How to write a cover letter? You’ve likely been told you should include certain things (i.e., personality, enthusiasm); however, those things can be difficult to quantify and put on paper; therefore, we’ll take a more practical approach here.
Here are our best tips for writing the perfect cover letter:
1) Make it about the company, not you
Don’t spend your cover letter talking about yourself (i.e., what school you went to, the GPA you received). It’s easy for hiring managers to glean that type of information from your resume. Instead, write your cover letter as if it was written directly to them.
What are their pain points?
How can you solve those pain points?
Address those in your cover letter?
2) Write keywords into your cover letter.
Often, companies will “keyword search” candidates’ resumes during the recruitment phase. It means they only want to see resumes with certain words or phrases on them before moving it forward in the recruiting process. You can learn what those are by having one of our Recruitment Specialists help you with your resume.
3) Don’t write a novel.
We want to thank you for taking the time to write us a letter, but please don’t thank us for two paragraphs before even getting to the point of why we should consider hiring you. That would be like saying “thank you” 5 times in an email or giving someone who just gave you a gift an essay on how much it means to you. Remember – less is more!
4) Proofread/have others proofread your cover letter before sending it off
Don’t have spelling errors or grammatical mistakes in there! Your potential employer is likely to overlook it if it has a few mistakes; however, they’ll most likely toss your cover letter aside if they are overwhelmed by how many errors there are. Also – have someone else proofread it before you send it! Sometimes hiring managers/recruiters miss small things too.
5) Make sure the cover letter is tailored to the position you’re applying for
Remember – each company is looking for something unique in their candidates; therefore, make sure you change your cover letter’s content based on the position you’re applying for within that company. If you don’t know what they’d like to see in terms of qualifications/content/etc., ask one of our Recruitment Specialists, and we can help outline those details for you.
6) Keep it between 1 & 2 pages
Don’t ramble! Make sure you stick to what’s necessary by keeping your cover letter concise, but also make sure that you are being thorough about the position you’re applying for. Typically the more senior-level positions will have longer cover letters because there is more to say regarding experience and qualifications. That said, don’t go overboard with your cover letter, or else it may be too overwhelming for the hiring manager/recruiter who has a lot of other things on their plate right now (i.e., interviewing candidates, checking resumes, creating schedules, etc.).
Conclusion:
Now that you know how to write a perfect cover letter go ahead and send it off. Once you’ve sent your cover letter in, make sure that you check back with our Recruitment Specialists so we can track its progress throughout the hiring process! If it gets forwarded to the hiring manager/recruiter, they’ll probably reach out to you for an interview before officially sending you a job offer.
Author Bio:
Sarah has been writing for a decade and now for the online Quran classes UK Website. She obtained her Master’s degree at the University of London. Her main objective is to write insightful content for those people who read and like it. Sarah loves to teach kids.
