My Guide To Writing A Killer Cover Letter
Most people think a cover letter is about themselves. This isn’t true.
A cover letter is a marketing tool. Treat it like one and you’ll see it do wonders. Treat it like an autobiography and you’ll wonder why no one gets back to you.
Here’s the cover letter formula that got me my current job:
- Analyzing the job description
- Identifying what to include in your cover letter
- Why do you want to work here?
- Writing the cover letter
Before we get started: this is a long post (~3000 words). If you'd rather get a free PDF copy of it, feel free to drop your email here and I'll be sending it next week.
1/ Analyzing the job description
Always write a cover letter from scratch. It's better to apply for five relevant positions with a complementing cover letter than to apply for fifty positions without any background research.
The best way to do this is to start by analyzing the job description.
A job description is composed of two parts:
- What you’ll do
- What the company is looking for (i.e qualifications)
First, focus on the “what you’ll do” portion. The first few bullets are the most important. And we need to make sure that they’re addressed in our cover letter. Start highlighting the ones you have experience carrying out.
Next, take a look at the qualifications. Note down the ones you can comfortably meet and ignore any you don’t. We also want to highlight the ‘preferred’ or ‘nice-to-have’ items listed in the job posting if you satisfy those.
Quick note: Qualifications are always negotiable and should never deter you from applying if you think you’re almost there but missing a few requirements.
Make sure to note all these skills you’ve highlighted in the job description down. We’re now ready to move onto our next step.
2/ Identifying what to include in your cover letter
Create a table with two columns. In the left column jot down the highlighted skills you identified in the above section. And now in the right column, start writing down how you can match up to the advertised qualifications.
Here’s an example for my latest role. Notice how I try to use as many of the same words as the job description:
For now, just put down the qualifications without any regard for style. Also, you don’t need qualifications for all the requirements. We’re only going to use the top two anyway.
Struggling to come up with qualifications? Try to ask your co-workers or peers about projects they’ve enjoyed working with you on. Keeping a brag document can also be really helpful.
And try to speak the employer’s language. So if a job description mentions “QuickBooks,” don’t just say you’ve used “accounting software”.
3/ Why do you want to work here?
You’re a great fit for the role. Now you have to convince them that you want to work there.
Realize that this is just a research based question. If you do enough research, you will find information about the company that you can link back to your own interests and goals.
To help you do research, ask yourself the following questions:
- What is the company’s mission?
- What problem are they trying to solve?
- What’s the product?
- What’s unique about this company compared to its competitors?
- What are some policies or values that the company has that they feature on their homepage?
- Describe any of the organization’s community engagement projects or employee development programs.
A great place to find more info is to look at interviews that their founders or executives have done. Another is the company’s blog.
Once you’ve done your research, list out why you find each answer to the above questions appealing. What is it about rockets that appeals to you? Why is a video messaging platform one you can connect with?
And if you’ve been using their product, that enthusiasm will shine through. It’s not mandatory and it’s not even common, but when it does happen, you have a great reason for why you want to work at the company.
Sidenote: I'm going to release a complete guide on researching companies before the interview soon. If you'd like to read that you can subscribe here and get it when it's released.
4/ Writing the cover letter
We’re going to use the following format for your cover letter:
(i) Who you are, what you want, and what you believe in.
(ii) Transition
(iii). Skill & Qualification Match
(vi) Why do you want to work there?
(v) Conclusion
(i) Who you are, what you want, and what you believe in
Use the first one or two sentences to make some statements about who you are, what you want, and what you believe in. Here are some good examples:
Emphasize your strengths and also ideally mention something specific to the company.
(ii) Transition
I like to link the intro in my cover letter to the first skill-qualification match by having a summary statement and attaching it to a generic sentence:
The first sentence summarizes what you will bring to the company. The second helps flow into the experiences you’re about to write about.
Mine would be:
Over the last 12 months, I’ve helped my company generate over $X in revenue by leading meetings with executive leaders and also built a variety of web applications on the side.
And now I’m excited to continue my journey by contributing and growing at Adyen. There are three things that make me the perfect fit for this position:
Here are some examples that differentiate weak and better summary statements:
Avoid jargon and get specific. Half the words, twice the examples. Ideally with a few numbers sprinkled in.
Quick Note: The summary statement is also great to add to the top of your Linkedin bio.
(ii) Skill & Qualification Match
Go back to your table matching your qualifications to the requirements. Pick the two most important ones.
We’re going to link your qualifications to a theme. And then use that to transform your boring bullet points into exciting sentences.
Here are eight common interview story themes:
- Leading People
- Taking initiative
- Affinity for challenging work
- Affinity for different types of work
- Affinity for specific work
- Dealing with failure
- Managing conflict
- Driven by curiosity
Let's say we ended up with the below table when analyzing a specific job description.
And let’s take our first qualification:
Conducted Feature-Mapping and Requirements Gathering sessions with prospective and existing clients to formulate Scope and Backlog. Responsible for managing and creating backlog, writing stories and acceptance criteria for all managed projects.
Let’s figure out how we can link this to one of the interview story themes:
And here's another example:
So what we’ve done here is abstracted some themes from this person’s actual qualifications.
I know this isn't super scientific. More themes than just one work for most qualifications. But the goal is to help you solidify the type of story you want to tell.
And now that you have your theme, you can use it to guide your body paragraphs using this format:
Some more examples:
(vi) Why do you want to work there?
Pick your two most favorite aspects about the company that you already found when doing your research. I like to pick one value driven one and one industry or current topic related. If you use their product, though, that should be first on your list.
If you want to check out some examples for this, you can do that here, here, and here.
Now that you’ve got two reasons, it’s time to craft together a simple paragraph that weaves them together:
Third, I’ve been following [COMPANY] for a couple of months now and I resonate with both the company’s values and its general direction. The [Insert Value] really stands out to me because [Insert Reason]. I also recently read that [Insert topical reason] and this appeals to me because [Why it appeals to you].
Realize that this part is your chance to bring out what you like about the company. And if you can’t really think of anything, maybe you need to rethink why you’re actually applying.
(vi) Conclusion
Simply state what you want and why you want it:
I think you’ll find that my experience is a really good fit for [COMPANY] and specifically this position. I’m ready to take my skills to the next level with your team and look forward to hearing back.
Thanks,
Your name
Putting it together
Combing everything, here’s what my cover letter for my current job looked like:
And voila. You now have all the tools to write a killer cover letter.
***
Credit
Thanks for reading. There’s great information available on this topic out there. The Princeton University cover letter guide is good as is the University of Washington's. Any questions feel free to DM me too.
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Over and out -
Shikhar
Posted Mar 9, 2022, 8:03 PM UTC · edited