Data Scientist
Cover Letter Example

1. Research what the company is all about

If you are serious about working for a company, take the time to learn about their values, culture, future plans, and position in the industry/market. By the time you sit down to write your cover letter, you should be an expert on the company and their moves in the market. Luckily, there are many resources with information about your potential new employer available to you:

• StackShare — Given that you are applying to be a data scientist, it only makes sense that you research the company’s tech stack if the information is available. Luck for you, companies around the world have gone public with what technology they are using. It’s as simple as searching the company you are applying for on StackShare, or other similar sites, for a behind the scenes peek at the technology stacks they are using.

• The Company Website — You can learn a lot about a company from their website. It will likely include all of the information they want potential customers, employees, and competitors to know about their values, products, history, and company structure. Make sure you check out the “about us” page and read their mission statement.

• Annual Report — If you are applying to a publicly traded company, their annual report is expected to be available online. This is an excellent way to gain a comprehensive overview of the company’s operations and financial position from the preceding year, as well as upcoming goals. Annual reports often include the following documents: statement from the CEO, fiscal years balance sheet, cash flow statements, auditor’s report, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR or goodwill) report, stock information, Management’s Discussion and Analysis (MD&A), and much more.

• Social Media — Given that it is 2018, the company you are applying to is probably active on Social Media. Taking a look at their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages is a great way to learn more about the company’s personality and upcoming goals.

Now you can use your cover letter to demonstrate you have done your research and that you can contribute to their unique goals and trajectory. For instance, check out how this candidate connects the company’s upcoming expansion to the skills they possess that will contribute to fulfilling this goal:

It would be a pleasure to learn more about [company]’s expansion plans and provide further insight into how my highly developed data analytic abilities, experience managing large data sets, robust predictive analytics, and machine learning skills can help your company achieve these results.

2. “Borrow” the quantified bullet points from your resume

As a data scientist, it can be easy for your contributions to the bottom line to get lost or be misunderstood. However, you know that your ability to extract meaning from and interpret data makes a sizable difference in a company’s operation.

If you want to immediately grab the hiring manager’s attention when they pick up your cover letter, use metrics to display the tangible results of your work. You can easily accomplish this by using the quantified bullets, those referencing changes in time, percentages, or dollar amounts, from your resume on your cover letter.

This will give you a competitive edge compared to the competition who are only referencing broad skills and vague accomplishments on their cover letters. Notice how this cover letter is immediately strengthened by employing this technique:

Some notable contributions to my previous employers include:

• Conducted a data regression analysis of the relationship between company stock prices and industry trends, achieving a 15% more accurate prediction of performance than previous years
• Used predictive analytics such as machine learning and data mining techniques to forecast company sales of new products with a 95% accuracy rate

If you haven’t started writing your data scientist resume don’t worry — we have a full guide on how to craft the perfect data scientist resume, including downloadable templates for you!

3. Spell check just won’t cut it

Spelling, punctuation, and writing style may seem arbitrary, but ignoring them on your cover letter could be the reason it lands in the recycling. The hiring manager is using your cover letter as a beta testing ground to analyze your attention to detail, thoroughness, and observation skills.

Think of your resume as a critical data set — you would never hit submit without refining the set with different data filtration techniques in order to identify queries, redundancies, and fragmentation. It is only logical that you would treat your cover letter with the same care.

Using special characters can cause formatting errors — for example, although spelling resume with an accent in your cover letter isn’t a mistake, it could cause the hiring manager to have problems viewing your application.

Unfortunately, running a simple Word spell check just won’t cut it when it comes to your cover letter. In order to reduce the margin of error, we suggest having a secondary source proofread and critique your resume. Luckily, there are a number of online resources specific to resume correction who will review your resume and get it up to scratch. So, no problem if you aren’t an English buff — there are cover letter connoisseurs out there that apply the same scrutiny to your cover letter that you would to finding data corruption.

4. Finish your cover letter with a Call-to-Action

Now how do you bring your thoroughly researched, quantified, and immaculately written cover to a close?

The last paragraph of your cover letter should address two important formalities:

1. Thank the reader for their time
2. Politely request an interview

For instance, this concluding cover letter sentence shows the candidate’s confidence and eagerness to continue with the application process.

Thank you for your time and for considering my candidacy for this position. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future to schedule an interview.

Great work — you are petabytes ahead of when we started! Now you can get to work crafting a superb data scientist cover letter with a professional cover letter template.

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