Cover letters—letters that accompany or “cover” your resume each time you send it out—are essential partners to your resume. Because they can be customized for each person to whom you write, they give you the opportunity to highlight the information that is most relevant for that particular audience. But hiring managers may not read cover letters thoroughly (or at all), so don’t count on your cover letter to communicate essential information that’s not in your resume. Instead, think of your cover letter as an opportunity to sell yourself in a different way than your resume does.

You’ll be writing lots of letters:

- Cover letters to potential employers when you send your resume for consideration

- Letters to network contacts and the referrals that arise from those contacts

- Thank-you letters as follow-up to networking meetings and interviews

- E-mail letters that might encompass all of the above purposes but often call for a more direct and concise writing style.

Normal Cover letter:

Capture Attention to the employer

Use your opening paragraph to tell readers why you are contacting them. Try to use interesting

language to capture attention and make the reader want to know more about you.

Language and Tone

When writing your job search letters, use a natural tone and simple writing style. Avoid stilted, outdated phrases like “per your request” and “enclosed please find.” Of course, because these are business letters, they should sound more formal than a quick note or e-mail you’d send to a friend, and they must be absolutely correct in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

And keep in mind, employers are interested in people who really want to work at their company. Don’t be afraid to show interest and enthusiasm about starting your career. These are among the most positive qualities you bring to the workplace.

Close the letter

Neatly wrap up your letter with a polite yet assertive closing that asks for an interview;

here’s an example:

Thank you for your consideration. I am enthusiastic about working at Bethpage Books and will call within a few days to see if we can schedule an appointment to meet.

Sincerely,

E-mail Cover Letters

Cover letters that you send by e-mail should be a bit shorter and crisper than mailed letters.

An ideal e-mail cover letter is short enough that it is 100 percent visible in the browser window of most e-mail programs.

 When e-mailing in response to a job ad or posting, follow these steps:

1. Type your cover letter into the e-mail message area.

2. Copy your text resume from the word-processing file and paste it below the cover letter.

3. Run your e-mail program’s spell checker. If your e-mail program does not have a spellchecker, spell check and proofread your resume in the word-processing program before pasting it into the e-mail window. Cover letters (even e-mail cover letters) must be just as perfect as your resume—with no typos, grammatical errors, or careless mistakes.

4. Include a formatted (Microsoft Word) resume as an attachment (unless the ad you’re responding to specifies “no attachments”; in that case, simply send the text version without the attachment).

5. Write a descriptive subject line for your e-mail message. To fit many keywords into the subject line, you might want to abbreviate. Here are a few examples of descriptive subject lines:

PR Assoc (Job #A-924) - BA Northwestern, NBC internship, strong writing skills

Med Rsrch Co-op - UCLA Bio major, hosp. exp., great work ethic

App Developer - Visual Basic, C++, database - recent training - team player

MSW – strong assessment & counseling skills – program mgmt exp

Networking Letters

Networking letters are written to people you know or people you have been referred to. You might be contacting these people about a specific job or simply to ask for their help with your job search.

Most people—as many as 64 percent, according to a 2002 New York Times survey—find jobs through someone they know, not through the Internet or print advertisements; these sources, combined, accounted for only about 15 percent of jobs found, according to the survey.

Your network—your friends and relatives, your parents’ friends, your friends’ parents, and anyone else you can get connected to through anyone you know—is a powerful source of job information, and you should dedicate most of your time during your job search to reaching out to these people. Networking letters are easy to write because you already know the person or have been referred to them, so it’s not a “cold call.” In general, the tone is more informal and less “hard sell” than other types of cover letters.

Thank-You Letters

It’s common courtesy to thank people who have helped you, so be sure you send a thankyou letter to each networking contact who shares time, advice, or contact names with you. After an interview, use a thank-you letter to reinforce your candidacy, reiterate key points, and make a positive impression on the interviewer. Many job candidates don’t take the time to write thank-you letters, so just by doing so you’ll give yourself a competitive advantage.

You can send thank-you letters by e-mail as an immediate follow-up, but they make a stronger impression when you send them by postal mail. Don’t try to hand-write your thank-you letters unless they are very short (one or two sentences) and you have exceptionally clear handwriting. Instead, use your word processor and compose a neat letter with information that will keep on “selling” you even when you’re no longer in front of the interviewer.