How To Get A Job Faster With A Cover Letter

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Well, such an edge actually exists. There's no such thing as a sure thing in this field, but the edge I'm talking about can rocket your odds of snagging a job faster and seriously reduce your time spent on the prowl. What is this edge? It's called a cover letter.

I've told people before that to turn a resume in that doesn't have a cover letter would be like showing up buck-naked to a serious interview. As you can imagine...you wouldn't likely do too well in that situation. It'd be much better to show up in a gorgeous Armani suit, would it not? That would create a great first impression, showing your businesslike side and making the employer think of what a profitable relationship they could have with the hardworking, responsible person you are. Armani, thy name is "Cover Letter."

The cover letter is always the first round of elimination. The more impressive your cover letter, the better you start out. It's the first line of culling, and it separates the Armani suits from the nudists. If you have a great cover letter, you can stay in the running, while the folks with the poor ones or none at all will go back to the beach empty handed.

So what do you do to improve your cover letter? Why don't you try looking at some example cover letters that have worked for other people? It'd be a bad idea to copy someone else's letter, but learning from examples and utilizing someone else's technique is pure genius. Ask yourself a variety of questions as you read the examples, such as why this worked for them and what makes it different from yours.

Not only will this help your skills at writing cover letters, but it also builds critical-thinking and analysis skills that will become very useful in the workplace and make you more valuable to your employers. Higher value equals better job stability, so that's never a bad thing.

And above all, I must stress to you that the cover letter has two essential key purposes. If it doesn't do these two jobs, it can be considered a failure. A successful cover letter needs to first outline your skills and qualifications, and also encourage an interview. The first is fairly obvious, since a cover letter is made to accompany a resume...you'd expect it to have to do with your qualifications.

Most important, however, is that a cover letter MUST pave the way for an interview. If your cover letter doesn't broach the subject of an interview or even flat-out try to set one up, you're not achieving the full effect of what a cover letter can do for you. It's the job of the cover letter to make an employer stop seeing you as just another sheet of paper in an endless stack cluttering up his desk, and get you in front of that person as one of the few well-qualified people for the job. The cover letter is the conduit for you to move from textual communication to face-to-face communication. If your cover letter can get you into an interview, you can finally call it a success.