7 Tips on How to Write a Cover Letter

The ever-changing hiring landscape has been made harder to navigate by modern digital recruiting practices, and many job candidates are not even sure whether cover letters are still necessary. The answer is short and clear: yes, they absolutely are! In fact, the importance of cover letters has only increased with the rise of digital recruiting and the fierce competition it brought.

According to most recruiting professionals, you should put at least as much energy into the cover letter as your CV. Think of your cover letter as your introduction to the company. Just like any other introduction, the cover letter provides you with an opportunity to make a good first impression on your prospective employer, which is why you should approach it as your chance to shine.

We’ve boiled down everything you need to know to seven tips, but the difficult part is turning our tips into an amazing cover letter that is guaranteed to catch the attention of the hiring manager and help you get one step closer to your dream job.

1 Make Your Cover Letter Job-Specific

Every job is different, and every cover letter you send should reflect this fact. While you might think that it’s enough to re-use the same cover letter over and over again, changing only a few lines each time you send it, we assure you that hiring managers can spot a generic cover letter from a distance.

A generic cover letter tells hiring managers that they’re dealing with a job candidate who isn’t motivated enough to do more than the bare minimum. Yes, doing only the bare minimum might be enough to get you some job, but it will never be enough to get you a good job, let alone a great job.

The jobs that are actually worth fighting for are not given to average job candidates. They are given to those who are willing and able to go the extra mile to make themselves stand out. The easiest way how you can make your cover letter stand out is to customize it to the job for which you’re applying.

2  Don’t Rehash Your CV

The laziest way how you can write a cover letter is to rehash your CV. The problem is that the things hiring managers want to read in a cover letter are not the same things that are communicated by your CV, which is essentially a written overview of a person’s experience and other qualifications for a job opportunity.

Your cover letter should encourage the hiring manager to read your CV—not the other way around. It should clearly communicate your personal story, why you want the job, and what you as an individual can bring to the company.

The cover letter also provides you with an opportunity to address any gaps your resume may contain. But if you decide to talk about those two years you spent working on your failed business after high-school, make sure to do it a way that tells something positive about you, such as how you’ve learned from the experience.

3 Don’t Talk Only About Yourself

Always remember that your cover letter shouldn’t be just about you. Make sure to mention the company you are applying for and tell them why attracts you to them. Be as specific as possible and avoid stating what’s obvious. The hiring manager knows when the company was founded, and they’re well aware of the company’s commitment to reducing its carbon footprint.

What the hiring manager doesn’t know is why you’re personally impressed with the company’s commitment to reducing its carbon footprint and how you could help the company achieve its goal.

If you don’t know much about the company, do some research and don’t be afraid to send a few emails to its marketing or public relations department—just not from your main email account. You’ll be better off delaying sending your resume and cover letter by a few days than writing a cookie-cutter cover letter.

4 Make It Look Great

It’s not just the content of your cover letter that will, hopefully, leave a lasting impression on the hiring manager but also its form. If you’re not a graphic designer, you most likely have no clue how to design a good-looking cover letter, but that’s not a problem. Fortunately, there are many websites with professionally designed cover letter templates, including Envato.

Cover letter templates are not expensive, and they are infinitely better than plain Word documents. It doesn’t take much skill or effort to fill in a cover letter template, and nobody will ever ask you if you’ve created it yourself. And if they ask, just tell them the truth—it’s the effort that counts after all.

Just make sure to send your professionally designed cover letter as a PDF document to guarantee that it will display at it should on all devices and across all operating systems. Include the .docx version only when asked to do so.

5 Don’t Be Afraid to Drop Names  

Everyone starts their cover letter with, “Dear sir/madam.” Your goal should be to stand out, and one very effective way how to do just that is to address the hiring manager by name.

• Address with: “Dear Mr. Smith/Dear Ms. Jones”
• Thank the hiring manager for their time: “Thank you for taking the time to consider my candidacy.”

Sometimes, the name of the hiring manager is mentioned in the job offer, and sometimes it takes a bit of googling to find it. Don’t be afraid to mention any personal connections you have within the company, but try to be nonchalant about it. You don’t want to come off as someone who expects to get the job just because they know someone who works for the company.

6 Keep It Short and Sweet

You should try to keep your cover letter between 1/2 and 2/3 of a page long. Two-pagers are completely out of the question, and you can’t reasonably expect the hiring manager to carefully read dozens of one-page-long cover letters sent in response to a single job offer.

Most hiring managers skim and look for the juiciest parts, so your goal should be to make every paragraph as interesting as possible. In other words, each paragraph of your cover letter should be interesting enough to convince the hiring manager to carefully read it from start to finish without skipping a single sentence. So, skip lengthy exposition and get to the point straight away.  

7 Thoroughly Proofread Your Cover Letter

The last tip should be obvious, but experience tells us that we need to mention it because way too many job candidates send their cover letters without proofreading them first. It takes just one grammar mistake to make the hiring manager toss your resume into the garbage, which is why you should never skip proofreading.

If you know that your grammar is lacking or if English isn’t your first language, we recommend you pay someone else to proofread your resume for you. Sites like Fiverr.com or Upwork.com allow you to easily find a freelance proofreader willing to correct your cover letter within 24 hours.