Hello World:

Today in Carrier Life Education we began our topic on cover letters. Before we begin, let’s define a cover letter. A cover letter is a special letter part of the job application process written by the candidate to argue why they are most fit for the position. To better understand it, we were assigned the task to take an example cover letter and break down it’s mistakes so here is the example:

From reading this, we have to look at its pros and cons so here some questions to help us break it down:

1) What are some things that were done correctly in this cover letter?

Well for starters, we can clearly see the letter format is right as it includes an intro, salutations, name and other letter formatting. We can also see he (I am just to use male pronouns as an example) included multiple of his contacts (email and phone) which is good  for the employer to access him. He also fully filled out the location and person to who this letter was meant to be received by with multiple descriptions.

2) What can this applicant do to strengthen their description of the relevant experience and skills?

Now the main problem with this cover letter is that it does not really advertise his skills and capabilities. The second paragraph of a cover letter is meant to do this but he essentially said they are hard working and like the company’s products. If he included about his technological skills and maybe give examples of this and to why he is so hard working, then this letter could have been much better.

3) What kinds of things would you add and/or remove to make this cover letter better?

In the fist paragraph, he barely stated why he wanted to apply for this specific position. Employers want to see why you want this job as this can contribute to success of wether you hired or not. I would remove this so called “experience” of working with machines  and replace with why he is applying for this position and how his reasons matter to the company. Finally, I think if he made some of his sentences complex with multiple points rather lots of single short sentences, the letter would be much easier to read.

 

Well that all I can of about this letter’s strengths and weaknesses so see you next time.

Bye