Oct

30

Career Tips: Making your cover letter stand out

Filed Under Career, Tips 

PR Week interviewed recruiting expert Brad Karsh for their 2007 Career Guide and he gave a variety of career tips including how to make your cover letter stand out.

Iacono: How do you make your résumé and cover letter stand out without going overboard and looking foolish?

Karsh: There is a fine line between clever and stupid. First off, cover letters are an extraordinarily underused medium. Think of your cover letter as a writing sample. In my last job, I probably received about 10,000 résumés and actually read fewer than 200 cover letters.

Every student writes the same one: It starts with how they heard about the job, discusses their interest and why they’d be a good fit, and closes with an invitation to follow up. It’s a rewrite of what’s on the résumé.

Instead, think of a cover letter as a teaser ad for your résumé. It needn’t tell the whole story. Force yourself to make it short, interesting, and personal. The first sentence can say something like, “I knew I loved PR from the moment I opened up a lemonade stand when I was five years old.” Don’t say, “As you can see from my attached résumé…” If someone spends 10-15 seconds reading your résumé, they’ll spend even less time reading your cover letter. You want to show that you know what the story is – how you got interested in PR.

Personally, I find the cover letters the hardest ones to write. Trying to find the right balance between informative and eye-grabbing can be tricky. I thought Karsh’s advice on talking about how you got interested in PR or some other interesting anecdote will do the trick when everyone else follows the same format. It also helps to now think of your cover letter as a writing sample. The only cover letter examples we seem to be given in college follow this formulaic outline, but that’s why they all read the same. If you do something different, the person having to read hundreds or thousands of resumes and cover letters will hopefully take note of your effort.

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