Covering Letter Advice for an freelancer looking for work

In this post, I have some covering letter advice for someone who sent me a spam email looking for work:

My Covering Letter Advice

I sent my equally cut’n’paste standard reply in response. It was the usual thanks but we have no vacancies at present email. I didn’t even click to look at his CV. If he isn’t going to spend any time engaging with me or showing me how his experience and work is directly relevant to the work we do here, I’m not going to spend my time doing it for him.

Oh, and the wife with the German passport? If you’re trying to say you can work here legally, just say it directly and clearly, rather than explaining your family history.

Although I appreciate English is not his first language, a spell check would have helped.

Does this approach work?

In my experience, this kind of scattergun approach rarely works. Your average producer/production manager knows enough good people who are out of work to fill these roles. If you want to really cut through to them, you’ve got to show you have something special that is directly relevant to their work.

Your challenge is to do your research on the company, and work out what their needs and challenges are. This means you’re going to have to spend time on each application, and so will send out fewer emails. However, those emails will be far more effective.

So if the person who wrote this email reads this, I’m trying to give you some positive advice. Don’t spend an hour emailing 50 people, spend 3 hours emailing 5 people with an absolutely bespoke covering letter. Your success rate will be far higher.

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