How to Write Your Own Cover Letter Like a Pro

1. Class Introduction: My name is Josh and I'm a business consultant for Mignola does consulting based out of Saskatoon, Canada. And today I'm going to teach how to make your own cover letter. Part of my business is providing professional writing services for people where I write resumes and cover letters. But today I'm going to try and empower you to write your own cover letter and a cover letter. What is it? A little bit self-explanatory? It's a letter that's essentially covering your resume. And now that's usually a one-page written letter. And the objective is to introduce yourself, your career objectives and give a little bit of a background on your professional work history and academic history when you're applying for a job. 2. Cover Letter Explained: Okay, so let's get started here on how to write your own cover letter. The first slide here and just going over the course objective. Of course objective is to write a right and better understand how to write a suitable, professional and attractive cover letter. What is the definition of a cover letter? It's a one-page written document and serving as an introduction of the job applicant and summary of their credentials and objectives to complement their resume or CV. So again, it's just like introducing yourself when you're applying for a job. One-page written letter that's going in front of your resume, kind of explaining who you are from a professional academic standpoint, your career objectives and your objective maybe specifically for a certain company or certain job. The optimal style for most people is one page long. It's unusual that you would want more than that. Three to five paragraphs is ideal. I would say three or four is better and tailored. You want it tailored to each job application. 3. Writing Basics: Okay, part one, writing your cover letter. So this highlight your skills, your experience, and objectives in a few short paragraphs. So some of the goals and specifics of the cover letter. Number one, as I said, one-page maximum, it's unusual that it would be more than one page or less than one page. It's like I said, it's gonna be about three to five paragraphs ideally, for I think is the best, but depends a little bit on your situation. This displays your writing skills. Whereas a resume focuses more on point form, accomplishments, Achievements, things that you've done in your past experience. The cover letter focuses a lot more on your actual writing skills. It is written paragraphs. It includes your contact information, just like your resume for sure. What's your phone number, your and your email, at least tailored for each job. So you want to like some obvious things. You want to change the date and who you're addressing it to. Maybe put some personal touches in there to address the specific company and the specific position. Finding name to address it to, if you can. I'll get I'll get to that in a little bit, a little bit later. But that would be like the hiring manager or the human resources manager. You want to sound confident without sounding arrogant. And that's something that I struggled with a little bit when I first really gotten into improving my resume and cover letter, you're basically trying to sell yourself and show that you are suitable for this job and you're a good candidate without sounding arrogant. So you do want to almost kinda brag about what you've achieved. But it's more so just to make yourself an appealing candidate, not to make it sound like the best person in the world or anything like that signed at the bottom. I think it looks better if you're going to add a signature rather than just writing your name, but that's up to you. Clean and simple format, consistent style with resume. So again, you're attaching this to a resume as far as fonts go and formatting and font sizes, things like that, you want it to be consistent. Always send it as a PDF file. Of course, you're going to be editing it in a Google doc file or a Microsoft Word file or something like that. But it always looks best and most professional if you send it as a PDF file along with a resume as well, should be a PDF file. And then free from grammatical spelling and grammatical errors. Some common mistakes to avoid when making cover letter. As I just mentioned there, number one is grammatical and spelling mistakes, so always proofread it. Read it out loud. Asked for help. I find what works best for me as those two things. Read it out loud. It just it's easier to catch mistakes when you read something out loud and then asking someone for help. My mom is usually very good at proofreading. Things will often ask her for help. But if you have a friend, I mean, there's there's even people you can hire to proofread for you. So just find someone who's good at that. The second issue there is two general so you want to make clear, understandable, and relevant points. I see a lot of people making points on their cover letter that just really don't really get too specific on what they've achieved or what they're trying to achieve and you want to make relevant points. There's a lot of fluff and cover letters and resumes and you want to avoid that. Too busy. So too much going on. Formatting is cramped. Too much information. As I said, 34, maybe five paragraphs and you want to keep those quite short so you don't want too much information in there. It is showing off your writing skills to just to show that you can kind of communicate what you're trying to communicate without adding excess information. Number for missing important information. So don't skip any contact or employment