LEO: Literacy Education Online General Cover Letter Tips

Your cover letters are as significant as your resume is. While the resume is, in a sense, a fact sheet, the cover letter is your sales pitches to a specific company. In fact, your cover letters enable you to adapt your background to prospective employers' needs since you'll be writing an individual cover letter for each job application you send out.

In general, your cover letters allow you to expand upon and emphasize particular aspects of your resume -- based upon the requirements of the particular position you're seeking. Therefore, consider what the specific organization needs and address your letter to those needs. Many recruiters can spot form letters and don't take them as seriously as letters adapted to their specific company, so write a carefully adapted letter rather than a generic one that you send to every company to get your foot in the door for an interview.

• Researching Companies and Yourself
  • Finding Out What You Want

  • Finding Out What Companies Want

• Writing Cover Letters
  • Cover Letters: Purposes and Information

  • Cover Letters: Presenting Yourself Persuasively

  • Cover Letter Style

  • Cover Letter Format

• Cover Letter Samples
  • A Sample of a Cover Letter for Teaching

  • A Sample of a Cover Letter for a Part-time Job

  • A Sample of a Cover Letter for a Summer Job

  • A Sample of a Cover Letter from an MBA

For questions and suggestions, please e-mail us at leolink@stcloudstate.edu.