How to Write A Great Cover Letter

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Letter writing is a dying art, which is unfortunate. However, it is not unreasonable for people to question the importance of the cover letter in the seemingly impersonal modern job application process. Unless you know exactly to whom you are sending a cover letter, is there even a point?

The short answer: In many cases, yes, there is a point. Even though in this age of applicant tracking systems (employer recruitment systems) cover letters have diminished in value and usage, a well placed, well written cover letter can help you get an interview for a job you want.

So, how and when does a cover letter matter?

• Your resume may have to conquer an automatic tracking application system but there are real people on the other end of the process, and if you know exactly who that is and how to reach them, you owe it to them to demonstrate that you really want – and are qualified for – the job.

• Some job postings request a cover letter to apply. In this case, you have no choice; interpret this requirement as your first test from the hiring manager. A poor cover letter (or lack of one altogether) may eliminate you as a viable candidate.

• If a cover letter is not requested, submitting one that is professional in tone and format shows you’ve put in extra effort and can create a strong first impression.

• When you take advantage of the extra opportunity to detail your reasons for applying for a job and talk up your qualifications, you gain a competitive edge over those who skip this step or send a generic going-through-the-motions type of cover letter.

Now that you are convinced to write a cover letter for every application, required or not, you have to write it. Here are quick step-by-step instructions to write an effective and professional cover letter:

Step One: Format your cover letter like a professional business letter, incorporating the date, addressee’s name and title, the address to where it’s being sent, and salutation. For those of you raised exclusively on electronic communications, here’s a sample and guide from the kind folks at Purdue University.

Step Two: Format your cover letter and resume with consistency between the two documents, namely use the same fonts and headers. Deviating from this will come across as careless.

Step Three: If possible, find out the name of the recruiter or hiring manager and address your cover letter to that individual; mining LinkedIn can often help you deduce this information. If you do not know to whom you are sending the cover letter, the salutation should be, “Dear Hiring Manager:”

Step Four: Keep it concise and professional, without sounding personal in nature.

Step Five: Don’t exceed four or five paragraphs, or one page. Less is more.

Here’s a sample format:

• Paragraph One: Lead with your reasons why you are excited about the company and to apply for the job.

• Paragraph Two: Tell the story of your relevant professional background, how it applies to the job position requirements, and how you will add value to the company’s mission. This is your opportunity to market yourself with some sizzle.

• Paragraph Three: List two or three of your biggest accomplishments that tie into the job’s criteria.

• Paragraph Four: Thank the person for reading your resume, tell them you appreciate their consideration, and finish with an action item (e.g. I will follow up with a phone call on Friday).

While a great cover letter can help you, a poor one can hurt you. Bear in mind that you’ll actually hurt your chances of getting the job if your cover letter (or resume, for that matter) shows a lack of effort, is poorly formatted, or contains typos or misspelled words. Your cover letter is the first thing an employer will see, and they’ll make judgments about you from this.

Proofread your letter several times. Then ask someone else to proofread it as well to root out any typos you missed.

Lastly, if you get stuck, there are many online sites and books with great templates and examples of dynamic cover letters. You wish to invest your time and money in these tools to learn best practices.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercareerstrategies.com.

7 Essential Social Media Tips For Career-Minded Professionals

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In the beginning of the Oscar award winning film “Gladiator,” Maximus, played by Russell Crowe, gives his soldiers a rousing pre-battle speech and says this amazing line, “What we do in life echoes through eternity.” As goes for gladiators, goes for social media. Your online presence lasts pretty much forever.

Employers may look at your social media profiles when deciding whether to hire you; it’s not an unreasonable assumption. And even if you deleted everything on every one of your online profiles ten years ago, it’s could still be just one advanced Google search away. Sorry to say, but there truly is no escape from your digital past.

As of July 2019, here are the Top 10 Social Media Platforms worldwide according to Statista.com:

1.     Facebook

2.     YouTube

3.     WhatsApp

4.     Facebook Messenger

5.     WeChat

6.     Instagram

7.     QQ

8.     Q Zone

9.     Douyin / Tik Tok

10.  Weibo

You need to be aware of how you’re presented on each site. Here are seven tips to help you manage your Social Media presence so that you can become – and remain – gainfully employed. 

1.     Even though Social Media is still the age of a teenager, there is already an old axiom that applies: Don’t put anything on Social Media that you wouldn’t want your Mom to see.

