How to write a cover letter + 6 examples [Get your CV noticed]

if you're currently applying for new jobs that it's vital that you have a strong cover letter to accompany your CV when you're applying for those jobs a good cover letter will help you to build rapport with recruiters and greatly increase your chances of landing those job interviews so in this video guide I'm going to explain exactly what a cover letter is I'm going to show you how to write a good one for each and every application you make I'm also going to run through some example cover letters so you can see how they work in practice in this guide I'm gonna walk you through step by step my process of how to write a cover letter for your CV this is going to help you get more responses from your job applications and ultimately get you more interviews so I'm gonna do this by obviously going through some slides and sharing some example cover letters with you his will be covered in the guide but firstly what is a cover letter and what is its purpose it's important that you understand this to be able to write an effective one the cover letter form and layout so how you actually go about strategy and cover letter and the format it should be in how to start your cover letter how long should your cover letter be what to include in a cover letter which is obviously going to be the biggest part of the guide you know what should you actually putting in there to make a good impression on recruiters and employers and how to end a cover letter and then I'm going to finish up the guide with some example cover letters so what is a cover letter well a cover letter is a small piece of text or a briefing notes that accompanies your CV whenever you send it to an employer or a recruiter when you're applying for a job and its aim is to firstly introduce yourself to build rapport with the the person that you are approaching and ultimately to encourage them to look at your CV i've Boldin's that point because that is the most important point so when you're writing your cover letter you just go remember those three things but most importantly you've got to always remember that you're trying to encourage somebody else to look at your CV because that's what's going to lead to more interviews for you so when you're writing a cover letter to a recruiter or to an employer before matting is actually really really simple the first thing to remember is to always write your cover letter in the body of your message or email so what I mean by that is if you look at these two examples here on the left if you're sending an email the right to a recruiter or an employer which I'd always recommend doing because I would even ensures the the message goes straight through to the right person then writes the text of your cover letter actually in the body of the email don't don't attach it as a separate document and the same thing goes if you're applying for job websites they'll usually give you an option to write some text so as you can see here on the right and you can actually write the text of your cover letter and what that means is and when you write in that box it will go through to the recruiter as an email and then the text will appear in the body of the email in the same way as it does if we if you were to write it in an email like here on the left so now I'm going to show you why you need to write your cover letter the body of your emails now if you imagine that this is a recruiters inbox they're very busy they've got a lot of jobs on they've got an inbox is overflowing of applications if we click on one of the applications here we can see that this person has actually written their cover letter in the body of their email so what this means is a recruiter can quickly see that as soon as he opens email you can read that and if he persuaded enough to open the CV you can scroll down open the CVS tray awaits by downloading there now if we look at somebody who attaches their cover letter separately you know just writing a brief note like cover letter and CV attached the recruiter then has to scroll down to the cover letter open up the cover letter bearing in mind they probably very busy lots of applications to go through they've got to read the cover letter in the word book and then close that down and then you know this stage if there's two interested they've got to go on and open up the CV now what this does it just slows things down you know if you imagine a recruiter who's got you know hundred applications that have just come in that day which is not uncommon for for an average recruiter you know they don't want to be mucking around having to open multiple documents now if you want to get their attention quickly write your cover letter in the body of your email or the body of the job board messaging system to make sure this straightaway the messages going straight through to them and you're gonna give yourself a much bigger chance of your CV getting opened time and time again by plenty of people and thus you know improving your application response rate so other than writing your message in the body of your email or messaging system there isn't really much more scupper in formatting because you're simply writing in plain text so it's just a case of making sure that the one you're using is clear and understandable and spacing the message outs of its nicely broken up so if we look at structure now I'm just gonna run through all of the the core areas of this the coverlet of structure and I'm gonna go into more detail on each one a bit later in the video so we'll start by addressing the recipient so you know just a simple case of hi and the name of the person and so I'll have a friendly greeting like hope you're worldw I hope this email finds you well or something like that just to kind of start building rapport then you need to explain which job you're applying for it sounds simple but a lot of people forget to do this recruiters will often have multiple jobs on the go and even hiring managers as well we'll be dealing with a number of vacancies at times so you know just be clear about the job you're applying for and then the bulk of the cover letter is where you are explaining why you're suitable for the job this is the most important bit again I'm going to cover this in a bit more detail later how you can do this but I'm just trying to give you a rundown of the structure for now and then at the bottom you want to let them know your availability for interview and you want to sign off in a friendly manner and that's pretty much it for structure so now I'm going to take a closer look at how you should start your cover letter so really the best way to start a cover letter is by addressing the recipient by name so you've got to remember that you're dealing with people whether you're emailing a recruiter or an employee or a hiring manager you know there's gonna be someone on the other end of that message and when you're receiving a message you know it's nicer to be addressed by your name so you need to try to find the person's name as much as you can so sometimes you'll find the recruiter or the hiring manager's name on the job advert although it's probably quite rare so often what you'll have to do is head over to the company website have a look around you know looking there about section the team section have a good scan around and try and find the person who would be most likely to be handling that vacancy also you can have as a LinkedIn a really good resource because you can you can serve two companies and then you can look at all of their employees and you can filter on like departments and the type of job they do and things like that again you know another thing you can do to try and find the person who's most likely to be looking after the vacancy but what if you can't find the name I've always got to find a name so really what you need to do is just start with height and then something like hopefully well now it sounds simple but it's just you know it's really all you can do at that stage if you can't find a name and often you won't be able to find the name so you know don't don't why too much if you can't find the name just start a simple high but whatever you do please don't starting with dear sir or madam you know this this may have been okay I don't know 30 40 or 50 years ago or something but some you know now it's a bit dated and a bit impersonal you know I don't you want to receive an email saying dear sir or madam I'd rather just have higher or something you know a bit more friendly and