While landing a job and earning a living is one of the most important parts of adulthood, many people rush blindly into job applications without much thought. Most young people who look for their first employment fail to realize the importance of writing a proper cover letter to accompany their resume.
Even though your resume is the important part of an application, the cover letter holds just as much weight in helping your future employers decide whether they should hire you or not. Let’s take a look at how a cover letter can and will help you land your first job so you can start building your career in a proper way.
Part of a whole
We have mentioned before that the cover letter is an essential part of your job application. This means that without it, your employer doesn’t have a context for any of your skills or experiences that are listed in the resume. A resume is just a list of skills, experiences and information that doesn’t mean much without “a human touch” added to make it more appealing. You can still get hired and employed without using a cover letter however, but the odds of that happening by the resume application alone are slim to none.
Explain your motivation
The main purpose of writing a cover letter that accompanies your resume is to explain your motivation to your future employers. Everyone is driven by a different set of values, goals and dreams. The simple truth is that employers will always look for ambitious people with a right set of values that cater to their own and that of their company.
By explaining who you are and where you come from in your cover letter, you will put a much more human face to your resume, making it that much more appealing. Take time to quietly and thoroughly think about whom you are and what drives you. It’s always a good idea to apply for positions at companies that relate to your set of values and dreams rather than ones that strive for something else – you will spend years of your life working there after all. This is the essential thing to consider when applying for a first job, because many people make the mistake of taking the first employment on offer without thinking about what that means for them personally.
Expand on your experiences
The skills and education you have listed in your resume will only tell your employers so much. You can expand on that information by elaborating what courses you have followed during your education, what volunteering or public service experiences you have or how and why you developed certain skills in your skill set.
Employers like people who can explain and talk about who they are, people who are self-aware and know where their life is headed. By elaborating your own experiences before applying for a position at their company, you will help the employer and interviewer get a much clearer picture of who you are and if you are fit for their business family. You don’t need to have years of previous experience to land a job – you just have to know how to sell whatever skills and aspirations you possess already and convince the employer that you are the right person for them.
Show your writing skills
Even though the business world has moved away from analogue work management and into the digital world, one of the most important things employers look for in their candidates is literacy. People who don’t know how to write or format a simple paper such as a cover letter or a resume have no business asking for a job employment in a predominant international company or a similar venture.
Make sure that your cover letter and resume are impeccable when you send them to the employers of your choosing. Visiting a professional writing platform might be a good idea if you are struggling with your writing skills. Platforms such as getacademichelp.com are always open to cooperation to make sure that you have the best possible papers. It’s completely possible not to have any job experience whatsoever and still get hired because your writing skills are at a high level, making it easy for you to adjust and start learning new skills.
Tailored to your employer
Employers are people like everyone else, and people like to see that others care about them. That is why you can use your cover letter to show how much you know about the company before the interview itself. By sprinkling bits of information in the cover letter and letting your employer know how much you want to work at that particular company, your chance of employment will rise exponentially.
Take some time to do research and find out a few details about who the CEO and the executive board is, if the company is a subsidiary or an independent venture and what their long-term plans are. This information will help you tremendously during and after the application itself, and it’s one of the most overlooked steps in people who are seeking their first employment.
Preparation for the interview
Your cover letter functions as a two-way preparation for the interview that will follow after your application is considered. It will not only help you prepare information about the company and your employer but also do the same for the interviewer. The person conducting your interview will prepare questions based on your cover letter and check how much of what you wrote is really true.
Falsifying a cover letter is always a bad idea – if it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be. Don’t force an application to a particular company just because you have grown fond of it during your preparation. The cover letter you write by yourself will be more than enough to prepare you for the interview and the interviewer will have a much easier job of deciding whether to hire you or not.
Conclusion
When all is said and done, a cover letter can help you in a huge way whatever position you are applying for. Use it to introduce yourself as a person with real feelings and dreams who can work in a professional team environment. The employer who is perfect for you will only take a glance at the application and know you are the right person for them. Others won’t be so easygoing, and knowing how to tell the difference and walk away is essential in landing your first job.
