'Cover Letters from Hell' Expose Poor Quality of College Grads

Oct. 19, 2006 — -- If recent college graduates apply for a job at Killian Advertising in Chicago, they'd better mind their grammar, spelling and punctuation -- not to mention their sentence structure, syntax and diction -- lest they end up in the company's "Cover Letters From Hell" that it posts on its Web site.

Six years ago, Bob Killian, owner and founder of the agency, began posting anonymous excerpts from poorly written cover letters he received from those asking for employment.

The mistakes ranged from unfortunate omissions ("I am seeking a new position as i have recently been laid" and "I also have a degree English which serves me well in editing text for poor grammer or typos") to nonsense sentences and topics ("It is through the innovational process, as well as media, that the features of an image can be highlighted and brought to the forefront for the consumer viewing" or "The colors red, blue, and lavender are those that I identify with the most. I feel they accurately describe my personality. I choose red because I turn red when I get embarrassed ...").

Some candidates even try their hand at poetry -- one girl rewrote "'T'was the Night Before Christmas," editing herself and the advertising company into the story and substituting presents for a job.

The goal of putting the letters online, Killian said, is to show job seekers that, "Hello! This is not a recognizable form of communication!"

Recently, Killian went through 100 letters that arrived at his agency from applicants requesting jobs and interviews. Of the 100, not one was without some kind of spelling, grammar or syntax error.

At first, Killian thought that a personal approach was best. When one of the letters came from a senior graduating from a fairly prestigious college and did not contain a single sentence without an error, Killian drafted a "gentle note," advising the student to get some help with his writing.

What Killian got in response was an angry four-page reply.

"That really set him off," Killian recalls. "We haven't done it since. We don't want to have to change the locks on the building."