Saturday, September 26, 2009

Cover letter professionalism

+Tailor your cover letter to the job announcement. Yes, you will have to create many cover letters.

+At a minimum, triple-check every cover letter for errors before submission. Do not rely on spell-check. (During one of my interviews my interviewer kindly informed me that I had misspelled the scientific name of a plant. Yikes. He was correct. I apologized and told him I would fix it immediately.) So...Do you have the correct date? Is the potential employer's name spelled correctly? Did you spell your name and address correctly? (It is hard to believe someone would do such a thing but it has been done...).

+Email cover letters in a PDF unless specified otherwise. This file format looks more professional. Don't know how? Here is a video from Microsoft that demonstrates how to do this.

1 comment:

  1. It doesn't all have to be grueling, though. I have applied to many, many jobs throughout my 8+ years of professional employment. I have two or three basic cover letter templates I work from - based on the type of job (field-based, office-based and research). I make minor changes to all of these so that they are specific to the job. It is important to remember your cover letter should only be two or three paragraphs. In the last paragraph I would recommend briefly summarizing your relevant experience and highligting why you would be an asset to the employer (i.e. you are hard working, a fast learner, good at independent and group work, etc.).

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