Cover Letter Template For An Advertised Job: Fill & Download for Free

I have provided a 7 step guide for writing a compelling cover letter based on my own experiences of writing effective cover letters, helping others with their cover letters and assisting my manager with screening applications. I have included examples of how each step is helpful. This approach is particularly helpful to technical specialists e.g. engineers and geologists who may need some quick tips on marketing and effective communication. I have used the same approach of benefits, evidence, features in writing successful bids to clients to tender for projects.I recognise that writing a compelling cover letter takes a lot of time and critical thinking, so if you are restricted with time, pick your top job vacancies to apply for rather than resorting to a bulk mailout of a generic cover letter.Research – get this right and it will provide a strong foundation1. Research your networks. See who in your network knows about the company or hiring manager. See if you can get a hold of company mission statement, values statement etc. The last job I applied for I discovered that a number of people I knew also knew the hiring manager. I dug for as much information about him and his team as I could. I found out that he was technically very competent, an excellent manager, cared about his team members, very personable, keen on building a strong team. I also managed to get a hold of a company values and personnel competencies manual which outlined company values and how it relates to expectations of behavior and competencies for the different levels in the organisation i.e. graduate level, professional level, senior, level, principal level. This was very useful in terms of responding to the selection criteria with an understanding of the expectations of a specific level, in my case it was for a principal role. So I knew exactly what the organisation expected of this role in terms of the various selection criteria. I used some of the keywords in my cover letter.2. Research every agency and job site. If the position is being advertised through an agency, research various job sites and see if the same position is being advertised by various agencies. Contact all agencies and ask for more information about the position and company. The more background information you can get the better. As an example, a friend of mine was interested in a position offered by one agency through one job site. In doing further online research he discovered that the same position was advertised by multiple agencies through various job sites. Yet, each description provided a new piece of information about the position and each conversation with every contact person provided even more information. Be diligent. It pays off.3. Always call the contact person. See if you can get more information about the company and position that was not in the job description or advertisement. If you are lucky enough to get a hold of the hiring manager you may be able to get a glimpse into their personality, what they are focused on, and what their personal KPIs might be. When I called the hiring manager, who was the contact person for the job advertisement, I was able to discover more about the expectations for the vacant position. I later found out, after starting employment, that the hiring manager was restricted with what words and terminology he could use in the job description due to the bureaucratic rules of the organisation and that although he wanted to provide more specific job requirements and expectations he was not able to. Always call the contact person and try to get more information.Analyse and Plan – this is where all the hard thinking happens4. Identify keywords in the job description, conversation with the hiring contact person, company mission and values and anything else you got your hand on. Use these keywords.5. Identify benefits. This is the key above all! This is where technical specialists often get it wrong. But those who are marketing-minded would be more familiar with this approach. It is natural to put the focus on yourself, but actually you need to place the focus on the organisation and show off your understanding of their needs. This is where you get a chance to connect to the organisation and make them feel that you are a perfect fit.Identify how the organisation would benefit from hiring you. This should relate to the key reason for the existence of this specific position in the company. Do not confuse benefits with evidence or features. You know an idea is a benefit because it can be categorised into one of three items: (saves) time, (saves) money (or increase profits), (adds) confidence (emotions).As an example. I was helping a geologist, to apply for a principal geologist position. In a conversation with a contact person from a job agency he discovered that the company was looking for a geologist to assist in due diligence of potential investments in coal tenements. From this conversation he identified that the key concern of the company was in identifying quality coal tenements to invest in and filtering out the poor quality tenements. As an experienced geologist he would be able to identify whether the exploration company that was undertaking the exploration work was providing reliable data to the investing company or whether they were manipulating the interpretation of data to make it seem that a coal tenement was better than it actually was.In writing the cover letter the benefits that had to be highlighted up front was: as an experienced geologist he could provide geological confidence in the quality of the coal tenement which would support investment decisions and he could save money in terms of identifying poor quality tenements.6. Explain the evidence in your ability to provide these benefits. So in the example of this geologist, he gave a succinct summary of his 7 years of experience in coal exploration and specifically in data handling and interpretation as well as quality control of an exploration team of 90 people and 11 drill rigs. He could identify when other geologists were not thorough or precise in the processes, discrepancies in interpretation or if there were any quality control issues.Write your cover letter – build out from the dot points you developed in steps 4, 5 & 6.7. Your cover letter structure should be as follows (I am assuming you already have knowledge of creating a letter format):- Introduce yourself.- Highlight upfront the benefits to the organisation for hiring you.- Explain your evidence for being able to provide these benefits. Remember to refer to your references e.g. “ As my references can attest, I am reliable and communicative.”- Refer to your CV for more detailed information.- Close off e.g. I look forward to hearing from you.- Sign off.Make sure to keep your cover letter to one page.Check and recheck your contact details.All the best!

