English paper

You may not have to do a cover letter for every job you apply for, but most professional positions will expect that you provide this.

The cover letter does two major things: it shows the prospective employer that you can write and it provides a way for you to show what you are like as an employee. In the cover letter, you can include subjective data about yourself. The resume, on the other hand, should be objective data that the employer can check if desired.

There is no one universally best format. Managers have different preferences, and preferences change over time. The format I’ve explained below is one that should work well in almost any situation.

Cover Letter

This should be one page long and contain an introduction, one to three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. If you have a lot of work experience, it’s possible to go over one page, but this would be unusual.

Standard Letter Parts

Format with standard letters parts: return address, inside address, date, and salutation. Do not use “Dear Sir or Madam,” as this is too old fashioned. Don’t use “To Whom It May Concern,” since this seems lazy. Instead, find out the name of the hiring manager by calling or researching the company or use a title, such as “Dear Hiring Manager.”

Use a professional email address, not something like [email protected]. It’s fine to use a free gmail address. Do not use the email address from your current job!

Note that you use a colon after the salutation of a business letter, not a comma.

Your name

Your street address

Your city, state, and zip code

Your phone number

Your email address

Date

Recipient’s name, including title

Recipient’s street address

Recipient’s city, state, and zip code

Dear Hiring Committee:

First Paragraph

Indicate the job you are applying for, including where you learned about it. If someone in their company suggested you apply for the job or will recommend you, name them. [Be sure to get permission first.] Indicate your qualifications for the job, that is, the relevant work experience (including years) and academic degree. The goal is to establish that you are qualified from the very start.

Body

The major reason for people to be fired from their job is not lack of technical ability but rather personal issues. In the body of the paper, show that you will be a good employee.

In one to three paragraphs, indicate your specialized experience and your personal traits, backed up with evidence of success stories that establish that these are accurate. For instance, in specialized experience, you might have worked in a particular type of retail store or have studied an area of marketing that applies directly to the desired position. Your personal traits should be ones that are accurate for you and that would be seen as valuable in the desired position. You might identify yourself as hard working or proactive or good at negotiating or insightful in understanding people or very good at bringing a team together, for instance. Think carefully about the one or two traits that you want to highlight since these are your personal selling point.

Then provide a success story for each trait, to prove that it’s accurate. A success story should have three parts:

• A statement about a problem
• Your explanation of what you did
• The results, quantified if possible

Here’s an example:

“I feel that one of my strongest abilities is being a problem solver. For instance, in my former job as an assistant manager, I found the restaurant was experiencing a lot of problems with staff clocking in late, which sometimes resulted in lost sales because customers walked out when they weren’t waited on quickly. I talked with the crew members and discovered that many of them had problems getting to work on time because they didn’t drive and the bus schedule was unreliable. I set up a ride share program with the ones who did have cars; riders shared gas costs, so everyone benefited. The problem with tardiness was solved and the crew worked together better than before, resulting in greatly improved customer service. In fact, sales increased by 20%.”

Conclusion

Use a brief ending. Ask for an interview and repeat the best contact information. If using a phone number, use one that can be used at any time of the day. (Prospective employers won’t stay late at work just to call you at home at night.) Thank the reader for reviewing the application.

Standard letter parts then include the complimentary close and your name. Use a comma after the complimentary close. Capitalize only the first word of the complimentary close unless you use proper nouns or proper adjectives in it. Type your name and handwrite it.

Sincerely yours,

Your name, handwritten

Your name, typed