What Is Cover Letter and Why It Is Important

What is a Cover Letter exactly and Why It’s so important, we should know that a cover letter is a document that you have to submit as part of your job application with your resume. Its motive is to introduce you and shortly review your professional background. On standard, your cover letter should be from 350 to 500 words long. A positive or good cover letter can focus on the manager’s interest and get them to read your resume. A rough or bad cover letter, on the other hand, might mean that your cover letter or application is directly going to cut or destroy. So, you have to make sure this will not happen, it’s necessary to know how to write an impressive cover letter. Always keep in mind that a cover letter is an addition to your resume, not a replacement. That means you don’t just repeat whatever is mentioned in your cover letter or your resume. If you are writing for the first time cover letter, writing all this might seem pretty tough. After all, you’re probably not an experienced or professional writer.

You don’t need to be creative, or even any good at writing. All you have to do is follow this format:

• Header - Input contact information
• Greeting the hiring manager
• Opening component - Capture or grip the reader’s attention with your top achievements
• The second component –you have to explain why you are the suitable or perfect candidate for the job
• The third component – You have to explain why you are a good candidate for the company
• Formal closing

Here are some tips to highlighting your cover letter and assure that you are steps ahead of the competition when a recruiter reads your academic cover letter.

• Just go through the job ad and you have to underline the keywords used by the candidates, as long as you have the ability that you should try to use these words in your cover letter.
• In your cover letter to each job when you are going for, add that why you are a good employee for this position in the organization in just 3 to 4 paragraphs.
• In the cover letter, you should personalize the letter to a suitable recruiter or manager. You should include their name, title, description, company name and address in the left-hand corner.  
• You should check twice or thrice the letter has the correct spelling, punctuation and the correct recruiter’s details for each job you are applying for. You should use simple language and the same font as your resume, it is recommended your font is no larger than 10 points, so clear to that as a guide.
• You should include your contact details on all of the pages so if your cover letter gets separated from your resume the employer can still find your contact details on each page, use the header to do this or under your signature at the end of the cover letter.
• The body is an important part of the cover letter, include a paragraph that includes why you are interested and qualified for the role, and keeps it short and to the point.
• As mentioned above keywords and words known as “buzz words” are a great way to get the attention of an employer or recruiter if they are just speed reading over all of the cover letters and if the online application is automated the tracking system will pick up these keywords… Clever right? Sign off your cover letter with a signature at the bottom, it should read and looks something like this. 

Tips for success

Do: 

• show your most impressive evidence first. You need to make an impact in the first few sentences. You should talk about your current or most relevant job first

• Focus on achievements in your current and previous roles in the organization rather than hardly your responsibilities .evaluate these wherever possible.

• Explain your achievements with briefly but giving specific examples, explaining why these are relevant to this role. You can also refer the employer to the resume for more detail.

• established on the areas which differentiate you from the competition rather than the primary job criteria

• Determine how well you have researched the role and the job background when you are explaining your career encouragement.

• Explain your reason if you are searching for a career change or moving

• End on a note of passion and anticipation.

Don’t:

• Try to describe your resume or give too much detail – you should need to be selective about the particular points that you highlight

• Make unsupported statements about suitable skills and experience without giving examples

• Send a similar letter or same to more than one employer. Never ‘cut and paste’ as employers will open the absence of research and career focus

• Make clear statements about why you want to work for the organization (e.g. referring to ‘a top 20 global organization or ‘a department with a high position)

• Use vocabulary specific to your employer or career which the employer might not understand

• Focus on what the employer can do for you rather it’s more about what you can do for the employer.

You should know how to Write the Perfect Cover Letter

Now we are going to discuss the process of writing a cover letter step by step. 

Step 1 – You should pick the right cover letter template

A positive or good cover letter is all about balance the first impression. So, what is a better way to balance a good impression than a visual template? You can also simply select one of our excellent cover letter templates, and you will be all set in a moment! Our content optimizer will even give you suggestions on how to raise your cover letter.

Step 2 – You should start the cover letter with a Header

As with a cover letter, it is very important to start your cover letter with a personal Information section:                   

Here, you have to include all required information, including:

Full Name

Mobile Number

Email Id

Date

Give the name of the hiring manager

professional title

Write the name of the company you are applying

And there are some certain things that you should not mention in your cover letter         header:

Don’t mention Your Address - You include address or city of residence in your resume, not the cover letter.

Improper or Unprofessional Email – You should make sure your email is attractive or presentable. It’s difficult for a hiring manager to take you seriously if your email address is “storio@gmail.com.” Whenever you are applying for jobs, you should write in the correct format like (first name + last name @ email provider.com) format.

Step 3 – You should greet the Hiring Manager

Once you have clearly listed all your contact information, you should need to start writing the cover letter contents.

The first thing to do here is to address the cover letter to the hiring manager.

That’s right, the hiring manager! Don’t use popular words like Dear Sir or Madam.” You have to show your future manager that you did your research and are you really passionate and ready to do the hard work and ready to give 100% working with their team.

We also know, no one wants to hire a job seeker who just spasms 20+ companies and give hopes to get hired in any company.

So you should know, how do you find out who’s the hiring manager? There are several ways to do this. 

