25 Tips for a Pleasing Cover Letter

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Source: Gallery of Best Cover Letters, by David F. Noble, Ph.D.

Purpose strategies

1. Make it clear in your letter that you really want the job. If you display a ho-hum attitude in a letter, the chances are that you will receive a ho-hum response, which usually means rejection.

2. Put a subject line near the beginning of the letter to indicate the position you are seeking.

3. If you know a company has been having employee-turnover problems, show interest in a long- term commitment if that fits your plans.

4. Consider writing the cover letter so you can use it also as a marketing letter in which you make your job interests and availability known to a number of readers.

5. Consider marketing your services aggressively in your letter.

Audience strategies

1. Make certain the letter is addressed to a specific person and that you use this person's name in the salutation.

2. Don't let your opening statement or one in your first paragraph give the reader a chance to think "NO" and stop reading.

3. Sometimes a cover letter will be more successful if the timing is right. Be alert to a prospective company's needs as determined by seasons, holidays, grants, changes in the economy, and so on.

4. Play down experience that may threaten a prospective employer.

5. Make your cover letter targeted by researching the prospective company and showing in the letter that you know important information about that company.

6. For individuals leaving the military and returning to civilian life, emphasize experience perceived as relevant to civilian life. The reader may not know how to translate military responsibilities into civilian duties; do it for them.

Content strategies

1. If your name is unusual or difficult to pronounce, consider putting an aid to pronunciation in parentheses after it.

2. When you are short on professional work experience to qualify for a position, consider related personal and volunteer experiences that may qualify you for the job.

3. If you are responding to a job that has been posted online, include the reference number.

4. If the intended reader of your resume suggested you send it, or if you have recently spoken with the person, say this in the first sentence of the cover letter.

5. At the end of the letter, consider keeping control of the follow-up by indicating that you will phone later.

6. If you have an impressive success story to tell about previous work experience, consider telling the story in your cover letter.

Organization strategies

1. Consider restating important themes at the end of the letter.

2. Try a change in format for a change of pace within a letter.

3. For a change, try presenting the information in your cover letter in ascending order of importance to give the impression that the information gets better and better as one reads the letter.

4. Consider expressing interest in an interview in one paragraph and saying thank you in another.

Style strategies

1. Try not to sound at all desperate.

2. If you want to be aggressive, keep your letter short.

3. Strive to make your cover letter hard to ignore.

4. If you want to speed the tempo of reading a cover letter, try using a series of short paragraphs.

5. Use a combination of bullets and boldfacing for information you think the reader must see.

6. Try to make each paragraph fresh and free of well-worn expressions commonly found in cover letters.

Source: http://www.freeresumeexamples.net