information for sure you want your phone number for sure you want your email. Really important employment information, academic information, some things you can leave out depending if you've been in the workforce for 2030 years, you don't really need to include your high-school education anymore, but you do want to include your most recent and relevant deployment information all the time. Poorly formatted. So keep it simple, clean, organized, and consistent. I've seen I see a lot of this as well, where there's just inconsistent formatting or just doesn't look very clean. And then the last one there is not tailored to the job. So make sure you highlight your credentials that are most relevant. E.g. what I mean by that is if you're applying for two different types of jobs, you're going to want to tailor your cover letter each time just to kinda highlight those skills that are more relevant to that particular job. Because sometimes you might have a variety of different skills and experiences. And they might be more suitable to certain types of jobs rather than other types of jobs. So if you can highlight the ones that are always the most relevant and specific to that particular job. I think that's really helpful. 4. Section 1 - Administrative Details: The first section here is what I call administrative content. So that provides personal information like your contact information and job-specific. And here's what it looks like on your cover letter. So it's the full-size cover letter. This section I've highlighted here is the administrative content. So I'm just going to break that down for you. So for starters, of course you want your name. So Full Name, firstName, and lastName. You don't necessarily need your middle name. I don't put that But first and last name for sure. Contact information. This is really important that you have your phone number and email address. There are other forms that you could include as well, but at least your phone number and your e-mail. The next thing there is city and provenance, or in other cases, state, city and territory, city and region, so they know where you're based out of. The next thing is home address. So your street address if you want to, but it's not necessary. I actually don't put my home address and I haven't for a long time. I noticed a lot of people still do that and that's totally up to you, whatever you feel comfortable with. But generally, I feel it's not that important as long as you are stating your city that you're living in, then the next thing is the date. So that's something as I mentioned, that you want to change every time you're updating your cover letter and applying for a new job, and that is today's date or the date that you are applying for a specific job company information. So by that I mean that the company that you are applying for a position with, some people put that I don't really put that. It's up to you and you can do it in different ways and I'll go over that shortly here. The next thing there is the HR manager's name is if possible. So HR being human resources or the hiring manager, if you can find it, It's always good to put that and just kinda adds a personal touch, but sometimes it's really hard to find. So just do your best in that case. And then the last thing there is a greeting. Greeting. I mean, like, Good morning, Good afternoon. But in this case, you don't know what time the person is actually going to be reading it. So I find it easiest just to say dear. So here's an example that I took off the internet of the administrative content section. For starters, this individual right at the top here put their name, the first name, and their last name. Very important. Next, they put their street address, which again is up to you. If you feel comfortable doing that, you can, but it's not necessary. Next, they have their city, state, and zip code. So for if you're living in Canada would be city, province or territory. And then your postal code. Or if you're in other regions of the world, the same thing, city, region, postal, zip, whatever code. Lastly there, the phone number and the e-mail. So those are super important because when you're applying for a job, obviously if they're interested in you, they're going to want to contact you, usually by phone, sometimes by email. How both of them next thing There's the date. So obviously this one is quite dated, but you want to include that on your cover letter near the top. And again, always change it as the days changed that you're applying for for new jobs. Now accompany information. I meant I mentioned that in the last slide. So this individual addressed someone working for the company, probably the hiring manager, HR manager, general manager, something like that. Then they also gave me information on that specific organization. The address, the state, city, zip code. That's up to you. I'll show you another example here after this. And then lastly you have the greeting, Dear Miss Nawaz. So Ms. New laws must be the hiring manager that this individual found. So that's one example. Secondly here, this is an example that I wrote. So this is more my style where again, I have pretty much the same information. I have the first name and last name, followed by the city and abbreviation for the province or state. Next I have the phone number and e-mail. So that's the contact information or personal information. After that, I have the date. So again, something you want to change every time. This is something I like to put and that's addressing or referencing a job that I'm applying for or my client is applying for the position title. And then if there's an ID