A good cover letter entices the recipient to give your resume a thorough read by planting seeds of interest. Like a trailer (the technical name for the movie advertisements that precede the main feature), an effective cover letter contains the following essential elements:
It advertises the product (you) by grabbing and holding the reader’s interest.
It’s brief- only one page long.
It maintains a crisp pace, making its points in an attention-getting manner, using vivid language.
It is well edited – every word, every sentence, and every paragraph has a distinct purpose.
It convinces the reader to take the next essential step- reading your resume.
Remember that your cover letter, like your resume, represents you to people whom
you’ve never met before. As a result, it plays a vital role in forming that all-important first impression.
To help you understand the principles of effective cover letter writing, it’s important
to understand the harried lives of school administrators who read thousands of these letters every year.
An observer would describe our reading of cover letters as efficient because it takes
only a minute to skim each one and place it in either the “Consider” pile or the “Reject” pile. After reading tens of thousands of cover letters in our careers, we can readily spot the information we are seeking. As a cover letter writer, your job is to quickly sell your candidacy.
