{"id":1212,"date":"2018-05-11T08:21:35","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T08:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/?p=1212"},"modified":"2018-05-18T06:09:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T06:09:38","slug":"how-to-write-a-killer-cover-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/news\/how-to-write-a-killer-cover-letter","title":{"rendered":"How to write a killer cover letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We asked one of Australia&#8217;s leading resume writing services for some tips on how to write a cover letter that works.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Here&#8217;s what they had to say:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Cover letters are important. They can make or break an application. In essence, a good cover letter is one that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Makes it clear you meet the job requirements<\/li>\n<li>Makes it clear you specifically want THIS job<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>With these goals in mind, here&#8217;s how to write a successful cover letter in 5 steps:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Address your letter correctly<br \/>\nDo you have the name of the hirer? If not, can you find it? Addressing people by their name and position title is standard business etiquette. It&#8217;s something you can do that many others will not.<\/li>\n<li>Make it clear that you meet job requirements<br \/>\nThe easiest way to do this is to reflect the wording of the job advertisement. Don&#8217;t parrot the advertisement word-for-word, but pick out the essential requirements and make sure it&#8217;s clear that you meet them.<\/li>\n<li>Be specific<br \/>\nRather than saying &#8220;I have strong skills in Photoshop&#8221;, it&#8217;s much more convincing to say &#8220;I have 3 years&#8217; experience working with Photoshop as an image retoucher at the Sydney Metropolitan newspaper&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t just focus on yourself<br \/>\nYour cover letter shouldn&#8217;t be a summary of your resume. Make it clear you meet job requirements, but also include points about what the company is looking for. A company needs to know that you have read their advertisement, understand why they&#8217;re hiring and are confident you could do well in their team. Include points about the company&#8217;s brand, their clients, their market &#8211; this let&#8217;s the reader know you&#8217;ve taken the time to get to know what they do, and that you&#8217;d be committed to their goals.<\/li>\n<li>Make it clear that THIS is the job you want<br \/>\nEven though you&#8217;re applying for the job, you need to go further to make it clear you really want it. This seems obvious, but is missed by many candidates. Is the job short-term? Does it pay less than your current role? Is it in a different city?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Whatever the job and its conditions, you need to give compelling reasons why this is specifically what you&#8217;re looking for.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck!<\/p>\n<p>If you need help with your job application, you&#8217;re welcome to get in touch with us\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.metroresumes.com.au\/career-one\"><em>here<\/em><\/a>. One of our friendly resume writers will be very happy to help you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We asked one of Australia&#8217;s leading resume writing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,54,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cover-letters","category-free-resources","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1212"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1463,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions\/1463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}