2.     Social Media means never having to say goodbye. As long as the Internet is live, so is the picture of you chugging rum from a pineapple while wearing a bunny suit. Might have been fun times, but not so much fun great when a hiring manger finds it, much less notices that you posted it at 6 a.m. when you closed down the bar. Today. On Tuesday.

3.     Be conscious of where and how you present your political point of view online. We live in an emotionally charged and divisive political climate and you cannot control the snap judgments others will make about a seemingly innocuous post or comment. On business-oriented social media, such as LinkedIn, it might be advisable to steer clear of political topics.

4.     Likewise, it’s generally advisable to keep personal matters on socially oriented platforms (i.e., Facebook) rather than professional platforms (i.e., LinkedIn). And while we’re on the topic ­– it’s not a bad idea to check your Facebook/Instagram/etc. privacy settings so that only your friends and family have access to your photos and conversations.

5.     Many social media platforms (LinkedIn included) have “comment” sections, which are a breeding ground for internet trolls and flame wars. Comments are just as public as official posts, so if you’re active on platforms or forums with comment sections, you may want to consider any potential professional ramifications before you tell @area51conspiracy he or she is the “world’s biggest moron,” and that you hope they, “die in a hail of bullets.” That “moron” could be in a position to make a hiring decision on your candidacy.

6.     Be conscious of your tone, too. Social media is just that – social. You may have written posts or comments to family or friends that had an intentionally snarky tone deliberately chosen for effect. While you and your friends who share a collective sense of humor may find your repartee hilarious, others might be turned off or offended. It’s not fair, but people observe how you interact with others and form a perception of you based on that, right or wrong, fair or not. If someone believes you are condescending online, they might believe you will be condescending to them in the workplace.

7.     This list has been filled with negativity (sorry), but here’s a good one. Make sure to explore the job portals on the various social media platforms! Naturally, LinkedIn has a robust job postings section, but companies are starting to wake up to the idea that the social social media platforms are where all the people are hanging out! As time progresses, you’ll continue to see more and more companies building job portals Facebook and other sites to reach key users. Don’t miss out!

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercareerstrategies.com.

In Search Of The Purple Squirrel – How To Decipher A Job Advertisement

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You are searching for a job and that means reading job posting after job posting; they all start to look and sound the same. Where do the listings come from in the first place, and how do you interpret and prioritize their contents?

To start with, there is no way to determine who wrote the job listing. The job description you’re seeing on Indeed.com likely originated with a template from human resources, who gave it to the hiring manager, who delegated it to a department or personal assistant, who cut and pasted several parts from a previous listing for another position.

You may find that Fortune 500-level companies are more likely to have professionally written job listings that are mandated from above. Still, there are more than enough job listings with murky backgrounds to justify a degree of skepticism. After all, job listings are an imperfect science and will sometimes contain too much, too little, and/or contradictory information.

Despite these failings, however, job descriptions are a vital component of the recruitment process. When read closely, a job description will tell you what requirements, from a recruiter’s or hiring manager’s perspective, are non-negotiable, and contain clues about the position’s day-to-day responsibilities.

Knowing how to decipher the internal language of the recruitment process will only strengthen your candidacy. So, let’s take a look at the anatomy of a typical job posting.

THE JOB TITLE

Let’s take a look at title of Human Resources Coordinator. This indicates that the job is in the Human Resources department, and Coordinator indicates that it is an entry-level administrative position. Easy, right?

Not necessarily. Job postings titles can be deceiving because the actual meaning may vary wildly from one employer to another. The same job may have different titles at different places. One company may link job titles to compensation, while another may pride itself on having no titles at all. The variations are endless.

Job sites like Indeed and LinkedIn include categorizations that are intended to clarify where a specific role may sit level-wise in an organization. These include “Entry Level,” “Associate,” “Mid-Senior Level,” that will often be incongruent with the job title used by the poster, adding another level of confusion. How do you interpret a job title with “Manager” that is categorized as “Associate?” (this is prevalent in sales roles, where someone can be an Account Manager, but doesn’t actually manage anything or anyone other than their own activities).

THE SUMMARY

The summary usually provides glowing general description of the company and a general description of the job. The summary is valuable to read as it provides perspective on how the company markets itself and the role. It’s a great overview but it tends to draw little connection to your technical qualifications for the position. For example:

“The Amazing X Company, a world-class provider of amazing stuff, seeks a Human Resources Coordinator to join its growing team. We’re looking for talent with outstanding communication skills, great customer service perspective, and strong problem-solving and decision-making abilities to support the entire HR process.”

