Great leadership requires great communication, but even the most skilled and experienced communicators struggle when writing or speaking about themselves – when they’re the subject, like in a cover letter for a school leadership job.
But don’t worry! Whether this is your first foray into school leadership or just your latest and greatest, this article will explain how to organize all your skills and experience into a clear and compelling cover letter that will grab the attention of any hiring manager out there!
- Start by carefully reading over the job description and researching the school. Any information that you can glean from these sources will help narrow what to include in your cover letter and how it should be presented.
- Effective written communication is the one skill that a candidate has to show in their cover letter rather than tell. Your cover letter will be evaluated just as much for its presentation and execution as for the actual contents. The candidate with the most impressive resume, but the least impressive cover letter will be judged as only as good as their weakest trait.
- Emphasize leadership skills, management skills, interpersonal skills, and knowledge of educational trends and philosophies in your letter to form the backbone of your qualifications for a role in school leadership.
- Back up your accomplishments with tangible results and numbers. Even the best written cover letter won’t get any attention without the facts and figures, so to speak, that back up the words on the page. The perfect cover letter is crystal clear and simple information that’s told in a compelling and structured way.
- A great cover letter for a school leadership job focuses on a candidate’s goals for the school instead for their career. Many candidates make the mistake of describing the position in their cover letter as more of a stepping stone than an opportunity, whether or not that was their intention.
- Find a balance between conversational and professional in your writing. You’re introducing yourself to the school and faculty with your cover letter, so you want to strike the right tone to make a great first impression that will hopefully lead to meeting in person. Write the way that you would speak in the interview or the workplace. Professionally but excessively!
- There’s nothing wrong with short but sweet! Instead of trying to fill up the page, focus on writing your letter in as succinct yet complete a way as possible. Editing out the last sentence or two is even recommended if the letter starts to trail off at the end.
- Stick the landing! You want whoever’s reading your cover letter to remember your qualifications and to remember you, and one of the best ways to do this is to close strong and end on a high note. It sounds a little confusing, but it’s your job here to restate your case without repeating yourself. Editing and structuring come in handy at this stage as the perfect ending to your cover letter could easily come from a redundant sentence or two at the beginning.
Writing a cover letter can be stressful. For more tips on writing one, please visit our Cover Letter Resources page here.
