When there is a job vacancy, the HR manager gets hundreds of applications and without an impressive cover letter, your resume is sure to find place in the waste basket. On the other hand, the application with a professional and winning cover letter will likely get noticed at once. A well-written cover letter demonstrates your communication and organizational skills, two things of paramount importance in any organization. Here are some tips to help you write a cover letter which is tailor made to impress your employer:
- Customize your cover letter to fit the employer’s requirements as announced in the job advertisement. Your cover letter should emphasize on your skills which match the requirements of the employer as mentioned in the job advertisement. These areas include expertise the company needs, years of experience of a job applicant, his technical knowledge, the transferable skills that he possesses, and his personality traits.
- Your cover letter should emphasize on your employer’s needs and definitely not your own needs. Describe what you can do for the employer and his company. Only then your cover letter will attract your employer’s attention.
- Keep your cover letter on a professional note. Capitalize on your qualifications without sounding boastful about it, keep your information to the point, without any pretence or unnecessary formality.
- Simplicity is the key to writing a winning cover letter. Decorations, jazzy paper, designer fonts, pictures are a strict no-no in a cover letter. Use a simple block format with left flush margins and ragged right margins. Restrict your cover letter to one or at the most two pages.

