It is said that first impressions are everything. And when it comes to landing a great job, nothing slays like a well-crafted CV and an impressive cover letter that will leave your soon-to-be employer breathless and wanting to hire you right then and there! OK, perhaps that’s quite a slight exaggeration on my part – but I like to think that’s what happens when someone responds when they see my CV and cover letter, but they’re hiding behind the inherently nonchalant mask of online communication.
All jokes aside, while the process of polishing and updating CVs is usually the first task job seekers tend to when they’re applying for a job, cover letters are ignored. I have heard horror stories of job seekers that are using the same cover letter that they’ve written when they first graduated when applying to jobs today…And what’s even scarier is the fact that a lot of job seekers apply to jobs without a cover letter altogether, thus losing a major opportunity to show off their brilliant achievements and personality!
And we can’t let that happen, can we? Well, you’re in luck, because we present to you 6 expert tips – curated by yours truly – on how to craft a killer cover letter that will put you in a league of your own.
The nature of the human brain is to tune out everything that doesn’t concern or stimulate it. In other words, anything that doesn’t pass the split-second test of relevance or excitement is promptly ignored and never to be accorded attention again. This is exactly how employers go about the candidate screening process. Yes, I see them skimming through your application right now.
“So how do I stand out and draw their attention?” you ask.
Well, one thing you can do is to talk (or in this case, write) as if you were talking to a friend. Of course, keep the overall tone of professionalism throughout your cover letter. This means that you elaborate on your expertise and achievements in conversational and light-hearted language, but not to the point of adding irrelevant (or, God forbid, inappropriate) details.
Trust me, you’ll easily blow your competition out of the water if you perfect this balance between casual and professional.
It’s tempting to search up a one-size-fits-all cover letter, fill in the blanks, repeat that a dozen or so times and call it a day. I mean, it is a time-saver. So, pretty much the smart thing to do, right?
Not really. In fact, I recommend you avoid it like the plague.
Instead of opting for overused cover letter templates that hiring managers have seen a million times, try bringing your own uniqueness to the table. It’s OK to follow other examples for inspiration, but do remind yourself that it’s you who’s writing that cover letter. While there are set formulas for writing cover letters (for example, you can start and end all your cover letters in the same vein), there are no rules that state you have to the same phrases and format that everyone else uses, so make sure the content is always unique to the receiver.
Research, research, research. Find out who’s going to be opening that email, make sure you’re well-acquainted with all the basic details about the job posting and the company’s vision and mission statements.
Why? That way you can illustrate how your unique skills and expertise can help in fulfilling the company’s mission, in the cover letter. You can even take an individual job requirement and address it in the cover letter by tying it with your personal history, professional experience, and overall technical know-how.
More often than not, cover letters comprise long-winded verbiage of legato-sounding sentences that take too long to mentally process and encourage the reader to skim over them (or skip, if it’s bad enough), due to fact that they require substantial effort to comprehend and because they are oh-so-very exasperating to read and understand and…
See what I did there?
In a nutshell, shorten your sentences. Avoid run-on sentences by replacing commas with periods where you can. Don’t overdo it though, so as not to disturb the smooth flow of your conversational tone. Do away with complicated-sounding adverbs and adjectives and focus on powerful verbs and nouns instead. Oh, and while enthusiasm is good, never use exclamation points.
Your cover letter is a golden opportunity to weave in personal stories that show your relevant experience and keep the reader engaged. Do not just copy/paste the information in your CV to your cover letter. Instead, explain how you were able to meet the accomplishments listed in your CV.
Remember: the goal is to reflect your strengths and convince the potential employer of your capability to successfully accomplish the tasks mentioned in the job description.
It’s inevitable that you’ll come across very promising job postings, but be demoralized to find that you don’t meet the whole list of prerequisites. What if I tell you that you still have a very good chance at actually standing out (and even winning the job over more qualified candidates) if the employer really sees what you’re trying to convey?
How? You bring past experiences or seemingly irrelevant accomplishments from other areas in your life and link them back to a particular strength, one that will vastly help you in performing well for that position. Maybe you started a project entirely on your own in the past, which explicitly shows you’re a self-starter who generally needs little incentive because you’re already intrinsically motivated. And guess what? The cover letter is your chance to highlight these achievements.
Time to hit the workshop
The cover letter’s one and only objective is to trigger an interest in the employer so that they reach out to you personally and give you an interview, a test assignment, etc. With that in mind, you can use every trick in the book in order to support that objective; uniqueness, different styles of writing, or even having a distinct voice.
Want more tips on how to make the perfect first employee-to-employer impression? Check out our blog section solely dedicated to writing amazing cover letters!
