The main purpose of a cover letter is to sell yourself to a company. You can write cover letters to accompany a resume when applying to a job advertised online. You can have a cover letter if you are contacting a company “cold,” or without any posted job advertisements. Cover letters are also useful for proposals, letters of intent, and more. However, the format of this business letter usually stays the same, as does the basic outline of the content.
In general, a cover letter is a one-page document with three paragraphs of content. The first paragraph should explain your interest in the company/school/job opening (or whatever the subject of the letter is, if it doesn’t fall into one of those categories).
The second paragraph should always explain why you are the best person for the job. It should detail what special credentials you have that make you a good fit for the program or job you are applying for. If you are applying to graduate programs at colleges, this paragraph should explain your goals and why they make you a better candidate than the competition.
The third paragraph should be a polite and respectful closing statement. Thank the hiring director/director of admissions/other professional for their time and consideration.
To observe these similarities and learn the basic cover letter structure, read over as many examples as you can find. Some great examples are at the following websites:
-http://www.quintcareers.com/cover_letter_samples.html
-http://www.resume-resource.com/covers.html
-http://jobsearch.about.com/od/coverlettersamples/Sample_Cover_Letters.htm
However, despite this basic outline, the content of the cover letter should be unique to you. You should find a different way to sell yourself that makes you stand out in a crowd. You don’t want to talk about boring or irrelevant skills you have, but rather you want to nail your first impression by showing you have what all of the other applicants don’t. For this reason, your cover letter shouldn’t look like any other sample out there. So, even though you can get free sample cover letters online, you shouldn’t copy them exactly. Be sure to learn by example, but make the cover letter really represent you. (You should notice the differences in all of the samples, too, which illustrates this point.)
