4 Sound Arguments For Writing a Cover Letter

1. Writing your cover letter is the easiest part of your career search.

It is likely going to take you less than 5-10% of the time you need to spend creating your resume and your LinkedIn profile, and an almost minuscule percentage of the time you’ll spend developing a personal website if you follow the growing popularity of that advice. 

There are very simple templates, readily available, for drafting a short, effective cover letter.Yes, there are alternatives to traditional cover letters, marketing letters, for example, that are designed to be more like a resume than a cover letter. These options will take more time but they are intended to be similar to, and in some cases a substitute for, your resume.

2. This one’s easy to state – and not that hard to implement. Don’t make spelling and grammatical errors.

If you are likely to make a spelling or grammatical error in your cover letter, it is even more likely you’ll make one (or more) in your resume or LinkedIn profile. Skipping the cover letter, for this reason, doesn’t make much sense – especially when there’s a much better alternative. First, carefully proofread your cover letter. Second, ask a trusted friend or colleague to proofread it with you. Third, use your computer’s spell check carefully and consider stepping up to something more sophisticated like Grammarly.

3. Your resume, if written effectively, is focused on your accomplishments, not just your experiences and skills.

It is customized so that a “summary statement,” if you have one, plus your accomplishments for each job, are tied to the job you are applying for. However, your resume is still “too much information” for that initial “6-second scan” and the HR recruiter or hiring manager might overlook the key point you especially want them to see. The cover letter lets you add that special detail – that personal insight into your passion – that might be harder to include in your resume. Perhaps there’s something that’s not from your current position that really fits this potential job so it is not at the top of your resume.

4. A-B-C, Always be closing.

That is the classic sales advice, and you might hope that your resume has some powerful “closing” points about your accomplishments. However, your resume does not offer you the chance to close directly – your cover letter does. Almost all advice on cover letters suggests a short and simple formula, one that always ends with asking for the next steps: an interview, a phone conversation, or the job itself.

In the dynamic of the more automated, more networking world of hiring today, the traditional cover letter may have lost some significance. However, so have other elements, including the resume which has lost importance due to the continued growth of online processes including LinkedIn. However, there are still organizations and millions of small businesses and job opportunities, where a strong cover letter can make a difference.

By Gbenga Sogbaike