It’s often viewed as a formality, but your cover letter is actually really important. You only get to submit a few documents to convince the hiring manager you’re the best person for the job, so giving it anything but your all just doesn’t make sense.
Sometimes submitting a cover letter is optional, sometimes it’s required, but either way, it’s always important to put significant time and effort into getting it right, because your career depends on it. If you’re tired of getting rejected for jobs you know you’d excel at, consider giving your cover letter a major overhaul.
5 Tips for a Winning Cover Letter
Follow this advice to write a cover letter that reveals your fit for the job in one page or less.
Start From Scratch
Doing so takes a lot of extra time, but every cover letter you submit must be unique. No two jobs are exactly the same, so there’s no way a generic cover letter can convince a hiring manager you’re the right fit for both the position and the company. Along with showcasing your fit for the job, your extra effort will also convey your enthusiasm.
Don’t Repeat Your Resume
Your cover letter is valuable real estate, so use it wisely. There’s no need to restate your career history or skills list, because that’s already on your resume. Instead, use this supplemental document to share additional information explaining why you’d be great at the job. For example, if you listed customer service as a skill on your resume, use a sentence or two to expand on that to offer a more detailed account.
Let Your Passion Shine
Companies want to hire someone who is truly excited about the position. In a few brief sentences, use your cover letter to explain why this particular opportunity caught your eye. You might share something you admire about the brand or mention an issue currently faced by the organization and what you could do to help.
Highlight Your Cultural Fit
If you’re not a fit for the company culture, you won’t get hired. Subtly prove you’d blend right in with the team by carefully reviewing the organization’s website, blog, social media presence and any other available content to get a feel for it’s voice. Use your findings to write your cover letter in this tone, because it will speak volumes.
Make Sure It’s Error-Free
Just as with your resume, spelling and grammatical errors will send your application to the reject bin. Run spellcheck on your cover letter, review it several times yourself and ask someone you can count on to give it a look. You can never be too meticulous when a job is at stake.
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