Hate to break this to you, but your cover letter stinks. It’s not your eloquence or your experience, it’s the whole idea of a cover letter to begin with. Recruiters and hiring managers see thousands of resumes and do not have the time to read your page long description of your hopes and dreams. This is a tough lesson to learn, but it’s an important one: KEEP IT SIMPLE!
Today recruiters and hiring managers use resume and cover letter screening tools in addition to reading them. What these tools do is look for keywords in your resume to match up with what they are searching for. Only some screening tools read cover letters and 80% of recruiters and hiring managers skip to resumes without bothering with cover letters.
However, do not skip the cover letter. Some recruiters and hiring managers won’t look at a resumé if it doesn’t have a cover letter. It’s a tricky beast to tame, but you can do it if you follow these expert cover letter writing tips!
- Salutation: Skip the whole ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ BS. What that salutation shows is that you were too lazy to find out the hiring manager’s name. If you need to, call the company and ask for a name. If you can’t be bothered, or you can’t find it out, skip it all together and get to the point.
- Short & Sweet: Plan on saying everything you have to say in one paragraph. Like we said, recruiters have zero time so make it easier for them.
- Name it: Make sure you mention the name of the company in the first sentences of your letter and why you want to work there. Keep it truthful and sincere because recruiters and hiring managers are like sincerity bloodhounds and will sniff out a lie in a flash.
- Mobile Friendly: The fantastic recruiters at Search Solution Group do work even after hours and outside of the office. Making your cover letter mobile friendly ( meaning short and neatly organized) gives your cover letter a higher chance of actually being read. No one wants to have to zoom in and scroll to read anything, much less a cover letter.
- Typos: Read your cover letter and resumé a million times before hitting send. If you have terrible grammar and a sordid past with typos, have someone trustworthy read it for you.
- Be Eye-Catching: After a cover letter has been deemed worthy by a screening tool, the recruiter still wants to be convinced why yours is the one to pick. Being straightforward and sincere are good like we said, but taking it a step further and asking a good intelligent question is another way to get a recruiter to call you. However, as much as you want to ask, it can’t be a question like, ‘how much travel is there?’ or ‘what’s the pay?’.
- Refer To Your Resume: By making a quick reference to your resume in on of your few sentences of your cover letter, it makes the recruiter subconsciously look at your resumé which brings you a step closer to being called!
- Sign Your Name: If this is a paper cover letter, you better sign it at the bottom. If it is an online cover letter, type your name. It’s simple, but a surprising amount of people forget to put their name on the letter.
Once you get far enough to become a candidate for a job with our recruiters at Search Solution Group, you will get even more advice for your resumé and how to present yourself best on paper. We know that you have Top Talent and our recruiters will make you even better!
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