My professor told me I was writing like a robot and it stung but she was right

I was in a business communications class last semester and our first big assignment was a cover letter. I spent hours making it sound super professional and formal, like how I thought employers wanted. Professor handed it back with a C- and wrote "this reads like a LinkedIn bot wrote it" in red. She sat me down after class and said real hiring managers can tell when you copy generic phrases from templates. She made me rewrite it using actual sentences I would say out loud to someone. I changed the whole thing to be more direct and personal, talked about specific projects I worked on instead of buzzwords. Ended up getting an interview with that version and the guy said my letter made him smile. Has anyone else had a teacher just completely tear apart something you thought was good and then it actually helped?

2 comments

2 Comments

kais675d ago

Nah you're wrong actually. That cover letter thing is different from writing like a robot in general.

leow904d ago

Man yeah I feel you on this. It's like everyone's trying to sound like a corporate bot these days. I see it all the time in emails people send me, even just casual stuff. It's like they're afraid to just say what they mean without dressing it up in fancy words. Cover letters are just one part of it, the whole thing is getting out of hand. Sometimes I miss when people just wrote like they talk, you know?