Sunday, February 22, 2009

Covering the Cover Letter

No matter who you are there is always more to learn, and everyone who applies for jobs can always do something better. After perusing Collegegrad.com, and reading the advice on cover letters, I now have learned a few awesome tips to help with designing and improving my personal cover letter. Therefore, in this blog post I plan to cover the cover letter and the advice I have picked up in my little research.

Cover letters play a critical role for employment and they must be tailored to the specific company you are applying to. I agree with almost all of the advice offered by the articles on Collegegrad.com, especially the format. The three paragraph introduction, skills/benefits and close is a very effective and simple way to reach a prospective employer. Also, I really liked the two techniques offered, the postscript and testimonial techniques. This advice is a great way to establish your credibility and motivation to join the company. Moreover, I think the sample cover letter is the most useful part of the tutorial. I believe it is going to give me a general idea for which I can personalize my letter. Sometimes by seeing an example it really helps put the pieces to the puzzle together and spur greater thinking. Reading all of the articles have given me some great ideas to brainstorm on and how to go about constructing the cover letter.

Any surprises? As a matter of fact, I had no idea it was appropriate to write a post script, I thought that would be somewhat unprofessional. After reading the article, I have to agree that this will emphasize a person's value to the company and is a great way to get the reader's attention immediately. Additionally, I was unaware that most human resource managers always look at the resume first and push the cover letter aside until they are interested. I guess this does make sense, since they really need to see if someone is qualified before they go any further. All and all, I plan to use the post script technique and the testimonial technique because I believe these will definitely emphasize my skills and benefit to companies. I know there are so many other articles that will help me develop the best cover letter, and I plan on learning more before my job applications next year.

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