How to write an Awesome Cover Letter¶

Estimated time to read: 13 minutes

What is a cover letter?¶

A cover letter is a document that is sent together with your resume. It is a way to introduce yourself to the company, explain why you're applying for the job, and why you're a good fit for the position. You should also explain why you're interested in the company, and why you want to work for them.

Nowadays writing a Cover Letter seems to be a lost art. Most of the time, people just send their resume and that's it. But, if you want to stand out from the crowd, you should write a cover letter.

In a cover letter you can be more personal to sell yourself more effectively. The core of it is to link your skills and history to what they do and need. Now lets see how to write a cover letter.

Strategies to write a cover letter¶

There are many strategies to write a cover letter. But the main idea is to be personal and try to sell yourself more effectively. Here are some strategies to write a cover letter:

• Be clear, concise and specific. You should try to be clear and try to sell yourself more effectively. Don't waste their time with long and boring paragraphs. You can do that by linking your skills and history to what they do and need. You can also try to show your personality and your passion for the job;
• Be personal, enthusiastic and professional: You should try to be personal setting the best tone that matches your style and the company, just don't exaggerate. You can also try to show your personality and your passion for the job. But, you should also be professional and try to be polite and respectful. If you're unsure about the company culture, you can do that by using a formal language and a professional tone;

Knowing your audience¶

Usually, game companies are interested in people who are passionate about games. But there are some core differences between what profiles AAA game studios and Indie Studios seek for. AAA usually follow the path of the specialist, while Indie Studios usually, the generalist. So try to match this style of writing in your cover letter.

Another relevant aspect is the company culture. You should try to match the tone of your cover letter to the company culture. If you're unsure about the company culture, you can do that by using a formal language and a professional tone. Or try to connect with some employees of the company and ask them about the company culture.

Research about the company. Try to find out what they do, what they are looking for, and what they are interested in. You can do that by reading their website, their blog, and their social media. They tend to prefer people that have culture, passion and goals aligned with theirs. So try to show that you are passionate about their products and their goals.

Play their games, and use their products. An awesome icebreaker can be yourself telling about some funny bug or how you enjoyed the game connecting it to your life. It would be awesome if you can show that you are a fan of their products to the point to even create mods or fan art.

Write interesting content¶

You should try to write memorable sentences to maintain your reader engaged. One strategy is to start the paragraphs with a short and powerful sentence that summarizes the the topic you are about to write. Arguably, you can also try to use a powerful quote to start your cover letter.

Your first sentence plays a huge role in your cover letter, it should be meaningful to you and to the reader. Chances are, they wont be reading the whole cover letter, so you should try to make the first sentence as interesting as possible. Try to be catchy and try to make them want to read more, but take care not to exaggerate.

Sometimes your content is really relevant to you but it might not be that relevant to the company or the job. Sometimes we get too excited and we want to tell everything about ourselves and how passionate we are, by try telling all the things you ever did. But you should try to be clear and concise. Just add some breadcrumbs for the reader ask you in the interview about the things you didn't mention in the cover letter.

Strengths¶

You should try to highlight your strengths. You can do that by using a list of your skills and achievements. They will try to extrapolate the value you brought to the previous companies you worked for to themselves. So try show that you are a good fit for the job by giving success stories about your acchievents. Some examples:

• AAA centred: I published a game on Steam with 100k downloads while a student. I acted as the main developer and tech lead, responsible for creating tools for level designers and AI system for the game. Besides that, I played a fundamental role to cut the scope of the game to make it possible to be released on time and consequently the sanity of the team;
• Indie: I am fearless. I am not afraid to fail or take risks. This behavior pressures me to have a good plan and to be prepared for the worst. Once we tried a very ambitious feature that we thought would be awesome, we tracked the adoption of it, just to discover that nobody used it. We learned from it and we tried again with a smaller scope and it worked. We released the game on time and we were happy with the result;

Pay attention that some companies might not like to see that you are a risk taker. So try to be careful with that, and ask some employees of the company and ask them about the company culture.

Closure¶

You should try to close your cover letter with summary, thank them for their consideration and time, and add a call to action. You can also try to add a call to action to connect with you on social media or to visit your website, or just say that you are in hopes to talk with them in person soon.

Create a Template¶

You should try to create a template for your cover letter. A way of doing it is to add replaceable tags for the company name, the job title, and the date. Try to mark those tags in some colorful way, so you can easily find them and replace them. You can also try to add some comments to help you remember what to write in each tag.

Another strategy to templating your cover letter is to create one template for every type of company. For example, you can create a template for AAA game studios, another for Indie game studios, and another for game companies. You can also create a template for each type of job. For example, you can create a template for a game designer, another for a gameplay developer, and another for a UI/frontend developer.

But if you pursue this path, you have to pay attention to the examples and products/games that you use in your cover letter. You will have to change them to match the company you are applying for.

Homework¶

Write a Cover Letter for a game company.