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If you were giving a beautiful piece of jewellery to someone, you wouldn't wrap it in yesterday's newspaper would you?

So why would you go to all the trouble of crafting a fabulous resume, only to send it with a half hearted, poorly crafted covering letter?

Well, you wouldn't. Not if you were really serious about getting that ideal job.

A well thought out and carefully written covering letter is the first step to selling yourself to a prospective employer. So make it count.

Focus on the job at hand. It's fine to tell a prospective employer how great you are. But people are only interested in how your greatness relates specifically to the position they are looking to fill. In other words, do you have the particular skills and talents they need? So make it relevant. Find out exactly what the job will entail and tailor your cover letter accordingly.

Less is more. There is no need to write more than one single page for a covering letter. Successful people are busy, and brevity is appreciated.

Do some research first. Before you write your letter, why not call or visit the place where you wish to be employed? A bit of background will add some substance to your letter.

The best type of letter is one which is typed. Don't handwrite unless specifically instructed to do so, which would be highly unusual. (Unless you were going for a job as a calligrapher).

Get the little things right. Make sure that the names are spelled correctly - in fact, make sure ALL words are spelt right. Check the grammar and punctuation. Don't use words that sound impressive if you're unsure of their meaning. Make sure that the date is correct and of course, that your contact information is right.

Don't exaggerate ... too much. It's OK to gild the lily a little bit when it comes to your experience and credentials. Everyone tries to put as a positive a spin as they possible can on themselves. But don't go overboard. You should be able to work out how much is too much.

Some fine cover letter examples

Here are some examples of some great cover letters examples written by some successful job applicants before you. Have a read, and get some inspiration.

Project Manager

Why it was a winner...

• Covers the requirements indicated in the ad
• Solid précis of work experience, - easy for a consultant to refer to
• Indicates by default what the candidate considers to be his strengths

I am a professional project manager with expertise in the use of personal computers to manage the projects and risk analysis; and dealing with customers and staff. My strengths include the ability to manage staff during periods of change, generating management reports and problem solving, and creating satisfied customers. I have worked for six different organizations, from a private enterprise small business, to a large domestic telecommunications provider, two multinational telecommunications suppliers, two large metropolitan hospitals and an entertainment organization. The skills I can bring immediately to the job are:

• To prepare Project Management procedures for a new IT organization, assume control of existing projects inherited from other divisions and manage and create the project office environment for new staff.
• Project Management of critical telecommunications projects (PABX's, radio paging, networked dictation solution) for a hospital group spread over a large area.
• Year 2000 project management training and experience in implementing solutions to overcome risk exposure.
• Hands on experience in work station rollout for a state government department.
• Telecommunications network design experience and business financial management of design sections.
• IT teams management during a critical development phase for a major telecommunications provider.
• Specifications, design and project management of a Dictation system.
• Project management experiences that involved negotiating contract variations and substantial management of sub-contractor relationships.
• Developed and maintained performance reporting (to senior management) which was linked to generate the necessary reports, thereby enabling a proactive approach to dealing with the customer.
• Approved the invoicing of the project management service.
• Analysed data to identify regional performance issues and develop options for corrective action to be taken.
• Negotiated the equipment type and timing for customer's projects, resolving any contractual issues that arose.

I have been required to participate in, and manage, teams of up to fifteen members. My management style is participative with a focus on developing and empowering others to achieve business objectives. I look forward to discussing this opportunity with you.

Personal assistant/admin

Why it was a winner:

Shows a clear understanding of:

• The structure of the company
• Where the advertised position fitted into the company
• The company's products and its markets

Dear Mr Klein

I wish to apply for the position of Personal Assistant (your reference 0900/A) as advertised on SEEK.

For your consideration I have enclosed my résumé. I believe that my résumé will demonstrate that I have the complete range of skills and experience to be able to achieve in the advertised position including the communication and computer skills mentioned. It is harder in a résumé to demonstrate the personal qualities and beliefs that I have which are also necessary to be a good Personal Assistant (PA).

The manufacturing industry is going through a period of significant change and it is important that senior managers are able to devote their energies to ensuring that gains result from this change. I believe that PAs should assist in this process by freeing senior managers to devote time to the serious issues while the PA takes care of the more peripheral issues.

To do this successfully the PA must be able to develop a relationship with a senior manager built on understanding, trust and the ability to keep confidences. It is the quality of this relationship which often is as much the measure of the efficiency of a PA as the technical skills.

A good PA also has a broad understanding of the structures of the company, the industry in general, the markets for the company products and influencing factors on those markets.

I understand the importance of a good PA and I am sure that my referees will attest to my good nature and my personal qualities as well as my skills and experience. This is why I am applying for this position.

