There's a big difference between writing a cover letter (here's a list of bad examples) and writing a successful cover letter. A successful cover letter presents you to your potential company as a perfect fit for a certain job offering and it gets you hired. This is why you must come up with a plan on how to craft the cover letter. You need to know what should be in a cover letter and what should not be there. Let's go through this article to see some of the best ways to write cover letters.
Present yourself as a problem solver
Research about the company
Share your story
Be as honest as possible
Greet the hiring staff using their names
Present yourself as a problem solver
Even though it can be tempting to list out all your achievements in your cover letter, you must focus on solving problems for your potential company. This is because it shows them that you care about the job position. This can even make you stand out from other applicants at the same time. Think of it this way. Almost every other applicant will be boosting about their years of experience and so on, when the hiring manager reads through all of this, it will get to a point that everything will start to look generic to him. Showing yourself as a problem solver means you understand what it takes and you are serious for the position.
Research about the company
This is very important in your cover letter. You have to know what type of company it is and the type of industry they are in. Doing this helps you have an idea about their products and services as well as their target customers. Investigate deeper. Do they have diversity as a core value? Once you have some background information, then the next thing is to make findings of the job position you are looking to get into. You need to know the tasks and duties that are expected of you if you get hired. This will help in making your cover letter more targeted towards the job position. You can even recommend how to improve employee engagement by some interesting ideas, but don't be condescending.
Share your story
This is a way of talking about your past achievements and making them more directed towards the job position. Most job postings will ask you to write the number of years of experience that you have. Almost every other applicants will start counting numbers with no way of backing it up. You can simply let them know by giving an example of how you had performed similar tasks in the past and achieved amazing results. Giving a story or description of how you did it in the past is one of the best ways of writing a cover letter.
Be as honest as possible
When it comes to cover letters, you don't want to lie your way into winning the job. If the job requires that you have seven skills and you have just six, say the truth or don't even apply at all. Let the company know that you have substantial knowledge of the skill but you are willing to learn. This simple act shows how truthful and humble you are and even though they are looking for the best applicants, you can still be considered for being truthful.
Greet the hiring staff using their names
Most applicants are used to addressing the hiring managers using formal greetings like "Hello sir", "dear sir" and so on. Even though this can work at times but it even works better to greet the hiring managers using their real names. This acts a hook which sparks the attention of the manager and makes him want to read your cover letter before others. If you don't know the name, you can get the name by calling their official numbers once in a while. Most applicants don't know of this and it gives you a fair advantage over them.
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