Complement Your Resume Using a Cover Letter

     The current job market has tightened further because of the continuous impact of the global economic recession. There are more jobs rolling out than there are new job openings. To worsen the situation, many laid-off employees have been joining the pile of jobless individuals who have been finding appropriate and good-paying jobs for quite some time. Competition among job seekers has really gone fiercer. Thus, there is a need to stand out. 

    Experts assert that impressing prospective employers should begin with the resume. By now, you should know how you could boost the quality and impressiveness of that document. Not many job hunters know that good cover letters could back and support good resumes. For quite some time, it has not been a standard practice for job seekers to include cover letters when submitting resumes. Now, many companies advise job applicants to write good cover letters and attach them in front of their resumes. Needless to say, to impress, you have to send a cover letter together with your resume, even if it is not directly requested.

    What advantage could cover letters do? In general, effective cover letters are able to draw recruiters into any resume. A study conducted by career networking site Careerbuilder.com in 2008 found that numerous managers automatically dismiss job applications if resumes do not come with cover letters. This way, cover letters could already showcase an applicant’s creativity, initiative and necessary writing skills, if done effectively. So how could you make an effective one? Here are some tips:

• Write the cover letter as if you are writing a formal business letter. This way, you have to make it short and very direct to the point. Remember that managers are very busy people. They may not always have ample time to read and browse through letters. By stating your points directly, you are not giving favors to the managers; you are giving yourself a greater favor as you could have a greater chance to secure or get the job.

• Make the content informational, yet persuasive. To guide any letter writer, it would help if the following topics would be covered and discussed by the cover letter: the position applied for, how the applicant learned about the job vacancy, why the job seeker is best for the post and how the prospective employer could contact the person.

• Do not overlook the layout of the letter. Be sure it is neat and is easy to scan. Always remember that the reader of the cover letter has thousands of other cover letters to look at. The ones that will surely stand out are those that are easy to the eyes. As a general rule of thumb, make the letter have ample white spaces.

• Do not mention negative attributes and history as doing so may detriment your application. If you aim to explain why you were laid off or why you resigned from your previous job, better leave the subject for discussion during the actual in-person job interview.