What is a Cover Letter?
A cover letter is essentially a letter that explains your interest in a position, whether it’s because it meets your future career goals, matches your previous experience, or both. A cover letter will ideally display knowledge of the position and the company and will entice a hiring manager to look deeper into your resume.
Many jobs today ask for a cover letter. And if you aren’t writing a good one, you could get passed up for jobs that you were very well-qualified for. You can certainly look up cover letter guidelines, to jumpstart your thinking and give you ideas. However, a cover letter is extremely customized; you need to be able to really express yourself in both an engaging and functional way. Let’s take a deeper look at how you can write an excellent cover letter to land the perfect job.
What is the Purpose of a Cover Letter?
A cover letter introduces you and your resume. It’s a lot like meeting briefly with the hiring manager; it gives context to your knowledge, skills, and desire to get the job. Cover letters provide concise, easy to read information so that a hiring manager can hear your voice and how you express yourself in the words and phrases. While a resume just talks about technical skills, the cover letter talks about your professional life.
Many hiring managers will read a cover letter first as a way of determining whether they even want to consider reading your resume. And that’s important. Because your resume won’t be read if your cover letter isn’t great. Use the cover letter to develop your suitability for the position and the benefits, accomplishments and experience you can bring that are different from anyone else.
How do You Format a Cover Letter?
Cover letters, like resumes, must look polished and professional. To that end, you can download a template online that will make your cover letter look great. The actual format of a cover letter is usually very simple:
To whom it may concern:
I’m interested in [position] at [company]. I feel I’m particularly well-suited to this position because of [credentials]. [Company] is of interest to me because of [unique aspects of business].Â
Sincerely,
[Name]
Of course, the actual text will be more detailed than this.
On a technical level, you should usually send a cover letter in PDF and DOCX format unless a specific file format is requested. These are the most common formats. DOCX has the advantage of being widely supported but PDFs are not only widely supported but also won’t change any formatting you have.
What Should You Include in a Cover Letter?
Keep in mind that a cover letter should have some substantive information in it. It shouldn’t be by-the-numbers; it has to be written for each position. Therefore, when someone reads your cover letter, they should feel that an effort was made to distinguish yourself from other applications.
A cover letter should contain:
- A great introduction of your skills, including what you do best, and what makes you best suited to the job.
- A deep understanding of what the job position requires and how you meet these requirements.
- Aspects of the business that you love, such as its company culture, upward mobility, and position within the industry.
- A brief explanation of your experiences that have led you toward the company and make you well suited to the culture.
- A very concise history of the company and its industry, showing that you have done your research about the company itself. This is particularly important if you are coming from another industry but can demonstrate transferrable skills.
A cover letter shouldn’t be too long and many are one page at maximum. It’s not an entire thesis about the position. And if you’re seriously looking for work, it’s likely that you’re going to be sending many cover letters. In each one, you need to cite relevant examples, but not at length; that’s for the interview.
Use Specific Examples in Your Cover Letter
Avoid trotting out the age-old phrases such as “I am a good communicator” “I work well under stress” or “I am very organized”. If in fact you do have those skills be sure to cite specific examples to illustrate your experience. Hiring Managers also appreciate short “before and after” stories. To avoid writing a novel, a good formula to adopt here would be one short paragraph outlining the:
Problem. Briefly describe how you defined the issue and separated out each project to work on, alone or with your team
Solution. Write a very brief description illustrating the ways in which you solved the issues. (Leave this out or write one simple sentence if the paragraph is too long.)
Result. Describe in one short sentence the outcomes or results.
Some job positions will also request specific technical information in your cover letters so read postings carefully.
What Shouldn’t You Include in a Cover Letter?
A cover letter shouldn’t repeat information covered in the resume. If you’re discussing past job experience, don’t say “At XYZ Corp, I fulfilled these duties” and continue with a job description. Rather, you should simply say “My experiences at XYZ Corp showed me…” and discuss those which are pertinent to the new position.
A cover letter also shouldn’t have in-depth personal information. If a company is looking for a good “fit” culturally, they may look at a hobby or personal section on a resume. But they don’t want a lot of personal discussion or information in a cover letter; it has to be brief.
Finally, a cover letter shouldn’t be generic. If you’re simply copying and pasting text from other letters, you’re probably not doing a good job of highlighting the unique benefits hiring you would bring. Hiring managers read through countless resumes and cover letters, so they can identify a generic one that’s been written for multiple applications at once. You need to make sure your cover letter has been customized.
A cover letter is a great time to impress a hiring manager. If you would like to be a little different you can use a professional template, brighter colors, or interesting fonts to be memorable. Keep in mind that different industries operate differently; marketing will be more open to “different” than construction.
Today, writing a cover letter is an essential skill. It’s hard for people to get jobs if they aren’t willing to write a cover letter that will “wow.” But with time and practice, it becomes easier to create a good cover letter that outlines the major points.
