The changes made to our genre model during project 3 were mostly changes that we thought about when putting together our original genre model. Some of them I agree with and some we left out for particular reasons. Some people definitely ran into issues where the schema was constricting, and while I’m sure there are cases where the schema was wrongly constricting, we made it very strict to keep the letters focused and well organized. Especially among the examples of “good” engineering cover letters, there was almost no variation in the order things were included and there was very little filler text to make transitions easier. We probably could have helped this make more sense if we improved our documentation of each of the elements.
We found that it was excessive to put more than a line or two as a “reason” for applying in your introductory paragraph. Realistically, most employers are going to care more about what you can bring to the company so emphasis should be on the background paragraphs. The proposition element was also really important to keep because it’s like a summary of the whole cover letter in one sentence. It should be a very clear statement of what your intentions are with the letter. I know that during the presentations of project three, someone had almost the same definition as their take of the “compatibility” element in the conclusion, and I agree with them, but our intention was for the conclusion to be a reiteration of the letter and not the first time you clearly state your purpose for the letter.
I really like the idea they had to have an optional URL element. We didn’t really consider the unique circumstances that go with electronic copies of cover letters. As long as a URL isn’t bulky and clumsy in the middle of a cover letter, it would probably be really cool (as a hiring manager) to be able to be reading through someones cover letter and application and have a handy hyperlink I can click that will show me their portfolio.
We also talked about adding a space for a hand written signature. I completely agree that a cover letter should have a real signature on it, but we decided against adding a mandatory space because it would just achieve the same thing as adding 3-4 line break elements.
