Some people still don’t see the value of a good resume cover letter. They believe that they can afford it to wait till their first meeting which is of course total rubbish.
And if you are creating a nice looking resume be careful how you send it, there are many mistakes that you can make along the way. Just use the next checklist and you’ll increase the change of being invited for a job interview at your possible future employee.
1. Don’t try to impress them in you cover letter with the knowledge about the company if you only Googled them.
2. Create several resumes; one for the sales role, one for the marketing role and one for the job as project manager.
3. Always be positive in your letter and don’t make the mistake of being negative towards your current employee.
4. Make sure that you’ve changed the name on your cover letter to the company that you are sending your resume to.
5. If you are creating a new ones; visit several websites in a specific branch and use the keywords and job tasks in your resume and cover letter.
6. Of course you need to lift up your skills a little but don’t over do it. If you are the head of a small sales department with 3 employees, don’t tell them in your letter that you managed a department with 30 employees.
7. Once you finished the letter, put it away for a few hours and read it over again. Be sure that you don’t have any spelling or grammar mistakes in it.
8. Never talk about your negative sides or shortcomings. Emphasize your strengths, your skills and your experience.
9. Make sure you apply for the same job in your letter and in your resume. Since you use both your cover letter and your resume as a template this happens quite frequently, don’t make this stupid mistake.
10. Check if you have all the referred documents. If you are referring to attachment #3 in your cover letter, make sure you’ve added a copy with it.
11. Stay away from rambling. Keep it short and to the point. It can easily happen that your future employer receives >100 letters for one position. If you don’t keep it short you’ll be in the bin immediately.
12. Personalize the cover letter and try to create it like a good sales letter. Your cover letter should be intriguing enough to have the employer want look at your resume.
13. And the last tip is run it by someone with the same expertise as you. If you are applying for a role as sales manager don’t have it read by a car mechanic and this is works both ways of course. A sales manager doesn’t know much about a fuel injected engine.
Good Luck with job interview.
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