Maybe I shouldn't have read this article?

I was reading an article in the AMS Notices about applying for postdoc and professor jobs just in case it gave me any new ideas. (The people writing this are faculty at universities, so they've been on both sides of things and could say something useful.) One thing would have been had I not heard it as part of a dinner conversation I was having with a professor from Harvey Mudd. (Namely, while some research schools may not look at the cover letter too closely [though some of them probably do], for liberal arts and other teaching schools, it is exceptionally important and needs to include a discussion of why you are a good match for them. My lesson there was that I needed to spend more time on my cover letters this year. Somebody who recently got offered a tenure-track job by Caltech's physics department -- I should check if he accepted -- had also recently given me similar advice.)

OK, so why am I suggesting that maybe I shouldn't have read this article? Well, it's actually pretty simple. In the acknowledgements section, the authors write, Portions of this article were adapted from "Questions I Don't Know the Answer To" by one of the authors. That's bloody great.