The simplest option is to check out the head of a similar department on LinkedIn. And let’s say you are applying for the position of HR EXECUTIVE in XYZ Company. The hiring manager is probably Head of Marketing or Chief Marketing Officer.

So, you do a quick checkout on LinkedIn:

Or you can also say you are applying for the position of an XYZ. In that case, you would be looking for the “manager.”

If this is also doesn’t work, you can also check out the team page the company website; where you can find or you can say there is a chance you will at least find the right person there.

Still, you can’t look to find the right person? There are many things that you can use:

Department Hiring Manager

Dear Hiring Manager

To whom it may concern

Department Team

Dear Team

Step 4 – You should write an Attention-Capture Introduction

First impressions always matter, especially when it comes to your job search.

Recruiters get hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of applications. Chances are, we know that they are not going to be reading every single cover letter end-to-end.

So, it’s difficult to catch their attention from the very first content.

The first issue we see with most cover letter opening content is that they are usually extremely generic. See the issue here? This opening paragraph doesn’t look good much anything except the fact that you’ve worked the job before. Do you know who else has similar work experience? All the other applicants you’re competing with. Instead, you want to start off with at least your best achievements that you really focus on the reader’s attention. comparatively, the performance should be as similar as possible to the position.

Keep it balanced

You should not try to oversell yourself but,

You should focus on the position you are applying for an organization and how you can help the company.

You should explain why you are a good fit candidate taking into this position, your skills and experience

You should be clear that how you can add value to the company.

Step 5 –You should explain why you are the perfect employee for the job

You should have to show off your professional skills and try to convince the HR manager that you are a better employee for the job than all other applicants. But first things - before you write anything, you should need to learn what are the most important requirements for the role are. So, you should check the job ad and you should identify which of the responsibilities are the most difficult or critical. Before you write your letter, you need to be clear on what your different or unique points are for the role to the key job criteria. You should think about what will differentiate you from the competition. You should know who else might apply, internally and externally, and what they offer. What makes you stand out from them?

These efficacies include:

Greater intensity of expertise in this field or a higher research profile than other likely employees

 A particular combination of experiences that give you a unique perspective (e.g. international experience,  having worked in both industry, and having gripped posts in more than one academic discipline) Specific achievements in your current and previous organization. [ Interview Preparation Tips ]

Dedication and commitment to this area of research or working for this organization.

Well organized research or funding networks which could prove helpful in the job or anything else you think to make them stand out in a way that is significant to the role.

Step 6 – You should explain why you are a good employee for the company

Once you have completed the last paragraph, you might be thinking that you will just wrap up the cover letter and just click that SEND button.

Well, no. You are not right there yet.

The HR manager does not only looking at whether you will be good at the position of the job or not. They are looking for someone that is a good employee for the company culture.

You should need to convince the HR manager that you are really passionate or you are a very hardworking person and give 100% best to working with them.

How should you do this? You should start as; you want to do some research about the company. You want to know things like:

• What is the company’s business model?
• What’s the company's product or service?
• Have you used a company product or service?
• What’s the company culture like? Will someone manages your work in the company, or will you have autonomy on how you get things done?

You should find all the information you need either on the company website or somewhere from around the web.
Then, you need to search or figure out what you like about the company and get that into text.
You have to say, for example, you are passionate about their product and you like the culture and independent work in the organization. You should make sure to do a lot of research and come up with good reasons why you are applying.

Step 7 Analysis with a call to action

Finally, it’s time that you have to complete up your cover letter and you have to write a conclusion.

In the final paragraph, you want to: Recap any points you could not in the previous contents. Do you have anything left to say? Any other information that could help the hiring manager makes their decision? You should mention it here.

Thank the hiring manager for their time. It never hurts to be respectful, as long as you don’t come off as too needy.

Complete the cover letter with a call to action. The very last sentence in your cover letter should be a call to action. You should ask the hiring manager to take some sort of action.

Step 8 - Use the right formal ending

Once you have done with the final content or paragraph, all you have to do is just to write down a formal “goodbye”.

You have to use one of the most popular conclusions or endings to a cover letter:

Best Regards,

Kind Regards,

Sincerely,

Thank you.

How to Submit a Cover Letter?

You have done a cover letter to edit and rewrite it, the many times you delay the opportunity for someone else to get the consideration of the hiring manager that you want to impress.

You have to submit your academic cover letter as soon as you are certain that:

You should check that your resume, cover letter, and your work are clear from errors.

You should check that your cover letter is written in a way that balances expertise with identity.

You should check that your cover letter gets attention to the reader’s interest from the beginning sentence and maintains till the end.

You should be aware that your cover letter uses the compulsion for the job and data or information on the company as a guide for its content.

In your cover letter, you have to tell stories that are completely filled with examples that satisfy job requirements and uniquely make you stand out positively as an individual and a good employee.

When you submitting your cover letter

You should follow the submission instructions given in the job description when you are submitting your cover letter.

When you are submitting the letter via the website with all contained fields, it confirmed that no formatting or content errors have occurred.

Conclusion

Now, we come to the conclusion, we should know that its motive is to introduce you and shortly review your professional background. On standard, your cover letter should be from 350 to 500 words long.

Always keep in mind that a cover letter is an addition to your resume, not a replacement. If you think there can be something more to it, let us know in the comments section below! If you like the above-Mentioned Blogs Please comment and let us know if any improvements in our blogs are required.

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