Let me tell you about a very recent experience as a hiring manager. We advertised a software developer position and received 130 applications in four days. That’s probably the highest rate of applications in my six+ years as a hiring manager. So far so good. In the job description, we clearly said “If you don’t submit a cover letter, we will not look at your resume” in bold at the very end. Guess how many of those 130 applicants submitted a cover letter? Barely half of them. So of the 130 well-qualified, bachelors and masters degree holding candidates, less than half did not read the job description or cared enough to follow the key requirement in the job! So theoretically if someone submitted a resume and an empty cover letter they would be in the 50th percentile of the candidates. Within those 65, we could weed out 30+ because of utterly horrible grammar or half-hearted recitals of their resumes. In fact there was one candidate who quite obviously started from a template where she searched & replaced the company name. The templated cover letter was pretty compelling but she missed one the of the occurrences of the company name so a different company name showed up in our job’s cover letter :) . A grave, unrecoverable mistake by any standard, but I decided to take her to the next stage of the interview process because of the effort she put into preparing the template and doing the search-replace!Our company talent team and I thank these 95+ applicants for making our job easy and literally screening themselves out, but we are not going to take you to the next stage. Sorry! Attention-to-detail is a key skill and no matter what other super-powers you have, all of them will be negated at this early stage of the screening game. Now, I am pretty sure that we may in fact have screened out a couple of super-hero candidates in the process but we are OK with that.

Question URL: #quora .com/What-are-some-good-books-or-other-resources-on-how-to-master-writing-cover-letters-and-or-CV. Best tips and tricks for the question: #What are some good books or other resources on how to master writing cover letters and or CV?##4 SECRETS TO WRITE A KILLER COVER LETTER!=>1. Write a customized cover letter.Most cover letters suck.My guess is at some point you’ve googled “cover letter template,” made a few tweaks, and used what I call the “spray and pray” method (sent it off to as many decent companies as you could find in the shortest amount of time).Writing a legit, personalized cover letter takes more time and effort than personalizing a resume (where you might change a bullet point here and there). So a lot of people just “check the box” and mail it in. Trust me, hiring managers can tell… you’re not fooling anyone.—→Related post: Free ebook 395 interview questions with answers pdfDownload link: CoverLetter123. com/2018/06/free-book-395-interview-questions-with-answers-pdf.html=>2. Explain what you’ll deliverOnce you’ve hooked your reader, the next few paragraphs should explain what you can do for them and the company.“Spell out very quickly and succinctly what you can walk through that company’s doors and deliver, with the deliverables of the job directly in mind,” said Foss.It doesn’t have to be a guessing game. She pointed out that the job description will give you “some very solid hints” about what they’re looking for.Kermes suggested using three to four bullet points within the letter. Under each one, you should “quantify the outcomes you can produce to solve your recipient’s biggest problems,” he said.So, instead of saying “I sold $300,000 worth of products at my last job,” you could say “I will use my past experiences to double sales of your products in the next 12 months.” After all, if you write a rockstar resume, it’ll have all the details about your past positions.—→Related post: free 32 resume templatesDownload link: 32ResumeTemplates.blogspot .com=>3. Make a strong first impressionYour job application (resume + cover letter) is your potential dream employer’s first impression of you. Your resume is your opportunity to showcase your professional experience and accomplishments. Your cover letter is your opportunity to advertise your unique personality, story, and passion.Oh and by the way, you’re not the only one who’s sooo busy. Be respectful of the hiring manager’s time and write a concise letter that packs a ton of punch.I trust you to use your discretion on cover letter length, but people always ask me for rules. So here you go: your cover letter should be 3 paragraphs.Related post:InterviewQuestionsAZ.blogspot. com/2018/09/32-tips-to-prepare-for-your-job-interviews.html+ 10 secrets to win every job interviews: InterviewQuestionsAZ.blogspot. com/2013/07/top-10-secrets-to-win-every-job.html=>4. Be Skill-FocusedMost people have a resume that’s structured around the jobs they’ve held, rather than their skills. So turn your letter into an opportunity to highlight on 2–4 of your relevant abilities. Structure each paragraph around one of the skills you’ve chosen to highlight, then write 2–3 sentences about how your experiences specifically showcase them.Again, you don’t need to worry about covering everything, or even necessarily about being chronological. With this strategy, you’ll avoid repeating your resume—making the most of the space you have in your cover letter, and not wasting the time of your potential employer.