There are two parts to any job application, and the first is the resume. It shows your work experience, your skills, your history, and everything else that a potential employer needs to know about you. However, the second part is equally as important and also acts as a gateway to your resume: The cover letter.
You need both of these components to ensure that you get the job or at least move onto the next stage of the job application.
However, while many people spend hours and hours handcrafting their resumes, most don’t focus on the cover letter. However, taking on the cover letter and ensuring that you do it perfectly is something that you need to focus on.
If your cover letter is interesting, it gives a lot of information and raises a lot of questions that your employer might want to have answered in your resume, and so they will start to read your resume. In order to make sure that your cover letter and resume work well together, then keep on reading for tips!
Match the Style of Your Resume to Your Personal Writing Style — Use a Resume Builder
You don’t want it to look like your resume and your cover letter are written by two different people. If you are warm and friendly inside of your cover letter and then have a resume that looks like a robot typed it out, it can cause some discord for your employer. Additionally, it doesn’t really show who you are as a person.
An online resume builder allows you to write out your resume in your style, without having to worry about the style. Instead you can just write and allow for the style and the actual building of the resume to happen all on its own.
Focus On The Skills and Accomplishments That Are Applicable For The Job
A good cover letter is focused on condensing the resume down into an easily readable assessment of your skills. Then, the employer will want to give deeper into the information in the cover letter by looking into the resume. In your cover letter, focus on what you have done at past jobs and talk about the accomplishments you have made and the results you have gotten.
If you can show in your cover letter that you know what you are doing and you can fulfill the requirements of the job in question, then your resume is going to show off all of your qualifications and will certainly be looked at.
Personalize It
One of the things that gets both resumes and cover letters thrown in the trash bin without anyone reading them or caring, is whenever you have clearly used a template and barely changed it.
While having an outline that you use to save time or because it works is fine, but you need to make sure some of it is applicable to the job that you are applying for.
Address your cover letter to a specific person, don’t be afraid to show that you are enthusiastic about the job, and show your personality in both the cover letter and the resume.
Crack jokes, share facts, do what you would normally do in the office and act like you would act if you got the job. That’s the best way to get your cover letter read, and if they like the cover letter then your employer will certainly go to the resume with a good attitude.
Put in some serious time crafting your cover letter, and you’ll find that you will go a lot further in your job hunting!