I look forward to hearing from you soon. I am available for interview any time at your convenience.

Yours sincerely

Alice Smith

Trade/Machinist

• Clear reference to the position
• Brief but succinct - highlights the core skills needed

Dear Mr Wayne

I wish to apply for the position of machinist (ref 301/00) that was advertised on www.seek.com.au on 20 August 2000.

I have over five year’s experience as a Machinist with Weaveanduck and have experience of a wide variety of pattern techniques. My technical skills are second-to-none, and I have an excellent record as a reliable, productive employee.

I am looking for new challenges and the position of Machinist sounds the perfect opportunity. Your organisation has an enviable record in innovation in machining, and an excellent reputation as an employer, making the position even more attractive.

I enclose my resume for your inspection and look forward to hearing from you soon. I am available for interview at your convenience.

An intern letter has to standout from hundreds of others. This one won a Microsoft internship because:

"This is a great letter. It's well written, highlights current projects and degree background and best of all, includes her technical skills. It also showed her motivation when she mentions what an invaluable experience she believes this would be."

Dear Sir/Madam

I wish to apply for the position of Technology Specialist Intern as advertised [publication] on [date]. I believe I would enjoy the challenge and the opportunity to learn provided by this position. I also recognise the invaluable experience that would be gained working with the largest name in the industry.

I am currently completing my Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics)/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science) degrees at [university]. Over the past two years in particular, I have achieved an average Grade Point of 4.96 (on a 7 point ascending scale) in subjects completed. I have attained academic excellence in subjects involving large professional-style projects, communications, management and business skills.

My involvement in the operation of EESEC, the largest single-campus student society in Queensland, has strengthened my leadership, teamwork, problem-solving and decision-making abilities and has enabled me to acquire expertise in all facets of successful business administration. I believe that these factors, along with my broad information technology and engineering knowledge base, my extensive experience with the Microsoft suite of products and my personal skills such as initiative, creativity, adaptability and a willingness to learn will enable me to excel in the role of a Microsoft Intern.

Please find attached my resume and academic transcript. I would appreciate the opportunity of an interview and I can be contacted at the above addresses, on my home phone [telephone number] or via a message left on my paging service [number].

Yours faithfully

Create your Europass Cover Letter

Europass helps you to develop a structured, consistent and professional cover letter guiding you through each step. You can create new cover letters or edit existing ones using the Europass tool to create and edit cover letters.

How does Europass help?

Europass will guide you step by step through the process to help you create a good cover letter with all the essential information. You can create, store and share cover letters in 31 languages , choose from different templates to customise your application and share them easily from your Europass Library . 

Create your Europass

How to write a good cover letter

A cover letter should highlight your motivation to apply for a specific job or opportunity, and demonstrate why you consider yourself to be the best candidate. Your cover letter should refer to particular examples in your CV and describe why these are relevant for the job vacancy you are applying for.

Read carefully

Read the vacancy notice carefully and highlight the skills that relate to the requirements of the position in your cover letter.

Use keywords

Use the keywords when you list your soft skills as mentioned on the vacancy notice (punctual, organised, team-player and so on).

Have short and clear paragraphs that show different aspects clearly.

Get to know the employer

Take time to research the employer to gain valuable insights into the culture of their organisation and make references in your cover letter to one or two key points.

Keep it short

You cover letter should not be longer than one page.

• First paragraph - why you are motivated to apply for the position,
• Second paragraph - how you are the most suitable candidate for the position, and
• Third Paragraph - why the company is a good match for you.

Use formal tone

Use a formal, polite tone and make sure there are no spelling mistakes.

Use simple fonts

Use simple non-decorative font styles, normal font-sizes (11-12) and optimal spacing (1 or 1.5).

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How to Write a Cover Letter That Will Get You a Job

I ’ve read thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of cover letters in my career. If you’re thinking that sounds like really boring reading, you’re right. What I can tell you from enduring that experience is that most cover letters are terrible — and not only that, but squandered opportunities. When a cover letter is done well, it can significantly increase your chances of getting an interview, but the vast majority fail that test.

So let’s talk about how to do cover letters right.

First, understand the point of a cover letter.

The whole idea of a cover letter is that it can help the employer see you as more than just your résumé. Managers generally aren’t hiring based solely on your work history; your experience is crucial, yes, but they’re also looking for someone who will be easy to work with, shows good judgment, communicates well, possesses strong critical thinking skills and a drive to get things done, complements their current team, and all the other things you yourself probably want from your co-workers. It’s tough to learn much about those things from job history alone, and that’s where your cover letter comes in.

Because of that …

Whatever you do, don’t just summarize your résumé.

