{"id":59,"date":"2016-07-27T13:59:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T13:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/career-tips\/?p=59"},"modified":"2022-11-29T17:31:17","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T17:31:17","slug":"7-tips-to-make-your-cover-letter-shine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/7-tips-to-make-your-cover-letter-shine\/","title":{"rendered":"7 tips to make your cover letter shine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cover letters are notoriously tricky things. Recruiters are only human and have very short attention spans &#8211; if you haven\u2019t grabbed them within the first thirty seconds, assume your letter will end up on the rejection pile.\u00a0 Your cover letter needs to shout \u2018hire me\u2019, so here are the key things to remember when you write yours:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Research <\/strong>\u2013 Know your facts. Research the company you are applying to and demonstrate that you know their business almost as well as they do.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Name-drop<\/strong> \u2013 If you can find the name of the person with the power, address the letter to them. The personal touch will make it stand out from the other letters written by candidates just blanket bombing firms.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tailor it<\/strong> \u2013 Don\u2019t be tempted to simply copy and paste. Address the key criteria for each individual job description and give them examples to show how your skills and experience meet them. Upsell yourself as much as possible.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Keep it short and sweet<\/strong> \u2013 One side of A4 hits the sweet spot. Any shorter and you\u2019ve probably not addressed the key points; any longer and the reader will simply switch off.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Keep it professional <\/strong>\u2013 Never use slang and try not to lapse into awful corporate clich\u00e9s. Chances are they\u2019ve read hundreds of letters from \u2018team players\u2019 and \u2018blue sky thinkers\u2019, they don\u2019t need another one from you.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Read it back <\/strong>\u2013 Always read over your letter before you send it out, or better yet, get someone else to read it. Spelling mistakes and sloppy grammar are a no-no which will turn them right off. Be articulate, be accurate.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tell them when you can start <\/strong>\u2013 People like to know how soon they can get you through the door if they like you. Try to be flexible, it improves your chances.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The cover letter is your golden opportunity to make a strong first impression.\u00a0 Like a stand-out CV it should hit them between the eyes and make it impossible for them to turn you down.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re sending it off by snail mail then printing your letter on plain A4 is fine \u2013 nobody expects fancy coloured or headed paper these days. Remember, though, that if you\u2019re pinging off an email, the cover letter should go in the main body of the message rather than as an attachment.<\/p>\n<p>If you heed just one piece of advice, it\u2019s to always make your letter fit the job. The ultimate cover letter crime is not reading the job description and sending out a generic and dull list of reasons why you want the position. Make it as focused as possible and you\u2019re sure to grab their attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cover letters are notoriously tricky things. Recruiters are only human and have very short attention spans &#8211; if you haven\u2019t grabbed them within the first thirty seconds, assume your letter will end up on the rejection pile.\u00a0 Your cover letter needs to shout \u2018hire me\u2019, so here are the key things to remember when you<a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/7-tips-to-make-your-cover-letter-shine\/\"> Continued \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cvs-cover-letters"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}