I am inspired by realsupergirl’s putting her poetry out there for everyone (including me) to see and discuss.

I don’t write poetry. These days, I write cover letters.

Here’s one for this job:

With more than five years experience conducting and translating quantitative and qualitative public policy research and analysis for policy makers and the public, I am a strong candidate for your Research Analyst 3 opening, which I learned about on the Office State jobs website. I would enjoy using my skills and experience to collect, research and analyze data to help other ODE professionals improve educational programs throughout the state.

My training in statistics began in graduate school at Prestigious East Coast University with courses specifically aimed at using statistics in the public policy arena. More recently, I refreshed my knowledge of statistics with eight credit hours at Generic Community College. My coursework focused on presenting a null hypothesis and testing against it, using a z-test or a t-test as appropriate.

I have experience with both quantitative and qualitative data collection, research, analysis and interpretation. I researched political money in the state of Oregon and translated the numbers into stories about how campaign contributions affect how public policy is made. For example, I analyzed contributions to the campaign supporting Me.asure 37, a ballot measure which re-wrote Oregon’s land-use laws. For this analysis, I consulted with my organization’s executive director, a colleague with expertise on land-use issues, and an economist. Based on their recommendations, I designed a study to measure how much contributors to the Me.asure 37 campaign stood to gain from Me.asure 37 claims, selecting data sets and measurements appropriate for the analysis. I also created the standard that we used to verify the relationship between the contributor and the claimant.

In another research example, I directed an interns’ exploration of how ethics commissions audited campaign finance reports for a short white paper to present to the legislature. In that case, we interviewed personnel at each state’s campaign finance governing body and distilled the results into a table that broke practices into three basic categories. The tabular data also conveyed where on-the-ground budget realities effectively overrode statutory authorization.

I have worked extensively with Access and Excel to collect and standardize data as well as to analyze it. (I was acquainted with SPSS in graduate school, but have not used it professionally.) I use Access to enhance data, creating fields that allow me to standardize data and writing queries (and getting help on macros) to populate those fields. I often write queries in Access to aggregate data based on certain criteria. For example, I wrote a series of queries to extract from a database of 200,000 or more records how many contributors gave $50 or less to candidates. I prefer Excel to help create tables and graphs and to find simple statistical data, such as means and medians.

Please call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx to discuss in greater detail the valuable contributions I would make to the Office team.

And then there’s the one for this job:

With more than five years experience conducting and translating quantitative and qualitative public policy research and analysis for policy makers and the public, I am a strong candidate for your Research Analyst 3 opening, which I learned about on the Office State jobs website. I would enjoy using my skills and experience to collect, research and analyze data to help other DHS professionals assist people to become independent, healthy and safe.

My training in statistics began in graduate school at Prestigious East Coast University with courses specifically aimed at using statistics in the public policy arena. More recently, I refreshed my knowledge of statistics with eight credit hours at Generic Community College. My coursework focused on presenting a null hypothesis and testing against it, using a z-test or a t-test as appropriate.

I have experience with both quantitative and qualitative data collection, research, analysis and interpretation. I researched political money in the state of Oregon and translated the numbers into stories about how campaign contributions affect how public policy is made. For example, I analyzed contributions to the campaign supporting Me.asure 37 (the re-write of Oregon’s land-use laws) against Me.asure 37 claims. For this analysis, I both downloaded data from the A New State XML Database system and received other electronically filed reports; these files arrived as comma-delimited text files. I imported data into Access and created standardized fields in order to aggregate contribution amounts from each contributor. I cross-referenced these totals with data I analyzed using Word and Excel after painstakingly cutting and pasting it from a large portable document file (pdf) online. I created a table of campaign contributors with Me.asure 37 claims to display their contributions as a percentage of total fundraising, as well as the percentage potential increase their claims might make above their campaign contributions.

In another research example, I directed an interns’ exploration of how ethics commissions audited campaign finance reports for a short white paper to present to the legislature. In that case, we interviewed personnel at each state’s campaign finance governing body and distilled the results into a table that broke practices into three basic categories. The tabular data also conveyed where on-the-ground budget realities effectively overrode statutory authorization.

I have worked extensively with Access and Excel to collect and standardize data as well as to analyze it. (I was acquainted with SPSS in graduate school, but have not used it professionally.) I use Access to enhance data, creating fields that allow me to standardize data and writing queries (and getting help on macros) to populate those fields. I often write queries in Access to aggregate data based on certain criteria. For example, I wrote a series of queries to extract from a database of 200,000 or more records how many contributors gave $50 or less to candidates. I prefer Excel to help create tables and graphs and to find simple statistical data, such as means and medians.

My primary goal in my last position was to communicate complex data and technical information or findings to varied audiences, including members of the media, activists, the general public, and elected officials. The challenge always was to turn the data into information busy, non-experts could easily grasp and use to make public policy decisions. In one case, I created a power-point presentation to talk about the complex issues around increased television advertising costs for candidate campaigns and decreased coverage of public affairs programming.

In another, I needed to pull key findings from a 27-page report on campaign contributions to city commissioners to put into a three-minute presentation at a public hearing to many of those same commissioners. Since the organization was arguing that these commissioners should reform campaign finance regulations based on this data, the task required tact in addition to brevity.

I also trained grassroots advocates to use fundraising data to help them make the case for campaign finance reform to friends and neighbors at house parties.

I have spent most of my working life in smaller organizations that are part of larger systems. For example, the Tiny Non-Profit employed only 2-3 people, but worked closely within a community of 15-20 non-profits and built or was a part of coalitions around various issues. As a result, I would sometimes conduct research and ask colleagues with other organizations for assistance with issues outside of my expertise. At other times, such as when we collected data for a national organization tracking campaign advertising on broadcast television, I was called upon to recruit volunteers and design a system to complete a discrete component of a larger research project.

Please call me at xxx-xxx-xxx to discuss in greater detail the valuable contributions I would make to the OSH team.

I’m so tired of looking at this letter, in any of its iterations. Please — if you can find it in yourself to wade through either one — please tell me what you think.