Career Tools: Cover Letters: Creating a Cover Letter
A good cover letter is like a good research paper: Despite what you may think, it is not written overnight. Remember the papers you researched and wrote the night before it was due? How ill conceived and poorly organized they were? One thought here, one thought there, lame sentences all over. Now remember the papers (fine, maybe it was just one) that were written over a few weeks, a few drafts. Not only how much better they were but also how much better you felt after writing them. Creating a cover letter is a very similar process.
Your job is going to be a significant part of your life after graduation so it pays to look into where you want to be and what you want to be doing. This process starts with researching your cover letter. Recall from the "What is a Cover Letter?" section that a good letter is written with a potential employer in mind. And you, as a potential employee, have a responsibility to know all you can about each employer from which you want a job. What are the strategic goals of each employer? Whom do they hire? Is there a new CEO at the helm? You certainly don't want to flub a job interview because you didn't know the big boss in charge. Be sure to also know something about the industry of each employer. Visit the library or your handy internet browser and find out how your potential employer and its competitors are doing. Have there been industry-wide layoffs recently? Are companies looking to grow their infrastructure overseas?
By finding out more about a company and an industry you can focus your cover letter on areas that are of important interest to the person reading it. Plus, you'll highlight your specific knowledge. The key is to find an edge, something that shows off your intelligence and attention to detail, something that no one else will include in their cover letter. No matter how well organized and grammatically perfect a letter is, unless it relates directly to what an employer is looking for, the odds of landing an interview are slim.
