A cover letter is still a valuable and persuasive tool in your job search, and communicating your value within your cover letter without replicating the content in your resume is essential. Related:4 Inside Secrets To Writing A Great Cover Letter So, how do you show the value you offer a potential employer without repeating yourself? Here are a few tips.
1. Keep It Concise
Avoid the tendency to get overly wordy. In fact, if you can keep your cover letter to 150 words or less, you're really doing GREAT. Write everything you'd like to say within the cover letter, and then check your word count, then go back and start deleting superfluous words.2. Know What They Want
Know what they want, and then address it. Start your cover letter by hitting a vital pain point the employer has. Here's a good model to follow:Are you looking for a (insert: job title here) who can (insert: deliver something you know they need really badly here).So for me, if I were writing this to my prospective clients, it would sound like this:
Dear Executive Job Seeker, (title of person I'm addressing) Are you looking for a $100,000 - $1M+ executive-level position? (what my clients need)
3. Focus On What You Accomplish
Here's the most critical part of showing how you add value; you must focus on what you ACCOMPLISH—not on what you do. Write three short bullets—and by short I mean one line, no more. Additionally, the bullet point must contain $$ or %%%. Here's what this would look like if I were writing it to my target audience. Here are some of our results:- 99.6% interview-winning success rate in less than 60 days.
- Job searches shortened from 9+ months to 3 months or less.
- 50% secure interviews in less than two weeks.
