What Makes a Good Cover Letter?

I always have problem writing cover letters.  I’ve seen many examples in the Internet but they seem too rigid or too general. Could you give me some tips or samples on how a professional cover letter should look?

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  1. Penelope Trunk
    Penelope Trunk says:

    A cover letter is rigid, so the advice you’ve been reading is probably good. The whole job hunt process is rigid in that there are conventions that you need to adhere to in order to show that you understand how the business world works.

    A cover letter needs to be fast, make a point, and end with a call to action. This will make the reader pay attention and move beyond the letter to your resume.

    A cover letter also needs to be roughly similar to all the other cover letters that the reader reviews, because the fastest way for a hiring manager to get through a pile of resumes is to compare apples to apples. This means the resumes all need to be formatted in a similar way and so do the cover letters – hence the rigid rules.

    Here is a post that lays out basic rules for writing a cover letter. Follow them. Don’t get creative. Your creativity should shine through in the bullet points under each of your jobs where you describe how you overdelivered in creative ways. Your cover letter and resume are not creative outlets in themselves.

    http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2005/08/26/8-steps-to-a-perfect-cover-letter/

    Penelope

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