Cover Letter Help - Writing Errors To Avoid
By Teena Rose
To ensure you’re always using an effective cover letter,
let’s review the letter’s intended purpose. A cover
letter primarily connects your resume to an open position. To
understand the importance of such a connection, you only need to
put yourself in the position of a hiring manager for a
day. Hiring managers, recruiters, HR personnel and others
within the hiring realm, see several dozen — or potentially a
hundred or thousand — resumes per day. How receptive
would you be at matching resumes up with open positions within your
company?
A cover letter not only needs to spell out how you’re a
perfect fit for the position, but can also address salary issues,
employment gaps, and any other qualification discrepancies, along
with willingness to travel, availability for interviews, and
provide a catalog list on how your career history matches the
company’s requirements.
Don’t utilize a general cover letter. As I mentioned
above, “matching resumes up with open positions” is not
necessarily part of the hiring reps job description. All incoming
job inquiries should specifically outline intended focus, making
the jobs on those on the hiring sides of the table a little bit
easier.
Use a cover letter about 95% of the time. The only
exception is when the resume is hand-delivered to a hiring manager
or when a phone or in-person discussion resulted in agreement to
have the resume dropped by.
Below is a list of errors to avoid when sending a resume to
hiring companies:
ADDRESSED VAGUELY, OR WORSE, TO NO ONE.
Failing to list contact name, this shows lack of detail, not to
mention, allowing the document to float around the office rather
than sitting on the desk of the hiring agent. What if no contact
information is available? Make a phone call to the company, or ask
someone in your network for a contact name. Anytime you can add a
personal salutation to your correspondence, you increase your
chances of it being seen by the right person.
INCOMPLETE OR INACCURATE ADDRESS. Go the
extra mile by searching online for the company’s website, or
minimally, mention of the company somewhere so you extract a proper
mailing address. Double-check everything — even if you pulled
the address from the phone book, a classified ad, or the company
website. Check two different locations to verify that the address
you’re listing is 100% accurate and complete.
LACK OF BUSINESS FORMAT. The lack of
proper business format is another common mistake. Use
acceptable business format margins (.75” to 1.0” left
and right) and knowing when to indent and double space. To add an
additional amount of flair to your letter, utilize the same font,
margins, and header as with your resume. When viewed as an entire
package, it will look very professional and consistent.
MARGINS, FONT, PICA, AND WRITTEN MATERIAL APPEAR
SLOPPY. Impression applied to any hiring agent is
based on the overall appearance of your cover letter because
it’s the first item seen before proceeding onto the
resume. If a cover letter arrives on that person’s desk
without consistent margins, font, pica, and without effective
writing, your document has the potential of being “dead in
the water” before the reader even thinks of turning the
page.
UNRELATED SKILLS OR QUALIFICATIONS OVERSHADOW THOSE
WHICH SHOULD BE FRONT AND CENTER is probably the most
common mistake candidates make. A highly skilled and educated
person is wise to mention significant achievements that pertain to
his or her current position or title. Listing irrelevant
information in the cover letter can actually leave a negative
impression; so revolve every sentence in your letter around the
company’s needs and expectations of you.
By following these simple dos and don’ts, writing a
cover letter should become somewhat painless. One last word
of caution, however. Before sending any document, ensure to
proofread, proofread, and proofread! A person can never be too
careful when the fate of a great job is on the line.
