Writing Cover Letters

Cover Letters Writing

Your cover letters are as significant as your resume is. While the resume is, in a sense, a fact sheet, the cover letter is your sales pitches to a specific company. In fact, your cover letters enable you to adapt your background to prospective employers' needs since you'll be writing an individual cover letter for each job application you send out.

In general, your cover letters allow you to expand upon and emphasize particular aspects of your resume -- based upon the requirements of the particular position you're seeking. Therefore, consider what the specific organization needs and address your letter to those needs. Many recruiters can spot form letters and don't take them as seriously as letters adapted to their specific company, so write a carefully adapted letter rather than a generic one that you send to every company to get your foot in the door for an interview.

Researching Companies and Yourself

Writing an effective cover letter and preparing for interviews require that you know yourself pretty well and have a good sense of what the companies need. As preparation for writing your cover letter, then, you should spend some time thinking about what you want and researching prospective employers.

Finding Out What You Want

Before you can write an effective cover letter, you really need to think carefully about what you can contribute to a company and what you're personally looking for in a company. In general, you should analyze your background and skills, your values and needs, and the kind of setting you'd like to work in. The following guidelines will give you a start.

• Consider your background and marketable skills.
• Think about your education, work, and activities. Why did you choose the specific classes and projects you selected, the jobs you worked at, and the campus and community activities in which you were the most involved? What did you enjoy most and why?
• Look at the following list of skills. What words describe best the things you like to do best? Which describe your real strengths, those skills and abilities that set you off from other applicants?

adapted administered advertised advised aided analyzed answered applied arranged assessed assigned audited collaborated completed communicated compiled conducted coordinated corrected counseled created delegated designed

determined developed directed edited employed established evaluated expanded guided headed hired identified implemented improved increased initiated introduced led managed negotiated operated ordered organized

originated oversaw planned prepared produced programmed raised rated recruited regulated researched revised scheduled served settled sold solved started supervised systematized taught trained wrote

               Which skills do you prefer not to use?

• Think about what you value and need to have in a company you work for.

• What values do you consider essential in any company you'd chose to work for?
• What personal needs must be fulfilled for you to be happy working for a particular organization?
• What sorts of working environments would enable you to do your best work?
• Do you prefer a formal or an informal environment?
• Do you thrive on change? Or do you prefer a more constant environment?
• Do you prefer working in an atmosphere with a lot of interruptions or working without interruption?
• Do you like a quiet or noisy atmosphere?
• Do you prefer a fast pace with tight deadlines or a more leisurely pace?
• Do you do your best work under pressure or not?
• Do you prefer working independently or under supervision?
• Do you prefer working alone or in a group?
• Do you like positions requiring decision-making or not?
• Do you enjoy detail-oriented tasks or more global tasks?
• Do you have any geographical preferences or requirements?
• Are there any other factors or conditions that would determine whether or not you would want to work for a particular company? If so, what are they?

Finding Out What Companies Want

There are lots of avenues for researching specific companies. Print resources can give you a start; people can fill in a lot of useful details. The discussion below provides specific places you can check for information that will enable you to target your letters to specific organizations.

• Print Resources include the following:
• Yearly publications which provide recent information on companies.
• Articles on companies or fields in such publications
• Indexes listing articles on companies 
• People Resources are probably the best sources of information on particular companies.
• Talk to every professional in your field that you can think of -- professors in your department, people who hold positions like the one you want to get, people who work for competing firms -- as well as family and friends to find out what they know about the company and position. This networking is perhaps the best way to find out about companies and positions available.
• Use information interviews, interviews with company representatives at their place of business, to locate particular information about specific positions and the company itself. But go into the interviews prepared -- prepared with general background about the company and a specific list of questions you wish to ask.

In general, your goal in information interviews is to find out whether you're interested in pursuing a position with the company; this strategy shows that you're carefully considering where you want to work, that you don't plan to go with the first company that gives you a job offer, and that you're confident about your own abilities. For more detailed guidelines on information interviews, visit Career Planning and Placement.

Purposes and Information

In general, the purpose of cover letters is to interest prospective employers enough so they call to schedule an interview. To fulfill this purpose, you'll need to target each cover letter to a specific company and position, showing how your background and abilities fulfill particular company needs.

Generic letters written to prospective employers are not enough. Those hiring will see such general letters for what they are: they'll realize that you haven't invested much time or effort in researching their company and writing an individual letter. And they probably won't invest their time by interviewing you.

You'll find that time spent to research the company, to determine how you're going to pique your readers' interest, and to write a letter convincing a prospective employer that your background matches company needs is well worth the effort.

Particular Purposes and Information

Cover letters are sales letter. Essentially, you're targeting your credentials to a particular market -- one company -- and persuading that company to make the buy. To fulfill this overall purpose, you'll need to achieve several goals in your letter:

1. Your letter should provide readers with some insight into you as an individual. Draft your letter in a way that shows how you as an individual will fit into the organization.
2. Use key terms from the ad or job description that are clearly relevant to your background.
3. Structure your letter so that each part achieves these particular goals:
• In the opening paragraph of your letter, clarify your purpose in writing and build reader interest.
• The body of your letter will need to persuade the reader that you have skills and abilities useful for the company.
• The closing of your letter should request an interview as well as a strong reminder of the benefit to the prospective employer of scheduling an interview.