The No. 1 mistake people make with cover letters is that they simply use them to summarize their résumé. This makes no sense — hiring managers don’t need a summary of your résumé! It’s on the very next page! They’re about to see it as soon as they scroll down. And if you think about it, your entire application is only a few pages (in most cases, a one- or two-page résumé and a one-page cover letter) — why would you squander one of those pages by repeating the content of the others? And yet, probably 95 percent of the cover letters I see don’t add anything new beyond the résumé itself (and that’s a conservative estimate).

Instead, your cover letter should go beyond your work history to talk about things that make you especially well-suited for the job. For example, if you’re applying for an assistant job that requires being highly organized and you neurotically track your household finances in a detailed, color-coded spreadsheet, most hiring managers would love to know that because it says something about the kind of attention to detail you’d bring to the job. That’s not something you could put on your résumé, but it can go in your cover letter.

Or maybe your last boss told you that you were the most accurate data processor she’d ever seen, or came to rely on you as her go-to person whenever a lightning-fast rewrite was needed. Maybe your co-workers called you “the client whisperer” because of your skill in calming upset clients. Maybe you’re regularly sought out by more senior staff to help problem-solve, or you find immense satisfaction in bringing order to chaos. Those sorts of details illustrate what you bring to the job in a different way than your résumé does, and they belong in your cover letter.

If you’re still stumped, pretend you’re writing an email to a friend about why you’d be great at the job. You probably wouldn’t do that by stiffly reciting your work history, right? You’d talk about what you’re good at and how you’d approach the work. That’s what you want here.

You don’t need a creative opening line.

If you think you need to open the letter with something creative or catchy, I am here to tell you that you don’t. Just be simple and straightforward:

• “I’m writing to apply for your X position.”

• “I’d love to be considered for your X position.”

• “I’m interested in your X position because …”

• “I’m excited to apply for your X position.”

That’s it! Straightforward is fine — better, even, if the alternative is sounding like an aggressive salesperson.

Show, don’t tell.

A lot of cover letters assert that the person who wrote it would excel at the job or announce that the applicant is a skillful engineer or a great communicator or all sorts of other subjective superlatives. That’s wasted space — the hiring manager has no reason to believe it, and so many candidates claim those things about themselves that most managers ignore that sort of self-assessment entirely. So instead of simply declaring that you’re great at X (whatever X is), your letter should demonstrate that. And the way you do that is by describing accomplishments and experiences that illustrate it.

Here’s a concrete example taken from one extraordinarily effective cover-letter makeover that I saw. The candidate had originally written, “I offer exceptional attention to detail, highly developed communication skills, and a talent for managing complex projects with a demonstrated ability to prioritize and multitask.” That’s pretty boring and not especially convincing, right? (This is also exactly how most people’s cover letters read.)

In her revised version, she wrote this instead:

“In addition to being flexible and responsive, I’m also a fanatic for details — particularly when it comes to presentation. One of my recent projects involved coordinating a 200-page grant proposal: I proofed and edited the narratives provided by the division head, formatted spreadsheets, and generally made sure that every line was letter-perfect and that the entire finished product conformed to the specific guidelines of the RFP. (The result? A five-year, $1.5 million grant award.) I believe in applying this same level of attention to detail to tasks as visible as prepping the materials for a top-level meeting and as mundane as making sure the copier never runs out of paper.”

That second version is so much more compelling and interesting — and makes me believe that she really is great with details.

If there’s anything unusual or confusing about your candidacy, address it in the letter.

Your cover letter is your chance to provide context for things that otherwise might seem confusing or less than ideal to a hiring manager. For example, if you’re overqualified for the position but are excited about it anyway, or if you’re a bit underqualified but have reason to think you could excel at the job, address that up front. Or if your background is in a different field but you’re actively working to move into this one, say so, talk about why, and explain how your experience will translate. Or if you’re applying for a job across the country from where you live because you’re hoping to relocate to be closer to your family, let them know that.

If you don’t provide that kind of context, it’s too easy for a hiring manager to decide you’re the wrong fit or applying to everything you see or don’t understand the job description and put you in the “no” pile. A cover letter gives you a chance to say, “No, wait — here’s why this could be a good match.”

Keep the tone warm and conversational.

While there are some industries that prize formal-sounding cover letters — like law — in most fields, yours will stand out if it’s warm and conversational. Aim for the tone you’d use if you were writing to a co-worker whom you liked a lot but didn’t know especially well. It’s okay to show some personality or even use humor; as long as you don’t go overboard, your letter will be stronger for it.

Don’t use a form letter.

