What is a cover letter and why is it important?

You’ve more than likely applied to tens – maybe even hundreds of jobs in the past, and will have probably been asked to include a cover letter along with your CV for potential future employers to read.

It would also be a fair assumption that upon seeing a company that wants you to fill out a lengthy document, on top of an already carefully crafted CV, you’re probably left feeling a bit confused.

Questions start running through your head: “Why do they need this?”, “How long is that going to take me?” and perhaps even, “What is a cover letter, anyway?”

Today jobs24.com is going to answer that question for you, while highlighting exactly why a letter accompanying your CV is actually one of the most important facets when it comes to clinching yourself a job interview, as well as tackling how to write a good cover letter in general.

Why Cover Letters are Used

Your CV is crafted to give a history of your educational and professional background more than anything else, and lacks the character a covering letter has the potential to include.

There are several very good reasons why a cover letter might be attached to your application. Let’s explore a few of them.

1. Highlighting your writing ability

For jobs which are looking to assess writing skills, a cover letter is able to quickly help an employer determine whether your writing standards are up to scratch or not.

CV are generally fairly corporate and lack that additional character which comes from a lengthy bulk of text. It’s far easier to inject personality into a page of text than it is in bullet point and stop-start descriptions.

Even if the job you’re applying for isn’t directly related to writing, an ability to  pen a convincing and appropriately formal letter shows an interviewer you can carry yourself in a professional manner.

2. Pad out your accomplishments

Having a limited amount of space to utilise on your CV doesn’t only diminish your writing abilities, but it also majorly detracts from how much you can (tastefully) brag about yourself.

Alright, nobody wants to read a cover letter which is effectively one giant list as to why the person writing is so great – but if you have legitimately achieved something impressive in your career or personal life, a cover letter allows you to expand on that.

Perhaps you’ve listed an award you won in your resume, but couldn’t really explain what it is. A cover letter  gives you the opportunity to really flesh out what you did to earn the prize and what it says about you. Just make sure what you’re showing off about is worth the hype you’re giving it.

3. It shows you’re dedicated

It might sound odd, but taking the time to craft an entire cover letter specific to this one job shows to your potential employers you’re not someone who shies away from work.

Let’s be honest – everyone at some point in their life has started applying for a job they weren’t necessarily dead-set on, only to bin it halfway through because the application required them to forge a 500-word personal letter.

That said, if the job actually means something to us and is a career we could see ourselves doing for a lifetime, that additional effort isn’t such a huge ask. By filling one out, the employer knows you mean business and will be dedicated to the role.

4. Holding up a patchy resume

Your CV should theoretically be good enough in itself to stand alone and potentially see you get a callback, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily will be.

A cover letter allows you to not only fill in the blanks, but also patch up the cracks which might see your application fall apart somewhat.

Sometimes, even if your resume isn’t quite up to scratch, but your covering letter grabs an employer’s attention, it could lead to you getting a callback anyway. That said – it’s still wise to make your CV as good as you possibly can.

5. It tells the employer who you are

Lastly, and most importantly, cover letters are used to let the employer know who you are. We’ve already touched on it, but the life and personality you pour into a letter allows companies to get an inside look into you, as a person.

Maybe you’ll approach it with a comical twist, or use the space to demonstrate how articulate you can be. Whatever you opt for, make sure you give them a good impression of the type of candidate they’re dealing with.

On that note, don’t be offended if you get rejected. Just because they don’t want to give you an interview, doesn’t mean it’s because of anything that’s inherently wrong with you – they just have a different candidate type in mind.

Ultimately, when it comes to the question of ‘What is a cover letter?’, the simple answer is it’s a tool which  gives you the opportunity to present yourself in more detail than a CV, as well as helping employers vet an applicant more thoroughly to understand a little more about who their would-be employees actually are.

Cover letters give people the opportunity to back themselves up with points they’ve made on their CV – or even turn around an opinion if a resume doesn’t seem up to the required standard. Without them, the job market would be a drastically different place.

Put your cover letter to the test with one of the many vacancies on jobs24.com.

Posted on July 18, 2017