personal so how long should your cover letter be I would recommend to my cover letter up around three to six sentences so in practice this is what that kind of length looks like and at all costs please avoid writing a whole page of a4 or anything longer you have to remember that the purpose of the cover letter is to persuade people to open your CV and again as I said before recruiters and hiring managers are very busy people that press for time they're looking at lots of applications so you want to make sure that you get across your message quickly and get them to open your CV as quick as they can and that's where you're gonna have more of the detail you know that's what they're actually going to be reviewing assessing passing males and their colleagues so the cover let's just keep it brief and get your point across really really quickly so once you have introduced yourself and explained which job you're applying for would you actually include in the core part of the cover letter there's gonna persuade that reader to open your CV really what you need to do is you need to sell yourself and you need to prove that you're suitable for the jobs that you're applying for now you know if you put yourself in a recruiter shoes if they open up an email and there are lots of hints that this person is right for the job that they were recruiting for then obviously that's going to persuade them to go open your CV it's really that simple so first of all you need to do your research you cannot start writing a cover letter or even your CV before you've done your research on the jobs you're applying for so really we need to do is go to one of the big job boards like CV library or read or total jobs or something like that and have a look have a search for the kind of jobs that you're looking for and be specific as possible you know don't just write for example a teacher you know write primary teach or key stage to teacher and don't just write sales you know be more specific right IT sales because you want to build up a good picture of the type of candidates that those employers are looking for so you can reflect that both in your CV and in your cover letter so if we look at this example here I've just pulled up a relevant to a bad vote for a sales type of candidate and really we need to do is go through those those job ads and look for the hard skills so you know look for the the real sort of job specific skills that are important to those so those roles the kind of experience skills and knowledge they're looking for and just make a list of all of those things and that way you know you know what your target employers are looking for and you're not just using guesswork you've got a real good idea and then you just match those to the skills you have and those are the kind of things that you need to be including in your cover letter and in your CV so once you've done your research on the job boards and you've got a good understanding of what skills and experience and knowledge your target employers are looking for then it's really just a case of writing a brief explanation as to why you're the best person for the job that you're applying for so you know really making yourself look as suitable as possible now you do that by including relevant skills by including your level of experience by talking about your qualifications if they are needed by the role some aren't some are and also what your current situation is at the moment so you know are you currently working for a similar company and a similar role or are you working in a slightly different role but you have some transfer but schools that you could bring over to this new role another point that you should look to include in your cover letter is your motivation for applying for that particular job now when recruiters receive applications one of the first things that want to know is why is this person looking for a new job why do they want to work here and they can offer be suspicious and and they're sort of standard mode is to sort of think the worst of people so try to be positive and then show that you're enthusiastic and you're looking to apply for a new job for the bio reasons so say something like after spending two years of senior manager in my current firm I'm looking to take a step up to manage a bigger team in a more specialist market now that sounds positive enthusiastic sounds like this person is looking to progress and that's the kind of employee that employers want to take on don't write something like I've recently been fired from my old job so I need a new one quickly that obviously just sounds very negative and it doesn't make this person like a great candidate so even if that is the case don't write something like that you know write something can be more creative that makes you sound more positive and progressive and if you really want to make a big impact with your cover letter then what you can do is you can touch upon some of the things that you've achieved for employer some of the results you've delivered for them so you know for example if your work has saved the money if it's born new customers if it's improved processes which obviously save time and money or if you've made sales for your employer and then these are all things obviously greatly benefit the people you work for and the reason this is so impactful is because ultimately employers you know they're looking for people that can benefit them you know it's nice that you've got skills and experience accessor but really what they want is someone that can actually you know deliver results for them so what I would say is touch upon these in the cover letter don't don't give them mass amounts of detail don't go in you know because you've not got a lot of space and time in the cover letter so you know just just sort of mood to the fact that you've saved money or you've brought in new customers don't go into great detail but if you can mention some things like this then that really helped to excite the person that you're approaching and should you know encourage them to open the CV so once you've explained why you're the most suitable person for the job that you're applying for and hopefully you persuade the recruiter to open your CV you just want to round the cover letter off nicely so that it looks professional and it continues to build rapport with that person so firstly I would express your interest to progress so say something like I would welcome the opportunity to meet or let them know what your availability to interview is and this just lets people know you're serious and it gets into their mindset that Sam you know that they can start to progress you through to the next stage of the application and then sign up professionally so something simple like the guards or kind of arse in your name it is all that takes really just just sort of emo etiquette if you will and then add a signature at the very bottom so what this does is first the way it looks professional and secondly it ensures that they've got your contact details and if they want to get you in for an interview they can find you straight away and do that so hopefully this client has given you a good overall process on how to write your own cover letter one that's gonna a get you noticed and be getting more interviews but I personally think the best way to understand how to do is talking about this is to look at some examples so I'm now just going to run a slideshow of a number of example cover letters from a variety of different industries and experience levels so you can see how this works in practice and you can sort of borrow phrases and terms and skills etc from these cover letters so before I do that and if you new here don't forget to subscribe because I make lots of job hunting CV and cover letter advice and all geared towards helping you get the jobs you want so thanks very much for watching and good luck with the job search [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: StandOut CV

Views: 98,319

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Keywords: cover letter, cover letter writing, how to write a cover letter, write cover letter for cv, write cover letter, write cover letter for job application, cover letter writing tips, cover letter tips, cover letter for cv, cover letter example, cover letter sample, cover letter gudie, good cover letter, job application cover letter, cover letter format, cover letter template, cover letter 2019, cover letter 2020

Id: TBfBEBv3gb4

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019