number, not all jobs have ID numbers. But if they do, it's good to put that, especially with larger companies or larger organizations that have may have multiple positions with a similar title. It's good if you can specifically referenced that job ID so that they know which particular job that you're applying for. Then lastly there I have the greeting. So dear human resources manager, Dear Hiring Manager. That's the easiest most general one. Again, if you can find the person's name, that's going to sound better. Just makes sure that you're changing that each time. 5. Section 2 - Introductory Paragraph: Okay. So now they're written paragraphs of the cover letter. That is the substance of the cover letter that provides all the content regarding the applicant and their objectives. So here's another picture of the overall cover letter, and this is what we're focusing on now. We already covered the administrative content up here at the top. And now these are the written paragraphs. And so as I mentioned before, for is optimal, three to five is okay within that range. So here you can see there are four different paragraphs. So now I'm gonna go over those with you. So the first written paragraph, That's the introductory paragraph. So with that, I mean, it's a little bit flexible depending on your style, but generally they should be a brief explanation of who you are, what you're looking for, why you're applying your thoughts on the company, why you're a good fit, etc. So when I say who you are generating, this is like more of a professional focus. So it's not, you're not going to introduce yourself first talking about your hobbies. It's kind of like your main career position, your academic achievements, something like that. So really kinda putting yourself out there with your main credentials in the introduction. So I'll give you an example, a couple of examples of what that looks like. So first off, here's an example I took off the Internet and followed by an example that I wrote. So this first example, my experience and status as a third year, third year at the University of Virginia and make me an ideal candidate for the summer internship program with the US Department of Education, which I learned about it at the government and non-profit Career Expo in DC last month. Your agency is known for working to ensure equal access to education for every child and promoting educational excellence throughout the nation. I know that with my background and interests in helping youth, I'm a good fit for your organization. So I find this one is a little bit long, a little bit wordy. My example is a little bit shorter. With that first one though, you can see they're addressing the company a little bit more. Whereas in for me my preference is to address the applicant a little bit more starting out. So again, there's no, it's not so black and white you choose for yourself what makes most sense? What sounds best to you, but this is my style here. I'm a resident, attuned and a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan with an honors degree in marketing, currently pursuing full-time employment in Saskatchewan in a marketing role with established company. This is more I like this better because in the introductory sentence paragraph, it's showing exactly who you are and what your objective is, what you're looking for, what you're, what you're trying to accomplish. So right away, who's ever reading it knows exactly who you are and what you're trying to do, at least based from that limited kind of professional sense. 6. Section 2 - Background Paragraph: So we already covered the introductory paragraph and that was the brief explanation of who you are and what you're looking for from a professional standpoint. Now, the secondary paragraph is more of a focus on achievements, skills, experience, and then tied in with a particular job being applied for. This is getting into a little more detail as to what your background is, what you've accomplished professionally and academically. And it can be in other categories as well. But those are the two most important, obviously for a resume and cover letter. So a couple of examples here. The first one again, when I just took from the internet, and then secondly, I have an example here that I wrote. So for the first one here, my experience in sales and customer service, combined with my courses in psychology, has convinced me that hospitality marketing is a career a career option that would suit me well. In my position with Drake productions last year, I was recognized as the top sales associate in their summer program. I'm sure that I can put the same scale to use for you and yet continued to improve upon it as I learned from some of the top marketing executives in the business. So here they're breaking down their background a little bit. Some education stuff, courses in psychology. They're convinced that this is the position for them or the career for them. Talking about some background work experience that they had before, some accomplishments within that work experience. So this is a pretty good example. I find it's a little bit wordy. I prefer to keep it a little bit more simple, but it's up to you. So here's a second example. And the one I wrote, an extensive amount of professional education on entrepreneurial experience in the field of marketing, which along with my natural artistic skills, has allowed me to quickly excel and get promoted in my current job into the marketing manager position. This one's a little bit more simple. It might be good to get out a little bit more detail as far as some of the educational background here. But it's showing that you have a background in a marketing manager position where you excelled and you got promoted. So it's showing some of your professional accomplishments. 