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cover letters
brilliant
cover letters
What you need to know to write a
truly brilliant cover letter
James Innes
PEARSON EDUCATION LIMITED
Edinburgh Gate
Harlow CM20 2JE
Tel: ⫹44 (0)1279 623623
Fax: ⫹44 (0)1279 431059
Website: www.pearsoned.co.uk
The right of James Innes to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN: 978-0-273-72463-6
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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publisher.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
13 12 11 10 09
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction ix
How to use this book xii
10 My five top tips to make your cover letter stand out 199
The 15 most
common cover
letter mistakes –
and how to
avoid them
I
have seen many, many thousands of letters, covering pretty much
every possible kind of job and situation – and the difference in them is
vast. However, the same common mistakes crop up time and time
again.Too many jobseekers miss out on their dream job because of a small
number of easily avoided blunders.
Some of the mistakes that people make when writing their cover letter are
very obvious whilst others are much more subtle.The CV Centre has con-
ducted a comprehensive analysis of over 1,000 cover letters to derive a
‘top 15’. In this chapter I will list these 15 most common cover letter
writing mistakes and refer you back to previous chapters where necessary,
to explain why they are a mistake and also how to avoid them.
To find out exactly how to put together your own letterhead, please
take a look at Chapter 1, page 5: Structure: building your skeleton
letter.
Whilst these may be fine for corresponding with friends and family,
employers will probably regard more ‘serious’ email addresses as simply
more professional.
You might have taken time to put together a brilliant cover letter, but if
your email address is mrluvverman@example.com then it may harm your
chances. I would suggest you open a new email account to use for pro-
fessional purposes (e.g. Hotmail or Yahoo!) and keep your professional
correspondence separate from your personal correspondence.
To learn more about how to handle email addresses, please see Chapter
1, page 7: Structure: building your skeleton letter.
Yes, you’re applying for a job – they’ll figure that out pretty quickly. But
why are you applying for this job? If you fail to start building your
case immediately, you risk losing the reader’s interest right from the very
start.
It’s also important to put the right spin on your case. Always phrase your-
self in terms of:
Make sure you give them compelling reasons to invite you for an inter-
view.
For a more detailed discussion on the topic of ‘calls to action’ – and how
they apply to your letters – please refer back to Chapter 2, page 49:
Signing off: including your ‘call to action’.
Many job adverts will, of course, specifically ask you for details of your
current – or expected – salary, and you’re not going to get away with pre-
tending you didn’t notice the question! If a job advert asks for your
current or expected salary then you’re going to have to give them an
answer. Failure to do so will most likely result in your application being
summarily rejected. It’s not a risk worth taking.
To learn how best to handle this thorny issue, please take a look at
Chapter 3, page 81: The closing paragraph: including the salary ques-
tion.
It might not be easy to cut down on your use of ‘I’, but you should defi-
nitely make an effort to do so. Look at each sentence that begins with ‘I’
and see whether you can rephrase it so that it starts with a different word.
120 brilliant Cover Letters
If you can turn round a sentence so that it starts with ‘You’ or ‘Your’ then
this is ideal, because it shows your focus is on the reader, not on yourself.
12 Too long
As a general rule, most cover letters don’t – and shouldn’t – exceed one
A4 page in length. Never lose sight of the fact that your cover letter is not
intended to take the place of your CV – it’s meant to act as an introduc-
tion.
Unless there are clear instructions to the contrary, you should aim to keep
your letters short and sweet. A handful of paragraphs are normally more
than sufficient to whet the recruiter’s appetite and entice them to read
your CV.
If you find your letter is spilling over on to a second page then take a look
at Chapter 1, page 34: Content and style: what to say and how to say it.
The 15 most common cover letter mistakes – and how to avoid them 121
brilliant statistic
Our research has shown that 60 per cent of cover letters contain linguistic errors.
It might seem obvious. It might seem hard to believe that people actually
do send out letters with errors in them. But, believe me, it happens all the
time – so if you can make sure that your letters are totally error-free, you
will immediately be at an advantage.
brilliant blooper
In one unfortunate case, the individual in question got very confused about the
difference between ‘role’ and ‘roll’. He kept referring throughout both his cover letter
and his CV to the various ‘rolls’ he had had – for example, ‘an important roll in the
finance department’, ‘sharing a roll with another colleague’ and so on.
For the full story on spelling, grammar and typos, please refer back to
Chapter 1, page 27: Content and style: what to say and how to say it.
It is astonishing how many people use exactly the same cover letter and
exactly the same CV for every single application.
122 brilliant Cover Letters
It stands to reason that every job and every organisation is different and
every cover letter should therefore also be subtly different. If you send the
same letter to everyone, changing only a few minor details such as the
recipient’s name and address, then your chances of success will most defi-
nitely fall considerably.
By taking the time to sign the letter before sending it, you’re giving out one
further signal to the reader that you have taken the time to write to them
personally – and haven’t just sent out the same letter to dozens of people.
So, here’s a sixteenth mistake for you: failing to include a cover letter at all.
You would be surprised how many people think they can just send their
CV off on its own and don’t need to bother with a cover letter. Whilst I’m
not saying this will never work, I can say that it will rarely work, and I
believe I have firmly demonstrated how much a cover letter can do to
improve your chances of success.
If you’re going to go to the trouble of sending off your CV then it’s always
worth taking a little bit more time to construct a brilliant cover letter to
go with it.
Never send a CV without a cover letter unless you are specifically told to
do so.