We’ve all gone down that road, creatively writing an accurate cover letter just to have a good deal of them end up in the bin. While most people shy away from the thought of using this long criticized means of securing a quick interview with the company that has got an open vacancy of a job you are looking for, others can put a stamp of approval on the fact that most cover letters do help with winning trust from people who want to hire.
I’ve heard the common question go out of people’s mouths quite a number of times, “What is the point of a cover letter?” Well, based on the number of times you’ve missed the chance of being invited for an interview after having spent a great deal of time writing it, your tone of this question may vary in pitch, no pun intended.
Needless to delve more into the disappointments, there are many possible reasons why your cover letter didn’t quite deliver your match expectations. And you are going to want to understand what happened or usually happens with all of those that you write so that you know where to edge things up a bit and be successful in your next job opportunity.
So, to help you do that, here you are going to get the deep meaning and point of a cover letter and what is expected of it by your potential employer for them to be moved enough to schedule an interview for you.
So let’s get straight into things here.
The main importance that a cover letter should serve is to help you:
• To Give a Proper Introduction of Yourself
Other than what you have jotted down in your resume, the company is not going to get extra information about you, that may count to a huge extent in getting you the job, except for the introductory or cover letter. So if you leverage this opportunity well, you should be able to have the person who will read it get interested, see beyond your skills and knowledge and desire to see you in person and get to learn more about you.
And for you to do this effectively, you should try as much as possible to talk about yourself, in the sense of, why you want the job other than having the necessary requirements, why the company shoud choose you, what you can offer more than what the other applicants can and why you are the person they are looking for in all aspects.
• To Display Great Interest in the Job Vacancy
Another important thing that the cover letter does is to help bring out better your extreme desire for this opportunity to work in that company advertising the job. And you ought to be ready to show that interest in various ways. You need to get them to believe that you will be a good team player in the organization to help it realize its dreams and goals.
You should demonstrate your full belief in their mission and the readiness to get there. So you may want to use this as a good opportunity to go beyond the average job applicant and express your wish to join the firm , as it really is in your heart.
And this means going ahead and disclosing the appraisals you’ve gotten from your previous employers, your passion for this particular career and anything else you can think of to award you points.
• To Rouse The Reader’s Interest in Your Resume
The notion behind your mind as you apply for the post is that person hiring will look through all your documents and find you fit to fill in the vacancy. But for this to happen, you’ll want to have them go through all your major documents, that is the letter and the resume. And since most hirers go for the letter first, you should create an irresistible interest in them to view your resume. Say, in a certain company you were at sometimes ago, you made sales that went far much beyond the set limit, and you want to use this to your benefit.
You should include this event in the letter by mentioning it generally, to have them go to the resume and see how many sales they were from the appraisals or elsewhere, and then come back to the letter and learn of the strategies that you used to hit that milestone. This way you are going to show your capabilities in a unique well blended way that is going to add a tick on the plus column and increase the chances of you landing that job.
• To Encourage the Reader to Give You an Interview
If you want the job to be yours, you have to make the reader give you an interview. And for you to get interviewed, you have to direct the reader towards it through the letter. So if you look at it as an incentive for the hirer to make the interview possible, you are going to get many ways, based on your career and personality, to see that you get to sit down with them and get the interview to happen or possibly have a brief talk.
Basically, you can ignite the fire in them to want to meet you by telling them that you have been following their website or social media platforms and have been a major contributor even before the vacancy came out or something else that is sweet and will surely persuade them.
You can also briefly remind them of an event that was held in the organisation and how it moved you, as their strategy was what you had been having in mind for a long time. Ideally, you’ve got to be creative with the letter otherwise you won’t draw any attention from them among the thousands of applications they’ve been receiving.
• To Display Your Real Personality
Many are times that employers get the wrong impression of an applicant. Based on what you have gone through in your life over the years, what you crossed paths with and how you reacted, it is very easy to misjudge you. By catching a mere glimpse of your resume, a hirer can can find you fairly hardworking when you really are a hard worker.
And to eliminate these possibilities of misjudgement, you should get your letter to reveal your true self by writing naturally as you would communicate when you are speaking face to face with someone.
More to this, you should be able to touch on a few of your character traits, realistically, to help paint a better picture of yourself to the one reading it. See that you let what you love in and about your work, relating to the vacancy, come out very clear.
And be sure to blend the traits well with the post in a way that they will all portray you as the best fit for the post. And doing this will help your reader understand your personality very well and use that to see if that personality will fit the post as they’d wish.
And with all those simple but deep insights, it is very clear that the cover letter is an advantage to help you express more about yourself. With the few tips given on how you should make the most of it, you will surely draft a good letter, if you put them to practice effectively and hopefully help you be considered in the next hiring for an interview and finally be hired! So start taking this advantage seriously and maximize its full potential!
Frederick is a blogger and author of Top travel Games book