You don’t need to write every cover letter completely from scratch, but if you’re not customizing it to each job, you’re doing it wrong. Form letters tend to read like form letters, and they waste the chance to speak to the specifics of what this employer is looking for and what it will take to thrive in this particular job.

If you’re applying for a lot of similar jobs, of course you’ll end up reusing language from one letter to the next. But you shouldn’t have a single cover letter that you wrote once and then use every time you apply; whatever you send should sound like you wrote it with the nuances of this one job in mind.

A good litmus test is this: Could you imagine other applicants for this job sending in the same letter? If so, that’s a sign that you haven’t made it individualized enough to you and are probably leaning too heavily on reciting your work history.

No, you don’t need to hunt down the hiring manager’s name.

If you read much job-search advice, at some point you’ll come across the idea that you need to do Woodward and Bernstein–level research to hunt down the hiring manager’s name in order to open your letter with “Dear Matilda Jones.” You don’t need to do this; no reasonable hiring manager will care. If the name is easily available, by all means, feel free to use it, but otherwise “Dear Hiring Manager” is absolutely fine. Take the hour you just freed up and do something more enjoyable with it.

Keep it under one page.

If your cover letters are longer than a page, you’re writing too much, and you risk annoying hiring managers who are likely sifting through hundreds of applications and don’t have time to read lengthy tomes. On the other hand, if you only write one paragraph, it’s unlikely that you’re making a compelling case for yourself as a candidate — not impossible, but unlikely. For most people, something close to a page is about right.

Don’t agonize over the small details.

What matters most about your cover letter is its content. You should of course ensure that it’s well-written and thoroughly proofread, but many job seekers agonize over elements of the letter that really don’t matter. I get tons of  questions from job seekers  about whether they should attach their cover letter or put it in the body of the email (answer: No one cares, but attaching it makes it easier to share and will preserve your formatting), or what to name the file (again, no one really cares as long as it’s reasonably professional, but when people are dealing with hundreds of files named “resume,” it’s courteous to name it with your full name).

Approaching your cover letter like this can make a huge difference in your job search. It can be the thing that moves your application from the “maybe” pile (or even the “no” pile) to the “yes” pile. Of course, writing cover letters like this will take more time than sending out the same templated letter summarizing your résumé — but 10 personalized, compelling cover letters are likely to get you more  interview invitations  than 50 generic ones will.

• ‘I Had a Great Job Interview — Why Haven’t I Heard Back?’
• How to Answer ‘Tell Me About Yourself’ in a Job Interview

Cold Stone & Cover Letters

Join us for Cold Stone & Cover Letters – a delicious lesson in the art of cover letter writing in the Student Success Center on April 10 from 2-4 pm! Laura Rudolph, director of career engagement, and Todd Richardson, student success coach, will be guiding students through some of the best practices when writing cover letters. The cherry on top of this event? Cold Stone Creamery will be here! Pun totally intended. 

All students who participate in the cover letter workshop will receive their ice cream for free!

P.S. If you have a cover letter prepared, bring it! If there’s a specific job you’d like to apply for, bring that information and we can help you cater yours to that position!

Don’t forget to RSVP so that we can ALL scream for ice cream! 

Cold Stone & Cover Letters

• Name * First Last
• Class Year *
• Getting feedback on a cover letter I've already written
• Getting help writing a cover letter for a specific job I'd like to apply for
• Hanging out with Laura and Todd
• Eating free ice cream!
• Going to as many Career Engagement events as possible because I want to be super prepared for my career
• Social media

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Letter: Seeking transparency at city council…

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Opinion Letters to the Editor

Subscriber only, letter: seeking transparency at city council meetings.

At the Tuesday April 2 Chico City Council meeting I observed concern for transparency and cooperation from differing perspectives.

Councilmember Winslow was forced to give comments from the floor during public comment time. His fellow city councilors had refused to allow for routine reports on their activities as servants to the community in other capacities than the city council meetings. His issues of concern:  the lack of  grant applications to support passenger rail service to Chico; while utility rate increases continue, the city is not pursuing less expensive or greener utility services for its residents and this city council has chosen to make it difficult for city councilors to agendize issues, thus slowing discussion and consideration of council business. All predicated by partisanship.

Later, Mayor Coolidge commented on the legislative process in Sacramento regarding Assembly Bill 481 (which requires police departments to report ownership of militarized equipment annually). Coolidge said that the entire process of this requirement was a ‘partisan farce’. This law passed both the state assembly and state senate with over 60% approval.

I found it ironic that Coolidge seemed upset by the State Legislature enacting laws approved by their majorities while his city council has created highly partisan rules that limit discussion of issues important to our community.

It’s time for a change in Chico.

— Loree Monroe, Chico

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