The Keys to a Compelling Cover Letter

Premierehire Executive search and leadership strategies

Your cover letter is your second and sometimes final opportunity to secure an interview after your resume. A well-written cover letter is your chance to distinguish yourself from other applicants, selling yourself as an intriguing candidate beyond the standard bullet-pointed accomplishments of a resume.

The Content of a Cover Letter

Find a Name

Where possible, always address your cover letter to a specific individual. It makes your cover letter more personalized and lets the prospective employer know not only that you put in the effort to find out who to contact but also that you’ve customized your letter to them. If a job description doesn’t specify a person to address, contact the company and ask.

Customize

You don’t have to rewrite your entire cover letter for every application but always make sure to tweak it to address the specific job posting you’re applying for. Use the job description’s keywords and change the examples to the ones which best suit the qualifications you need to exemplify. Prospective employers will recognize generic cover letters and sending them out will only lead to one place, the trash can.

Don’t Be a Parrot

Never repeat the content of your resume. Your cover letter is your opportunity to elaborate on your skills and how great you are but don’t just rehash what you’ve already said. Think of other situations where you utilized your skills, the more interesting and impressive the better!

Don’t Just State It, Prove It

Always support the claims you make in your cover letter. It’s not enough to say you have the skills they want, you have to prove it. Describe situations where you used certain important skills they’re looking for to resolve issues. If problem- solving is key, make sure to describe that time your previous employer’s computer system went down and you introduced the temporary manual process that saved the day.

Be Friendly

Hiring managers read hundreds of cover letters a day. After a while, they all just blend together. Don’t just write another bland, cliché-filled document. You should always be appropriate and professional, but don’t be afraid to inject a little humor and personality into your writing. A well-placed joke will make the hiring manager smile and go a long way to making you memorable.

It’s Not About You

Your family may care about your career aspirations and how the job you’re applying for can help you but prospective employers definitely don’t. Always frame everything in terms of what you can offer them.

Proofread

Your cover letter should be just as well-written as your resume. If it has any spelling or grammatical errors, you’re headed for the rejection pile. So, just as for that resume, read it, re-read it, ask someone else to read it and then leave it overnight before re- reading it again. If after this you still can’t find any errors then you can send it off.

Phone that Friend

If you look back at the resume section, you’ll remember I said it’s important to have someone else read over your work before sending it off. This goes double for your cover letter. With a letter, there are many more opportunities for misunderstanding than a bulleted list. So have some fresh eyes takea look. If your friend or family member can’t understand what you’re trying to say then a hiring manager certainly won’t.

The Layout

Make it a Letter

The clue is in the name but your cover letter should always be drafted as a standard professional letter with the appropriate greeting and sign off.

Be Concise

A cover letter should fill at most half a page. Just as with the resume, you can be the best candidate in the world but no hiring manager is going to put in the effort to read even a one page document when they have 100 other applications to sift through. So save some of it for the interview and keep it short.

Easy on the Eye

Make sure to avoid block text in your cover letter. If you’re concise this should never be a problem, but large amounts of text is off-putting to the person faced with reading it. So use your spacing wisely and don’t forget to paragraph!

Send it as a PDF

If possible always paste your cover letter into the body of an email to avoid landing in the spam folder, but if the job posting asks for a copy always provide it in PDF format.

The Author

Leanne Abraham helps leaders and teams reach higher levels of performance. She supports leadership teams as an executive team coach, facilitator, trainer, and advisor.

She and her team also help organizations find and retain the right people through her 4 Phase Executive Search and New Leader Integration Solutions.

Leanne is a certified executive coach and team coach (EMCC, ICF); is a certified coach for Birkman Leadership and Career Assessments, has completed training with the Adizes Institute, Tony Robbins coaching, the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC), and the Global Team Coaching Institute (GTCI).

Leanne serves clients throughout the US and Canada, ranging in size and industry.

On a personal note, Leanne is an avid reader, aspiring author, student of servant leadership, mother of 2, and loves hockey. She is expanding her career coaching program to provide support to executives wanting to move up or transition and she recently completed her team coaching practicum under David Clutterbuck and GTCI.

If you are looking to elevate your team, your leadership, or your career, please contact Leanne at Leanne@premierehire.com or book a no charge consult.

Subscribe to our Blog

Receive the latest blogs on how to build a great team, grow leaders, and excel as a leader

You have successfully subscribed and we have sent you a confirmation email!

Looking to make a change? Get search tips from our experts in our free Job Search e-Guide.