Five easy pieces in Writing Effective Cover Letters

Five easy pieces

Lauren wondered out loud if the task of writing a cover letter was just too large to do well. I told her that we would learn how to write good cover letters by dividing the task into five easy pieces:

¨ Research

¨ Four paragraphs in a cover letter. These are discussed in Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6. (Opening/Why I am Writ­ing; Positive Characteris­tics/Why You Should Inter­view Me; Motivation/Why I Want to Work for You; Closing/Next Step.)

Approached that way, once we've done our basic research and drafted a prototype cover letter, individual let­ters to specific employers should take about 20 minutes to write.