Components of Cover Letter
What's Covering Your Resume? If your cover letter is falling short, your job search is too.
Cover letters are many things so we address pesky questions, such as your target salary, addressing prior work history/career blemishes, and highlighting the jobs pertinent to your next employment move. The object is to cover your bases and increase your interviews and hiring chances.
The importance of first impressions is clear when it comes to cover letters. In just a few paragraphs, you must present your personality, your communication skills, your attention to detail and, most importantly, your interest in that specific company and your qualifications for the job. A good cover letter will convince the employer that you could be the right person for the job. A poorly-written cover letter -- or worse yet, no cover letter at all sends the message that you aren't quite professional enough to meet the company's needs.
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Take the task of writing a cover letter seriously. Think of the cover letter as your chance to sell yourself. A resume is a fairly generic listing of what you've done, but the cover letter lets you tailor your skills and abilities to the specific job. That and your resume are all an employer uses to decide whether to move you along in the employment process.
Read your cover letter again for grammar and punctuation. This includes everything from making sure subjects and verbs match to confirming that you've used commas and periods correctly. If you're one of the many job seekers who have forgotten all the grammar and punctuation rules you learned in school, don't despair. There are many online websites that can help you review the basics and become more confident in your writing. If you feel you need more help, check with your local community college for other writing resources.
After you're certain that all your information is correct and consistent, read your cover letter one more time for tone. In essence, weed out questionable statements. Look at each sentence carefully to see whether it enhances your suitability for the position or whether the employer could somehow misinterpret it unfavorably. Rewrite any statement that might be of concern. If you have trouble deciding, ask someone else to read the letter with those objectives in mind.
If you can, set your cover letter aside for a day or two, then pick it up and re-read it from the point of view of the employer. Does it grab your attention in the first paragraph and keep it throughout? Does it clearly state what you want? Does it contain only the information that's relevant to the specific job? Does it answer the question "Why should I hire this person?" If you answer "no" to any of those questions, fix the problems.
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