7. Section 2 - Confirmation Paragraph: So the next paragraph within the written before written paragraphs that I'm going to go over is the third paragraph which is confirming the fit and interests in the job. So now you have an introduction, you have more of a breakdown of your background, and now you are taking that information and showing why that makes you a good fit for this job that you're applying for. A couple of examples here. Again, the first one taken from the Internet and the second one I wrote myself. So this first one, I'm prepared for this administrative role as a result of my position as an intern at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service last summer. There, I coordinated internship placements for over 200 students in the Charlottesville community. More specifically, I collected and organized applications, corresponded with students and sponsors via email and phone, maintained and updated Excel database of all internship sites and sponsor contexts and created orientation packets. I have honed the organizational and time management skills necessary to be successful in turn with the Department of Education. So again, that styles a little bit longer than I liked, a little bit wordy, but it is getting quite a few details. I'm showing. This one's kind of building more little bit on the background and showing why these, these skills gained make them suitable for this particular job that they're applying for. The second example here, my style one, thanks to my extensive education and experience in the field of marketing and my desire to continue to grow in this field and positively impact the company I worked for. I feel my great candidate for your marketing manager position with market pro advertising. This one is more simple. Just confirming that you have extensive background, education and work experience in this particular field that you're applying for. And that you have continued desire to grow within that industry. And therefore making you this particular position with this particular company. You don't have to write the particular position and company in the paragraph, but I think it's a nice personal touch. And if you do that and just make sure that you are always making that adjustment every time you apply for a new job, you wouldn't want to apply for a certain job and then keep this paragraph the same where you're addressing a different job with a different company. 8. Section 2 - Closing Paragraph: We've covered the introductory paragraph, the secondary paragraph, third paragraph. And now lastly we have the closing paragraph. And again, if you want to make this three or five, you can, but I think four is the best. With this final paragraph, the closing paragraph, that expresses interest and enthusiasm in the job opportunity and establishes an easy means of communication. By that, I mean a call to action, including a phone number or an email just showing that it's easy to reach out to you if they're interested in scheduling an interview. So two examples here. Again, the first one from the Internet and then the second one that I wrote myself. The first one, I'm thrilled by the opportunity to combine my administrative excellence see, with my passion for Human Rights missions by serving Vice President of Finance and the HRG. Thanks very much for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you. One quick note. I'll mention on this one is it says thanks very much. But I think it would be better to say thank you very much in this case just because it's more formal and more professional, which is what we're going for with a cover letter. Otherwise, this one is good. It's expressing that you are excited about the opportunity to continue in this career with this particular position and you're excited to hear back from them. The second example, I'm here to begin a new position in the field I am passionate about. Or I can use my skills, knowledge, and experience to positively impact the lives my community and organization. Please contact me at anytime at 03:06, 85070 to 72 to schedule an interview. This one very similar, just showing that you're eager, you are excited to continue your career in a particular field. And that this is the major difference between the two is that there's a phone number included here. Just more clear call to action. If they are interested in reaching out to you after reading your cover letter and resume, just another easy place to find your contact information. 9. Section 3 - Closing Section: Okay, so last section of the cover letter is the closing section. We've now covered the top administrative section, the main section here with all the written paragraphs. And now just the closing section, which is a formal closing statements which compliments the final paragraph followed by a signature or your written name if you prefer that. So what does that look like? First off, you want to closing statement which can be part of your final paragraph, or it can be something separate as well. Secondly, you want a parting phrase or formal salutation, like sincerely. And then lastly, you want your name or your signature. So here's a few examples. Over here in the orange highlight is the example from the cover letter that I wrote where it says sincerely as kinda like you're closing salutation. And then a signature up here just as regards and it has the written name. I think signature looks better, but it's up to you how you want to present that. Then the third