It makes sense to write a good covering letter to complement your great résumé. You want the hiring manager to take a second look and give you the chance for a job interview. A bad covering letter can cancel out all what you have worked for in your résumé and job application.
You could have your professional résumé written for you at resumesaustraliasia.com.au, or create your own online résumé at free job classifieds like OzFreeOnline.com. But, of course, once you have the perfect résumé, it naturally helps a lot to write too a great covering letter to accompany it.
Doing this will help in the second phase of your introduction, where your application will be handed to the interviewer, who will scrutinise your application and will initiate the interview, provided she/he feels you meet all the criteria.
Here's why you have to hook people's attention right away: It's a very hierchical enviroment in most companies, made up of many decision levels. Your résumé will be seen by a number of people who will screen your application. First, there's the secretary, or a recruitment officer who checks whether you meet the qualifications in the job description. If your résumé and covering letter fails to attract the secretary, she or he can immediately discard your résumé and move on to the next promising candidate.
Once your job application survives the secretary's desk, it will be passed on to a manager or supervisor who is understandably more rigorous and choosy when looking for job applicants. Here, your covering letter acts not just as a complement to your résumé but also as a back-up. Should the manager ignore your job application, how you compose yourself in your covering letter can make them change their mind and give you a second look.
It may seem like a long process from the first few words you wrote about yourself and your covering letter, but you must remember, that in today’s world, there is so much competition for the best jobs. Make yourself the person the company wants to get.
In your covering letter, get your reader to become so curious about you and the qualities that you are offering that they have no alternative but to give you a call and invite over for an interview. This is your ‘foot in the door’ and this introduction will make or break you.
These descriptions of initial strategies should assist you in composing a covering letter that will attract the most attention from each of those individuals in the hiearchy who has a part in the hiring process. Since the process of elimination is quick and ruthless in many companies, be a strong candidate for the position by connecting right away with the first person in the hiring process through your cover letter.
Make no mistake; if the first ten words in your covering letter are not interesting then you will be ‘filed away’ in a wire basket. Moreover, you will not get a second chance. Get the reader to continue down to the last paragraph, reading about your skills and how they will benefit the company.
By now, you should know about some beneficial sites like careerdevelopment.uts.edu.au and OzFreeOnline.com which can assist you, not only in your online job search, but with ‘how to’ applications, so you can fine tune your job application. So now is the time to use your expertise to create a masterpiece.
DO NOT REWRITE YOUR RÉSUMÉ We all know how boring it is to read a letter that has repetitions within it, and it is an easy and common thing to mention qualities in your covering letter, that you have already detailed in your résumé. Specify instead, the skills that have not been referred to in your résumé. Moreover, in your covering letter, cite only the abilities that are profoundly indicative of your competency and the reason why the company needs your capabilities.
THE FINAL WORD
Your covering letter must be kept to a single page. Wasteful information, particularly unrelated to the job, lessens the impact of your letter. Remember that this is your statement addressing your ability to perform.
A covering letter that is inadequately written most certainly will cause your résumé to be ignored, so take a good hard look at your covering letter, and put yourself in the reader’s place. Is the letter well-written? Will it encourage the reader to take note of the contents and pass it on to the next phase? Is the presentation and content entirely different from the résumé you have submitted? Finally, would you hire the person who has written it?
If you have said no to most of these questions, perhaps you should consider a professional to compose a new résumé and covering letter for you. At free job sites such as resumes.net.au and OzFreeOnline.com, you will be able to have the perfect résumé and covering letter written just for you, so that you can make your first impression a lasting and effective one.
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