Cover Letter Tips

By Robert Half International There are certain resume words and phrases that have become so ubiquitous they do little more than induce yawns and eye rolls from hiring managers. Employers are so accustomed to hearing from "team players" and "problem solvers," for example, that those descriptions are now...

A cover letter can be the first step of a new career journey. Or it can be a dead end that dooms your attempts to get a job. It all has to do with how you write it.

Face facts: Some people will never read your cover letter. The rest of the people may trash your resume if it does not include a cover letter. Others will value the cover letter over all other application materials. Since you can't know for sure which type of employer or recruiter will receive and review your...

Zillions of resumes are useless except perhaps for lining a bird cage's floor. The main cause? Resume advice has changed little over the decades, so most resumes today feel moldy, cliche-larded, as if spewed from resume software or a hired gun from the disco era.

By Shane Christopher, Editor-in-Chief, G.I. Jobs Magazine Do you discard junk mail before fully reading it? There's a pretty simple and logical reason for this: Most marketing is bad marketing.

Are cover letters necessary anymore? There are some who claim that the Internet era has made them obsolete. And when you're applying to dozens of jobs online, it isn't worth the extra effort; all that employers look at are the resumes. Don't believe them. A resume alone will rarely get you the job-- no matter...

Cover letters are a hot topic these days. Some say they are worthless; others say they are priceless. A recent study by Zip Recruiter indicates that 50% of hiring managers require a cover letter, and that of those, two thirds of them reject an applicant because of something included in the cover letter.

Some job seekers have problems selling their skills. They list their basic duties, which most job seekers have in common. You can stand out in a job search by positioning those skills so they set you apart. Think of how a salesperson sells a car. He doesn't tout the fact that the car has four wheels, windows...

By Debra Auerbach One of the most common pieces of job-seeker advice we give on this blog is to personalize application materials as much as possible. This includes the addressing of your cover letter. There may be cases where it's impossible to find a contact associated with the position, but that doesn't...