example here, thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely. And then as the name, so that one has all three, it has a closing statement, formal salutation, and then the name. 10. Creating Your Own Signature: Okay, so now I'm in Google Docs and I'm just going to show you how to add a signature at the end underneath your final paragraph or your salutation. So you have your cursor here and then the top here you want to click insert and insert. You wanna go down to drawing and then select New. From there. It'll take you to a new drawing window. Once you're in this window, you want to click over here. There's a line with a ball on each end of it. Click on that, go to the dropdown menu and select scribble. And then you have the scribble function here where you can make your signature however you want. That looks really sloppy, but you get the idea. If you want to delete it, you just hit backspace. And then you can try again. Just make sure it's on the scribble function. See if we can make that a bit nicer. A little bit nicer. And there you go. Then you hit Save and Close and inputs it into your cover letter. And so there you have the closing sentence or paragraph and then your signature at the bottom. 11. The Final Product: Okay, so now that we've gone through every section, we're left with a final product. So this is what it should look like. A full cover letter, as I mentioned, it's a one-page written document with three to five paragraphs for his best. So we have four. At the top, we have our administrative content where we have the name, city, region, phone number, e-mails, all the contact information, their date, company information, or specific job application information for the particular position. The greeting, dear human resources manager. And then we get into the written section. So for written paragraphs, which we went over the first introductory paragraph, the second paragraph, the third conformation paragraph, and then the fourth, the closing paragraph. Lastly, just an end statement. They're sincerely or regards just some type of formal salutation. And then the written name or the signature. Just another example here. So again, we have the name at the top. The city, the province, or state, or territory or region, phone number, email, date, company information, or the specific job information, and the greeting. So that's all your administrative content at the top. Then you have your paragraphs here. 123.4 again, can be three, can be five, but four is best. You want just a couple of sentence per one or two sentences per paragraph. And keep it really straightforward and direct, direct what you're trying to communicate and don't add any extra wording or make it too wordy. Then lastly, just your salutation and signature. And again, I showed you in the last video how to make your own signature using Google Docs. 12. Tailoring Your Cover Letter: Okay, So I mentioned at the beginning of the class that you want to tailor your cover letter for each job that you're applying for. Now I'm just going to go over some of those criteria, some of the tips that you need to change when you are changing your cover letter, when you are tailoring it for different jobs. So for starters, obviously the date, you're gonna want to change that and update it every time that you're applying for new job. I mean, if you're applying for 3M one day, obviously it's going to be the same date, so you don't need to change that. But if you're applying for various jobs over the course of days or weeks or months, you're going to want to keep updating the date on your cover letter to make sure that it is for the exact date that you're applying for that particular position. The second one there's job title. So with each job that you're applying for, if you are including the job title on the cover letter, which I think is a good idea, but that's up to you. If you are including that you're going to want to change it for each specific job to make sure it's the correct job title. And the same thing with the id. Certain jobs have like ID numbers or codes. So if you're going to include that, makes sure you have the accurate one. Next up is company information. If you're dressing the company, whether that be in the paragraphs or in the administrative content, make sure that you're getting not only the correct company, company information, but that you're changing it for each company as well. Next up is the manager HR employee name. So if you can find a name, make sure that you're including it. And if you are doing that, make sure you change it for each position that you apply for. Next up is any reference to the company or a specific position. So if you are including that in any of your paragraphs, make sure that you have the right company, that you're changing it. For each application. You don't want to put it in the wrong company or position information in a cover letter. Any personal touches that you want to add. If you have some type of like past experience with this company or something like that, or know someone within the company and you want to reference that in your cover letter, you can. And just make sure that you are adjusting that for each application. And then the last one is PDF. So save it as a PDF. You're gonna be editing it in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. But make sure when you're finished with it and you want to send it off that you're saving it as a PDF file. Now I just want to quickly show you an example in Google Docs of some of the things you might want to change with each cover letter that you submit. So starting at the top here would be the date. You're