Cover Letter Style

The presentation of your cover letter is as important as the information. Because readers hope to get a sense of you as an individual, you should work to make your letter sound professional, confident, and concerned with the prospective employer's needs.

• Writing like a professional assumes that your letter contains no grammatical, spelling, or typographical errors. Job applicants are frequently "deselected" because of such mistakes: prospective employers want employees who write well; they also assume that if you make careless errors when applying for jobs, you'll make them on the job.
• Adapt a formal tone to promote yourself as a professional.
• Use technical terminology appropriate for the position you seek. Frequently, you can use the job listing or advertisement to determine the terminology that is appropriate.
• Try to downplay "I" and "me" and emphasize "you" instead. When possible, bury "I's," "me's," and "my's"in the center of your sentences. Make your accomplishments, skills, and background the subjects of your sentences, and emphasize what these can contribute to your reader's organization, as the following paragraph shows:

Another experience which could be readily adapted to the Resource Center is my work as counselor during the past two summers for boys and girls ages 11 to 14 at a United Methodist junior high camp. This rewarding experience involved skills such as creativity, leadership, listening, and one-to-one and group communication. Although children in this age level are quite different from those in the nursery school group, I found once again that treating the campers with respect and care fostered cooperation and growth.

• This strategy is challenging -- particularly if you're trying to vary your sentence structure so it's not repetitive. But letters in which most sentences start with "I" or "My" sound very self-centered, not exactly the image of self most job applicants want to portray.
• Use concrete, specific language so that readers get a good sense of what you've done and who you are. This means using strong, active verbs to describe what you've accomplished. Some active verbs commonly used in resumes and cover letters appear in this list:

adapted administered advertised advised aided analyzed answered applied arranged assessed assigned audited collaborated completed communicated compiled conducted coordinated corrected counseled created delegated designed

determined developed directed edited employed established evaluated expanded guided headed hired identified implemented improved increased initiated introduced led managed negotiated operated ordered organized

originated oversaw planned prepared produced programmed raised rated recruited regulated researched revised scheduled served settled sold solved started supervised systematized taught trained wrote

• When you have finished writing, reread your letter to check for tone. Make sure that you sound confident rather than cocky or unsure of yourself. Also, as you read, try to imagine what sort of personality readers will see in your letter, and revise until your language matches the image you want to project.

General Guidelines for Cover Letter Format

Your cover letter ought to be set up in standard business letter format, including the following parts in the order listed:

• Your return address

Your return address includes your street address, city, state, zip code, and the dateline.

• Your prospective employer's address

Your prospective employer's address, also called an inside address, includes the contact person's name and title, the name of the company, the street address, city, state, and zip code. You can either put the person's name and title on the same line, or you can separate them on two separate lines.

NOTE: Never guess the gender of the contact person's name. Some names -- like Alex, Jan, Kelly, Loren, Mitch, Pat, and Randy -- can be either male or female. When in doubt, leave the Mr. or Ms. out.

• Your salutation
• Dear Mr. or Ms. is the standard salutation, followed by the person's last name and a colon.
• Never address the letter to Dear Sir or To Whom It May Concern. Call and find out the name of the specific person who is doing the hiring, the correct spelling of his or her name, and the appropriate title. This only takes a few minutes, and recruiters appreciate people who take the time to find out who they are.
• The body of your letter

The body of your letter follows, using either indented paragraphs or flush left paragraphs. If you use flush left paragraphs, double-space between them.

• Your signature block

The signature block includes the closing and your typed name. The closing -- usually Sincerely or Sincerely Yours--appears double-spaced below the body of your letter and is followed by a comma. Your typed name, then, appears triple- or quadruple-spaced below that.

• An enclosure reference

An enclosure notation appears double-spaced below your signature block. It includes the word "Enclosure" or "Enc." followed by the word "Resume."

Spacing and Margins

• Spacing should be standard. Your letter should be single-spaced with a double-space between the inside address and salutation, the salutation and the body of the letter, the body of the letter and the signature block, and the signature block and the enclosure reference. Spacing between your return address and the inside address can vary from 2 to 6 spaces, depending upon how your letter fits on the page.
• Margins should make your letter look balanced on the page. A standard rule of thumb is to establish equal top and side margins, with a bottom margin that is a bit bigger -- ideally one-and-a-half times the size of the other margins.

Your Return Address and Signature Block

Your return address and the signature block can be flush with either the left or the right margins. But be consistent: if you put one on the left, put both there.

If you line up both address and signature block with the left margin, you'll probably want your paragraphs to be flush left too. This is a more modern form -- and also lets you fit more on the page. This can sometimes help if your letter is running to a second page. Most prospective employers prefer one-page cover letters.