnesses, how to link
clients with emergency services and address their immediate
case management needs such as housing, employment, and
substance abuse treatment), and 3) how you would benefit from
the particular theoretical approaches, intervention methods,
and supervision styles you would encounter at this site.
Again, find out as much as possible
about the site ahead of time so you can make an informed
presentation of yourself. Be prepared to answer
questions that would logically come up at each different site
- e.g., Why do you want to work in community mental health?
What makes you well-suited to work with children? Adolescents?
Adults? How would training in a university counseling center
differ from working in a community mental health center? From
an outpatient clinic at a hospital?) Pick up the phone and
talk with someone who has trained in that setting before. Ask
about the particular benefits of training in that setting and
at this particular agency place.) One of my writing clients
said he wanted to learn testing in the inpatient unit of a
hospital so he could learn how each test contributed to
answering the referral question(s) and in detecting the
severity of each client’s psychiatric symptoms. Another
described how she wanted to train in community mental health
so she could gain exposure to a wide variety of diagnostic
presentations and learn how medication and therapy/counseling
work together. A third wanted to train in a university
counseling center to see how academic and individuation issues
interacted with psychiatric and emotional symptoms among
students..
4. Give
selection committee members some idea about what it would be
like to work with you as a trainee. The truth is, most
supervisors care much more about what kind of person you are
than about what you already know. They can (and will) teach
you everything they believe you need to know in order to work
well with their population and to become a competent
psychologist. Unfortunately, they have nothing to say about
the kind of person you are (how reliable you are, how
conscientious you are, whether you can work well independently
while remaining in strong, regular contact with your
supervisor, whether you are adaptable enough to take on
difficult clients and to help with routine/mundane tasks when
they ask you - such as helping to move boxes in the file room
or stuffing envelopes or answering the phone). Yet, these
latter qualities are often the most important factors in a
site’s interest in particular applicants. The most attractive
qualities I look for in trainees are: curious,
easy-to-work-with, adaptable, thorough, reliable, detailed,
and self-reflective enough to see their effects on others
around them.
5. Conclude by
summarizing your main points and re-stating why you think
your background and training needs are a good match for this
site. Having concluded your third paragraph with a
summary statement about how your qualifications fit well with
what the program offers, you are prepared to ask for an
in-person interview. Open your final paragraph by expressing
your enthusiasm and desire to train at this site: "Thank you
again for your willingness to review my credentials. I look
forward to the possibility of training with you and your staff
in the coming year." State your availability for an interview
at their convenience and invite them to contact you, listing
your telephone number and email address again (regardless of
whether they are listed anywhere else. The last thing
any reader should have to do - especially at the moment they
want to contact you to schedule an interview - is take time to
search for your phone number or email address. And, the last
thing you need after investing so much energy in writing this
letter is to have a training director decline to call you
because he or she could not find it right away. (Incidentally,
change the outgoing message on your voice mail to include your
full name and telephone number so the training director knows
right away that he or she has reached you. Erase any music or
other distracting sounds and replace them with your most
professional greeting. Never underestimate what a poor
impression you will make on a professional who has to listen
to Brittany Spears or 50 Cent on your voice mail and wonder
whether or not he/she actually reached you.)
Add a single statement or two that
closes your letter with the respectful, gracious tone you used
at the beginning before finishing with "Sincerely." One
of my favorite combinations is: "Thank you for your
consideration. I look forward to speaking with you
soon." As you look over the final draft of your letter,
take note of the overall graphic presentation you have made.
While you may feel free to create a simple letterhead for your
letters, resist the temptation to go overboard. Remember that
you are applying for professional training in clinical
psychology, not advertising or public relations. You do not
want to risk conveying an image of superficiality in the
layout of your letter that conflicts with the serious content
you spent so much time developing. Keep your paragraphs short,
no more than 8 to 10 lines each. Use at least an 11- or 12-
point font in a typeface that is easy to read (e.g., Arial,
Times Roman, Universal.) Avoid anything flowery. Just because
you have the technical capability of making something artistic
does not mean you should use it in this professional context.
In summary, you have made a
significant commitment to your professional training. You have
already invested countless hours completing coursework,
papers, and exams. You might believe that it is too soon to
worry about your training or that supervisors and training
directors know more than you do about what you need. Don’t
fool yourself. Their main priorities are, respectively,
filling up their training slots with the best applicants they
can get and placing as many students as possible. They have
much less vested interest in making sure you get what you
want. You will spend many years working in this profession.
This next year will strongly influence your first impressions
of what it will be like to work in this profession.
Don’t you, therefore, deserve to
have the best training you can get from the start?
John T. Carlsen, Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist
who trains and supervises psychology interns and externs. He
offers personal coaching and training resources for graduate
students applying for internships and post-doctoral jobs.
Click here to learn more about how to write
effective applications and prepare for interviews. Click here to submit comments, questions, or
suggestions for future newsletter topics.