going to want to change that each time to make sure that it's the correct date that you're actually applying for the job. Secondly, underneath that would be company information or job title, job information. If you have a job ID number, you're going to want to change that each time. Then here, dear human resources manager, if you can find a name, it's always good to add that. If you can't, it's okay to leave it with deer human resources manager. Then anything within the written section. Now e.g. here I've written the particular position with a particular company. If you're going to write that, you're going to want to switch it each time to reflect the actual position and company you're applying for? The rest should be okay and it just depends on your situation. So just read it over each time and make sure that everything in there is correct and suitable for that specific job that you're applying for. 13. Frequently Asked Questions: Okay, so now that we've finished up the instructional portion of the cover letters, I wanted to go over some frequently, frequently asked questions regarding cover letters. The first one is, should I have multiple cover letters? This question and the question, the answer to most questions is, it depends. It depends on your situation. If you're just applying for one specific type of job, you're probably not going to need multiple cover letters. Whereas if you're applying for multiple different positions that are in different areas, you might need to do that. So e.g. I. Recently had a client who was a Dr. and he was applying for positions as a Dr. but also as a college instructor professor. So in that instance, it actually made more sense for him to have two slightly different cover letters because they were a little bit different career paths and wanted to highlight different experiences and accomplishments in his professional and academic life. Number two, is it better to deliberate in person so the cover letter and resume also, it depends, usually know based on just the way things are these days, most people are just applying online. And most companies prefer that they might find it awkward if you try and deliver one in-person. But there are instances where that might be okay. So you just have to base on the situation if it's a small company and they have an office where it seems like it would be okay to go in, then go for it. Whereas with larger organizations, I think they generally just want them submitted. On line. Number three. How much do I need to tailor it each time? Again, that depends on you. You can have it more generic where it just says like dear human resources manager and don't make reference to the particular position or accompanying within the paragraphs. And without you just want to make sure that you're changing the date for the most part. So it just depends on how much specific information you're actually adding in your cover letter that's relevant to that job. And then number four, what if I can't find a name to address it to? That's fine. Just try your best. It looks better if you can find one. But if you can just do your human resources manager, Dear Hiring Manager or whatever, it just sounds suitable. It's not a big deal. It's just nice if you can find it. And just quickly here, if you want to cover letters that are a little bit different, you don't have to start from scratch. What you can do is just make a copy of it. So I'm in Google Docs right now. All you have to do is go to the top and click file and then make a copy. There you go. Now you have a copied version and you can change that to, let's say, version number two. And then you can alter this one and adjust it and make it a little bit different style. And you can keep your original one the same way you had it before. 14. Class Project: So now that we've finished up the instructional portion of the class, next is the class project. And now, no surprise here, but the class project is to do your own cover letter following the guidelines that I gave throughout the class. Keep in mind that this is personal information. This is some sensitive information. So if you don't feel comfortable uploading the class project, the cover letter, then you don't have to. Or what you can do is just change out some of the information, changed the phone number, change the e-mail changed the name, just so that it's anonymous if you're more comfortable with that. And now with the class project, obviously you want to create your own cover letter. Going through those steps where you have the administrative section, the written paragraphs, and the closing section. Feel free to experiment a little bit. It's not. The rules here aren't so strict. Experiment with different types of wording, even fonts and font sizes and different color highlights and things like that. So you want to follow some guidelines, but at the same time you want to put your own personal touch into it and make sure that you're happy with it, you're comfortable with it. And don't just copy word for word from someone else. So once you're finished it, if you're comfortable uploading it or once you've changed it to some anonymous information so that it isn't sharing any or personal private information. Feel free to upload it, offer feedback on other people's uploads. I can be available for comments and feedback as well. 15. Conclusion: Okay, so that's the end of the class. I hope that you found that useful. I hope now moving forward that you feel more comfortable writing your own cover letter. Also check out my channel for other videos and you can also find me on Instagram at Meg. Notice that's MAG NAL to us. Thank you.