5 Tips for Creating a Great Cover Letter
While a resume shares the technical details of your skills and work experience, a cover letter gives insight to your soft skills, attitude, and motivations. Regardless of your experience level, these tips are important to remember when formulating your cover letter:
Why do you want to work at this company? While employers are not naïve to the fact that your resume is being distributed out to multiple companies, they want to know you have taken the time to learn about their company’s values, history, and mission statement.
Why are you qualified for this role? It’s important to highlight one or two experiences/skills you have that align with the responsibilities of the role you are applying for.
Avoid redundancies. Many candidates make the mistake of repeating what is on the resume and fail to share unique details that further evidence for your candidacy. Make sure you are not repeating what they’ve already read somewhere else.
Avoid using the same cover letter twice. We know what you’re thinking…How am I going to apply to 50 companies online and create 50 cover letters. Know that hiring managers are professionals that review resumes and cover letters daily which means they can tell the difference between someone who does “Ctrl + F” “Company Name 1” “Replace All” with “Company Name 2” and a candidate who has taken the time to show unique interest. Remember quality over quantity.
Keep it to one page. Very rarely should your cover letter exceed one page. A popular format is an introduction (paragraph 1), an explanation of why you are applying for this company/role (paragraph 2), an explanation of why you should be hired (paragraph 3), and a conclusion (paragraph 4). One of EGIS Career’s best practices is focusing on deviating from the “typical” or “popular” to give our candidates every opportunity to differentiate themselves and we recommend you do the same.
