Are Cover Letters Important?
Studies and articles are all over the map when it comes to a cover letter’s importance. While some say they are worthless, others claim they are critical.
Enotes replaced cover letters when online job submissions replaced USPS snail-mail. I tell clients that if a posting calls for one, you’ll get dinged for omitting it. If it doesn’t ask for one, it can’t hurt.
There’s no guarantee the person who reads your cover letter will also read your resume, so the cover letter offers you another vehicle by which to showcase your greatness.
While enotes and cover letters share many of the same components, some have changed or must reside elsewhere.
Contact Info
Enote contact info must appear below your name as part of an email signature. It must match the contact information on your resume. Items to include are name, phone number, email, address and LinkedIn URL.
Role Identifier
With cover letters, it is common to include a reference line before the “Dear XXX” component to identify the name of the role or job requisition number. In an enote, this belongs in the email header.
Highlights
Include a brief paragraph or series of bullets that showcase your best stuff. You can include achievements from your resume by rewording them so they don’t appear to be a direct cut-and-paste.
Short & Sweet for Screen Reads
Reading online is much tougher than reading in print. Our eyes have a hard time skim-reading huge chunks of text on a screen. Strive for two to three lines per paragraph to facilitate a skim, online read.