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Written by: Tracy P. Miller
Editor, Publisher
TearTaylor's Career Corner
What Shouldn't Be In Your Letter
Before mailing your cover letter to a company, make sure you first scan your letter's address and salutation fields to make sure both are okay. What exactly should you be looking for in these areas? You're looking for titles or terms that are generic or nonspecific and that appear without names preceding them. What exactly does this mean? It means that titles such as recruitment manager, human resources coordinator or staffing director planted alone at the beginning of your address field or salutations that stiffly read Dear Sir, Dear Madam or To Dear Whomever It May Concern, shouldn't be in your letter. These terms, when found isolated, are distinct clues that the letter was created by a jobseeker who didn't want to be bothered with the simple task of securing a staffing person's name for his or her cover letter.
Benefits of Including Names
One sure way to help land your resume in a thick do-not invite in pile of any hiring director's is to send him or her a cover letter without their name properly recorded at the top of it. Neglecting to get this usually easily obtainable information can occasionally be associated with signs of a jobseeker that might in the future be lax or careless in gathering information for his boss and can also signal unwanted signs of a job applicant that might even be mildly disinterested in the job he is currently applying for. Also, it has been my experience that when applicants included the hiring person's name in their cover letters, the screener was more likely to have a positive appraisal of the letter than they would without the name. For some reason, omitting the name somehow created more of a detached screening experience for the hiring person. It made him or her more inclined to say no to the applicant that didn't include the name as opposed to one that did.
Besides, there's no excuse for not having a HR person's name in your letter. It only takes a few minutes to pick up the phone to find out who this person is at any organization. Also, if the company is large enough, you can sometimes go to their websites to get a contact name. Most instances, these websites may simply instruct you to send your resume to the Recruitment Manager or Personnel Director of the company without any mention of an actual contact name. In these instances, it’s okay to have a general salutation like the ones already used as examples but if you’re writing to inquire about a position that hasn’t been posted in the papers or a position that was revealed to you by a friend, you should really take the time to find out who the hiring person is for that company.
Cover Letter Uses
Finally, I know there are jobseekers that don't even bother sending cover letters with their resumes and probably believe that the whole point of this article is useless. But, if you happen to belong to this group and you're still painfully reading this article at the moment, I hope what I'm about to close with will help you change your views about sending cover letters in the future.
You should be aware that there is a bit more to a cover letter than it just serving as a thin shield for your resume. As much as you might disagree, cover letters weren't just created to prevent ink stains or coffee stains from marring your resume while it's stretched across the top of a recruitment director's desk. A cover letter does serve some other modest purpose. In the past, when I was rigorously reviewing resumes and cover letters for intern and CSA openings, I always used it to reveal faint hints about a job applicant's writing skills, to determine their level of interest in a position, to determine how an applicant found out about a job opening, to see if they were a referral of someone currently working at the company or to uncover other useful skills/traits that the applicant didn't list in his or her resume.
Personal Reasons For Letter
But probably more importantly, the cover letter was just something I got use to receiving with any resume. It was the first document my eyes came across when opening a jobseeker's envelope and when I didn't see it, I immediately found myself thinking less of the job applicant. For some reason, in that very instance, he or she looked less professional and appeared a lot less serious in their efforts to get me to give them the nod. I figured if a jobseeker couldn't take the time to prepare a short cover letter then how badly could they really want the job? And besides, what was the whole point of the cover letter anyway? Wasn't jobseekers supposed to use it to declare their interest in jobs? If the letter was missing, then what were we recruiters supposed to assume? That the jobseeker didn't really want the job after all?
Next Steps
So that recruiters don't draw wrong conclusions about you or assume you want a job any less than someone else they might be considering for a job opening, make sure you always include a cover letter with your resume. Cover letters don't take much time to prepare and there are countless free resources within your reach to aid you in developing them. Now, to help get you started in writing a cover letter, I've provided a link to a tutorial right from here: Easy Cover Letters.
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This article is © 2003-2004 by Tracy Miller and may not be reposted without written permission from the author and may not be reprinted for profit.