Cover Letter Advice:
9 More Free Tips!

Here's some cover letter advice - 9 more tips that can further help to ensure your job search success!

Cover Letter Advice Part 1: Customize Your Cover Letter!

Customizing your cover letter is the #1 most important of all my resume cover letter writing tips.

Customizing or targeting means carefully and specifically matching your ...

1) Skills and attributes,

2) Experience and accomplishments,

3) Specialized knowledge, and

4) Relevant education and training

... to the qualifications and responsibilities listed in the job description or posting. Keep your focus on what I call these “Big 4” issues of merit.

Give the employer what they want: Stick to the posting; be specific in your job search: Always prepare your cover letter and resume in a customized, custom-tailored or targeted fashion for those specific, real job postings that you are passionately interested in winning.

This will ensure that your writing is inspired, attracting the employer’s attention and motivating her to read your entire cover letter and then on into your resume without missing a beat.

This contrasts with the generic, general or “form” cover letter, which offers few if any advantages to either you or the employer.

Cover Letter Advice Part 2: Job Posting Keyword Links

The job posting is a fascinating document filled with many clues about what the employer most wants from you. Take time to dissect it and create keyword links between it and your customized resume.

Keywords are particular words – single words or word phrases - from the job posting that represent important qualities sought from job applicants. They’re words that are important to the employer. Do both yourself and the employer a favour by acknowledging their importance.

Search for and print out several job postings that interest you right now. Start with the one that interests you most. Take lots of time to review each posting very carefully. Read the entire job description 5 to 10 times; memorize it and internalize it.

Become very familiar with the specific qualifications and responsibilities, and the keywords carefully chosen by the employer to describe them.

Really study the job posting as if it’s the very last page of a fascinating novel. Study each job posting as if it’s on a big exam you’re studying for in your high school, college or university exams.

Look for clues – what’s mentioned first? Read carefully to pick out keywords – words that are emphasized in any way: Repeated, typed in bold or italics, given top billing at the beginning of the qualifications list or specifically referred to as “assets.”

Include several of these keyword links from the job posting in your cover letter to help the employer start to think, feel and understand the connection or match between the two documents. You want the employer to read your resume and cover letter and think, “Wow, I could have written this!”

Sprinkle the keywords here and there throughout your cover letter. For all you web designers out there, this is similar to optimizing the on-page “hooks” of a newly-written web page.

Cover Letter Advice Part 3: Make Every Word Count!

Another important piece of cover letter advice is to put yourself in the employer’s shoes when you write your cover letter, resume and thank you letter.

Employers are very busy. We can show respect for employers by remaining aware of their needs, and the best way to do this is to make every word count.

Keep in mind or even assume the main idea that the human resources representative who reads your cover letter may have already read well over 100 cover letters that day.

It could be even worse for her. Maybe she’s been at work for 12 hours and it’s well past dinner time but she’s still in her office reading, searching, hoping for someone who knows how to write a cover letter! :-)

She will have a migraine headache after these several hours of reading what are for the most part rather dry, boring and unappealing cover letters. The last letter she read before yours made her go “Ugghhh!” even though there was no one in the room to share her chagrin with.

And then much to her good fortune and delight she finally happens upon your letter. How can you make life easier for her, and make her deeply appreciate the high-value content of your writing?

What would you want to see in the ideal cover letter if you were her? I’ll give you some clues, but I want you to really think about it and put yourself in the employer’s shoes.

Cover Letter Advice Part 4: Only Include the Essential Points

In my opinion, you can most help the employer by being efficient, concise, succinct; as brief as possible, while still including all of the essential points you need to make to show that you’re the best candidate. Make every word powerful, meaningful and relevant - make every word count!

A client recently asked me whether or not she had to fit everything mentioned on the job description into her cover letter, in one page or less.

I replied,

"I agree that your second paragraph is full of important information. However, there’s no expectation that you’re going to fit “everything” into the one page. The cover letter is designed to highlight your qualifications. On the other hand, the resume is designed to address everything (or as much as possible) requested by the employer via the job description."

