Ultimate Cover Letters

Master the Art of Writing the Perfect Cover Letter to Boost Your Employability

Martin John Yate

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780749481667
• eBook ISBN:
  9780749481674
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

Does your cover letter have the X factor? How can you make sure that it communicates what employers really want? Ultimate Cover Letters, from best-selling author and careers expert Martin John Yate, describes how to write the very best cover letters, helping you to open doors to job interviews and offers of employment, and outshine all other candidates. From the very popular Ultimate series, the book offers sound advice on assembling letters and how to use key 'power phrases' to get results, as well as over 100 sample letters to cover a variety of situations. These include e-mail responses to online applications, speculative letters, letters to answer advertised vacancies, follow-up letters, networking letters and even acceptance and resignation letters.

Now including a chapter on how to develop your professional image and integrate it into your job search letter, Ultimate Cover Letters 5th edition covers all aspects of this crucial part of the job-hunting process in an engaging and approachable way, ensuring you put every chance of success by your side. Ultimate Cover Letters will help you make the perfect first impression.

About the Ultimate series...
The Ultimate series contains practical advice on essential job search skills to give you the best chance of getting the job you want. Taking you all the way from starting your job search to completing an interview, it includes guidance on CV or résumé and cover letter writing, practice questions for passing aptitude, psychometric and other employment tests, and reliable advice for interviewing.

1

COVER LETTERS: THE SECRET WEAPON IN YOUR JOB SEARCH

A recent survey of 1,000 executives revealed that 91 per cent found cover letters to be valuable in their evaluation of candidates. Your letter can add information that isn’t in your CV and help to establish a communication channel between two professionals with a common interest.

You can write the greatest cover letter in the world but if you don’t learn how to use it properly, your job search will take longer and the job you get may not be the best you deserve. Cover letters are most effective when you develop a plan of attack that includes reaching out directly to employers. Whenever someone in a position to hire you reads your CV and cover letter, the odds of getting that interview increase dramatically, because you have skipped right over the initial hurdle – getting pulled from the CV database – and you are speaking directly to the hiring authority.

The primary goal of every job search is to get into conversations, as quickly and frequently as possible, with people in a position to hire you; without conversations, job offers can’t be made. Difficulty reaching employers with your message is one of the major reasons why many job searches stall. This happens when job searchers involve themselves, almost exclusively, with posting CVs to CV banks and responding to job postings by uploading CVs into other CV databases.

However, when you can get your CV, personalized with a cover letter, in front of employers, you differentiate yourself and substantially increase your chances of landing an interview.

Employers overwhelmingly appreciate cover and follow-up letters. If all you are planning to do is load your CV into CV databases, a cover letter can still help. Its main strength is in personalizing your message to a specific company and ideally a specific person. When you develop a plan of attack for your job search that includes reaching out directly to decision makers, the personalizing touch of a letter really increases your impact.

The people to target during your job search are:

• Those most likely to be in a position to hire you. Usually this will be managers one to three levels above your target job.
• Those most likely to be involved in the selection process. Usually this will be managers working in related departments, recruitment and HR. Whenever you have a name in one of these disciplines, use a letter to stand out.

Your ideal target for direct communication is always someone who can hire you, although any management title offers opportunity for referral. Human Resources contacts are valuable. The pivotal nature of HR jobs means the professionals in this area are aware of all areas within a company that could use your skills.

With the internet at your fingertips there are countless ways to identify the people you need to reach, and if a name and title is of no use to you, it might be just the contact another job hunter needs.

When an e-mail or envelope is opened, your cover letter will be the first thing looked at. It personalizes your application for a specific job in ways that are impossible for your CV to do, given its impersonal structure. The cover letter sets the stage for the reader to accept your CV, and therefore you, as something and someone special. It can create common ground between you and the reader and demonstrate that you are well qualified and suitable for this job and this company.

Six tactics that help your cover letter work

Address your target by name

Your first step is to grab the reader’s attention and arouse interest, so whenever possible address the letter to someone by name.

Approaching employers directly is one of the very best tactics for getting job offers. Whenever you can find the names of any one of the titles involved in the recruitment and selection cycle, approach them directly and address them by name.

Make your letter readable

Your customer, the reader, is always going to be distracted, so your letters need to be easily readable, focused, clear and brief. Your letters should be succinct as well as both friendly and respectful; they should never be unfocused, pompous or sound like you swallowed a dictionary. You can also grab the reader’s attention with the appearance of your letter, which should mirror the fonts and font sizes of your CV, giving you a co-ordinated and professional look.

I recommend a minimum of 11- or 12-point font size and a clear, easily readable font.

Applying these rules of matching font and font size to e-mail and print letters is easy to do and paying attention to the details pays dividends in any job search.

Emphasize your personal brand

Branding is the process by which you consistently draw attention to the bundle of skills and behaviours that make you a little different. All the job search letters you send – and yes, that includes every e-mail – are part of the packaging that captures you. If your written words look good, carry a succinct, relevant, readily accessible message, and show you to be a professional with a clear sense of self, you’re well on the road to establishing a viable professional brand. When your actions differentiate you from others, your standing as a candidate is improved.

What makes you special?

• Being smart enough to get your CV directly under the nose of a manager, who just wants to make a good decision and get back to work, makes you special.
• Getting your CV to the manager in a creative way and showing that you know what you are doing makes you special. Your letter might say in part, ‘I sent my CV by e-mail but thought you might appreciate a screen break, so you’ll find it attached to this letter…’. In that case, your e-mail should say, ‘As well as attaching my CV to this e-mail, in case you need a screen break I’ve also sent it by traditional mail.’
• Writing a strong cover letter that presents your CV and establishes connectivity between you and the manager makes you special.
• Keeping your message clear and succinct makes you special.
• Following up your meetings with letters that present the image of a consummate professional makes you special and confirms your professional status.
• Making sure in all your e-mails and printed letters that the fonts are legible and coordinated with your CV makes you special.

Continuity in written communication

To ensure continuity in all your written communications:

1. Make the font you employ for contact information and headlines in both your CV and your cover letter the same.
2. Use the same font you choose for your CV’s body copy for the message in your letter.
3. Use the same font choices for all your e-mail communications. Smart idea: set the chosen font as your default e-mail font.
4. Make the font you use in your written communications consistent with the font you use in your e-mail and other online communications.
5. Get matching paper for CV, cover letters and envelopes. Every office superstore has them. Sending your cover letter and CV by traditional mail when the opportunity arises is a way to get your CV read because most job hunters don’t think to do this. Today, managers get far fewer CVs by mail, but busy managers still like a break from the computer screen so more time is spent on your CV.

Be succinct and on-message

A good cover letter gets your CV read with serious concentration. Time is precious. Recruiters and managers won’t waste it on a letter that rambles. Your letter should always reflect a professional whose CV has something to say.

When you can, make a specific reference to a job’s key requirements. You want the reader to move from your letter to the CV already thinking that here’s someone who can do this job. You can do this in either of two ways:

• referring to a job’s most important requirements;
• referring to the issues behind the job’s most important requirements.

If an advertisement, a job posting or a telephone conversation with a potential employer reveals an aspect of a particular job opening that is not addressed in your CV (and for some reason ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Read this first
• 1 Cover letters: the secret weapon in your job search
• 2 Six successful cover letters
• 3 Know the job, know your customer
• 4 Develop your professional identity
• 5 Elements of a great cover letter
• 6 Assembling your job search letter
• 7 How to polish and edit your letters for maximum impact
• 8 The plan of attack
• 9 Sample letters
• Index
• Backcover