This description is generic, on purpose. It’s trying to present the general profile of the idea candidate from a behavioral side, but doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty technical details. Take it as a guideline to calibrate whether your personality and general background is a match for what they’re looking for.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

Here is where you are going to start to discover the clues that will help you understand the position and the skills needed to be considered a viable candidate. This area the day-to-day responsibilities of the role. Some sample job responsibilities for a Human Resources Coordinator include:

• Coordinating pre-employment activities

• Preparing, maintaining, and ensuring accurate records and files

• Conducting audits on personnel files and I-9 forms

• Ensuring compliance with federal and state employment laws

…and so forth.

If you possess direct experience in any of these areas it will help your overall application. Generally speaking, if an employer finds a candidate who ticks all the experience boxes in terms of day-to-day functions, they’re going to give that individual a deeper look. Interpret this as the employer providing you with guidance on what qualifications and past experiences you should highlight in your cover letter and on your resume.

REQUIRED SKILLS

This is the meat of the job. Anything you see under “required skills” is considered an essential component of the right candidate and to have a fighting chance for the job you’ll need to have it. Let’s dissect some sample requirements:

• Bachelor degree preferred

The use of the word “preferred” indicates that the degree is not a core requirement for the position. However, preference will be given to those with a college degree so if you’re applying without a diploma, the rest of your application better be stellar, and you should possess enough skills and experiences to compensate.

• Minimum of 2 years of experience in Human Resources

“2 years” likely wasn’t chosen at random. They’re looking at candidates that possess a minimum of two years’ experience. The understanding is that this is the minimum amount of time required to build the knowledge foundation to be successful.

• Direct exposure to employee relations and payroll practices

Pay special attention – this is the most important entry in this entire job posting. This is the experience that will matter most on your resume.

• ADP experience is a strong plus

Just like “preferred,” “strong a plus” means it’s not a requirement, but candidates who have used ADP in the past will be in a better starting position; if you haven’t used ADP, but do have experience in another HR software system, you’re in decent shape.

• Strong computer skills with high proficiency in MS Office

It would seem like this is a waste of space in today’s age, but it’s not. The employer included this in the job description because it’s nonnegotiable. Then there’s the soft skills:

• Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills

• Outstanding organization and time management skills

• Attention to detail

• Practice and maintain an environment of confidentiality

The employer is likely going to evaluate these traits in greater depth during the interview. They’re hard to quantify (although a resume riddled with errors could work against you in the area of written communication skills). Just understand, if you are to get the job, you’re going to be expected to live up to these standards.

Many employers also include a section for “Preferred Skills.” This is usually the hiring manager’s wish list of additional skilled and experiences. They’re looking for, in recruiter parlance, the “Purple Squirrel.” This is the candidate that probably doesn’t exist but would check off all of a hiring manager’s boxes in terms of attacking any other work they have lying around – related or unrelated to the core duties of the job. But make no mistake – the candidate who has ALL of the required skills and ALL of the preferred skills will probably be in the best position to receive an offer.*

*Note: I say probably because there are mitigating factors, such as candidate salary requirements, age discrimination, or any countless other dynamics at play.

Here’s some final thoughts on deciphering and approaching job postings:

Tip #1: You have some latitude when duration of experience is specified. Let’s say the listing says “3-5 years experience making widgets”. You should have a minimum of 3 years, but you shouldn’t rule yourself out if you have more than five years. You can apply with 2 years’ experience, and nothing is stopping you, but it’s an uphill climb.

Tip #2:  From the recruiter’s perspective, there is a distinct difference between a Required Skill and a Preferred Skill. But think about it this way - if you’re have 100% of the Required Skills and 50% of the Preferred Skills, you’re in pretty good shape.

And that brings us to the important life lesson about purple squirrels. Have you ever actually seen a purple squirrel? No you have not, and you never will. Purple squirrels do not exist, and job candidates who possess all of the Required and Preferred skills tend to pop up with quite a bit less frequency than a hiring manager hopes. Apply to the job.

Lastly, remember that your resume is a marketing brochure and the recruiters/hiring managers are your customers. You are trying to convince them to invest in something – you. Mapping the qualifications on your resume with the Required and Preferred Skills on a job listing will greatly increase your chances of clearing the first hurdle.

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 Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercareerstrategies.com.