During the year that I worked as an after-school college prep coach for a group of high school juniors, one of my biggest uphill battles was convincing my students that writing is still relevant in the working world. The vast majority of my students were more interested in being engineers, scientists, and health professionals than in being poets or journalists, and I could tell that they didn’t always get why I regularly made them do writing exercises.
Perhaps part of the reason I put such an emphasis on writing was pure personal bias: as a recent college graduate with an English degree, I was playing to my strengths. However, another part of the reason I kept making my students write was because I truly believe that writing is valuable not just to high school and college students, but to all working professionals. That means that young job seekers must demonstrate their written communication skills in order to successfully enter the working world.
The cynics out there might point to some statistics about the job application process: recruiters spend an average of 5-7 seconds looking at your CV, there’s only a 17% chance your cover letter will be read, an estimated 90% of large companies weed out resumes using scanning software. However, that doesn’t mean that job seekers can just phone it in with their written material. Here are just a few reasons why you still need to demonstrate good writing skills when you’re searching for a job.
1. If you don’t use proper grammar, you’ll never get to the interview phase. On average, 250 resumes are submitted per job opening. Employers have limited time to look through all those resumes, so they’ll quickly reduce the pile by throwing out any that have grammar errors or typos. It doesn’t matter how much relevant experience you have or how great you are at interviewing: if your resume isn’t grammatically correct, you’ll hit a wall in your job search process.
2. Strong writing makes your resume stand out. Even if your resume is free of grammar errors and typos, it still only has a few seconds to make a strong impression on its reader. That doesn’t mean that you should spend a short amount of time writing it, though. When scanning, a resume reader will generally look at the top of your resume first, then read maybe just the first line of every job description you list. That means you need to use strong verbs, specific details, and clear language in those job descriptions if you want to wow the hiring committee.
3. Excellent writing shows off your critical thinking skills. Not every job is going to require lots of writing on a daily basis, but just about every employer likes to see job candidates who have excellent critical thinking and problem solving skills. The type of writing required in a cover letter or the essay questions some employers include in their applications requires candidates to logically structure their thoughts and concisely persuade the employer that they’re the right person for the job. This type of thoughtfulness is a quality sought after in just about every field.
4. You need to craft a concise thank you email after an interview. If you make it to the interview stage of the hiring process, that’s great, but your work isn’t done. Within 24 hours of the interview, you need to send a short thank you email to your interviewer or risk them thinking that you don’t care about the job. This doesn’t need to be a Pulitzer-winning piece of writing, but it does need to show your appreciation for the opportunity to interview, convey your continuing interest in the job, and include a short pitch explaining why you’re a perfect fit for the job. Mastering this type of persuasive writing can help you stand out from other candidates who made it to the interview stage.
5. Your writing represents you. Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, said it best in a piece he wrote for Harvard Business Review: “In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can’t tell the difference between their, there and they’re.” No matter what type of position you’re applying for, whether you hope to work in the public, private, or non-profit sector, your writing is your voice. In order to present yourself in the best possible light, you need to focus on developing your written communication skills.