There’s no need to share every last detail in your cover letter – only the key highlights of your experience, education and specialized knowledge along with how you are inspired to help the employer meet client or customer needs.

Remember that the goal of your cover letter is to spark initial interest, not do the entire job of persuading the employer to invite you for an interview. That’s too large for one step. So there’s another step in-between: The resume.

The cover letter is a well-written “teaser.” :-) Let the cover letter be “just right,” such that the employer quickly looks to the resume to answer questions or a desire for further information that naturally arise from reading it.

When I write a cover letter, I give employers what they need – just that and nothing more, nothing less. I don’t write of speak anything over and above the essentials, what things they absolutely need to know about: The "Big 4" issues of merit that I outlined above.

Cover Letter Advice Part 5: Employer Screening/Attitude

Speaking as someone who has been in the “employer role” myself a few times, I can confirm that the main focus throughout most of the hiring and selection process is one of elimination.

Employers are skeptical and rather protective against hiring “the wrong person.” Until they reduce the number of applications down to their small “short list,” they seek to eliminate your application from their pile.

They could do this for a wide variety of reasons, including ...

a) Poor grammar, spelling punctuation, typos and proofreading.

b) Applications that completely lack cover letters are also often destined for the shredder, as are

c) Those that don’t use a professional format (“look and feel”) or where

d) The “Big 4” (as I've described above) are not prominently featured in such as way that the employer will notice them quickly upon first glance – within 30 seconds.

Please ... don’t give employers any reason to eliminate your application from consideration!

Cover Letter Advice Part 6: For Best Results, Write Many Drafts

For your cover letter, resume and thank you letters, you’ll get your best results if you write many drafts. Don’t rush through the writing process.

For your first draft, do a lot of brainstorming and feel free to write a lot of “raw data” – let yourself be creative and open to any new ideas. Especially valuable are unique phrases that you express in a unique way or in your own words – these often have extra “punch” and are very attractive to the employer who reads them.

Don’t focus much on the structure, length or fine tuning of your cover letter until you’ve given yourself a lot of opportunity to gather information. In other words, information gathering always comes before decision making.

If the posting deadline allows for it, take at least a few days to improve, fine tune and finally perfect your cover letter and resume – especially for new job opportunities that really excite you or that you really really want.

Review all of the cover letter articles on this site to ensure that you’re including all of the important “success elements.” Then mull it over, let it simmer, sleep on it, and read it over and over for possible changes including proofreading corrections.

Cover Letter Advice Part 7: Read it Back to Yourself Carefully

Once you’ve built the core 5-paragraph structure of your cover letter, read it back to yourself as if you’re a total stranger – as if you know nothing about you or the job posting. Take lots of time to carefully edit it.

Don’t use big, hard to understand or uncommon words – they might confuse, distract or intimidate.

Use well-understood terms such as the appropriate monetary units. Convert foreign currencies to the values used in the country you’re applying to. For instance, if you’ve moving from Japan to the United States, express your sales outcomes in U.S. dollars rather than Japanese yen.

Make sure that each sentence flows easily and that you write it in the active voice (don’t use word combinations like “was,” “will be” and “has been.”

Cover Letter Advice Part 8: Proofread it to Perfection

Carefully review my article on cover letter formatting as part of your careful proofreading process.

Proofread your cover letters carefully for grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization and spacing. Read it several times silently, and check it carefully after every time you make a correction.

Read it out loud to yourself and/or another – does it sound good? Are you pleased with it or a little embarrassed about some of the wording. Be honest with yourself, and courageously continue the editing process until you are truly satisfied and proud.

You could even read it backwards! :-) It will help you to correct additional errors you might have missed.

Then ask a trusted friend or family member to check it in a similar way before you send out an application for a job you hope to win.

In a nutshell, go through your cover letter with a “fine-tooth comb” before sending it off to an employer.

Cover Letter Advice Part 9: Follow Through!

My final piece of cover letter advice: Follow up exactly as you state on your cover letter to demonstrate your follow-through, organizational and time management skills and your punctuality, reliability and professionalism.

Follow up as you said you were going to in your cover letter – a good general time frame is one week.

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