For students who have completed the graduation level, we can say that they have knowledge about the importance of a cover letter. The cover letter is essential paperwork while you are applying for a job or any certification. Through this letter, the applicant gets an opportunity to show his cause and efficiency professionally.
To apply for your first job, you have no working experience, no such corporate achievements, and rewards to present. So, you have to confess to them about your expertise, knowledge, and efficiency to gain their attention and trust. In this situation, along with a resume, the entry-level cover letter will help you to give an extra boost to your application.
This article is going to be useful for entry-level candidates. This step by step writing guide will help you to customize your cover letter. Let’s take a descriptive look at this guide.
About Entry-Level Cover Letter
As we mentioned before, an entry-level cover letter is paperwork through which an employer or hiring manager will get a glance overview of your knowledge and skills. Moreover, if you want to create your value and excellence, which diverts the employer to fix an appointment or meeting with you, you have to tell them about yourself.
The hiring manager takes a glance at the applicants’ resumes and cover-letters to gather information on what they can call them for an interview. Says that the first impression is the best impression. So, if you can describe enough about your skills and expertise professionally, the hiring manager can identify you as efficient and professional enough to call you for an interview.
To grab the attention of the employer/hiring manager, you have to maintain a sturdy format. There are four sections you can follow while formatting your entry-level cover letter,
- Introduce yourself as an efficient and elegant candidate for the job to potential employers or hiring managers.
- Describe the reason why do you think that you are suitable and efficient for that job post.
- Leave a positive and memorable impression, which can lead to the interview call.
- Leave a cause for the employer/hiring manager to contact you for the interview.
A cover letter is a way to present your first impression along with a chance to highlight your skills, education overview, working capability, and other containing capacities. These things will show that you are the best candidate for that job.
How to Format a Cover Letter
Before you start writing a cover letter, you need to format/ align it in the correct order. Here, we can relate a cover letter with a business letter. It describes your interesting things and qualifications which suites for specific job sector. In general, a cover letter contains six sections to build a worthy cover letter. These are,
- Date and contact information.
- Greetings.
- Opening Paragraph.
- Middle Paragraphs.
- Closing Paragraph.
- Complimentary Close and Signature.
This is the professional format of a cover letter. By following this format, you can build a cover letter for any kind of official use, such as seeking certification or achievement authentication from your institute or workplace. Now we will discuss what you can include format valuable to you.
Let’s focus on the step by step entry-level cover letter writing guide.
Tips to Write a Cover Letter with Minimal Experience
Through a cover, the employer will fall into a conversation with you. You can call this the first meeting with the hiring manager/employer. So, it would be best if you did not waste your chance of getting the attention or call from them for an interview or physical meeting.
Thus you are maintaining an entry-level resume and cover letter. You have to be more professional and conversive with the cover letter because you have to confess to the hiring manager that you have a professional background, which gives you the right navigation on work.
Maintain these six following steps to build an outstanding entry-level cover letter.
- Provide your specific and to the point address information.
- Express your interests and efficiency professionally.
- Describe your specific skills and expertise.
- Conversationally end your letter.
- Include a signature line.
- Proofread and alignments.
Let’s take a descriptive look at the following steps.
Display Your Address Accurately
A cover letter is a part of the resume or portfolio. So, you have to include every piece of information in a professional way. Display your address on the left side of the cover letter. Include your address between 3-4 short lines.
Include your name, living address, city, state, zip code, phone number, and mailing address in these short lines. Follow this structure to mention your address properly,
Felix R Salmons
4617 Gateway Avenue, CA 93301
661-979-0598
felix.salmons@gmail.com
Along with your address, you have to mention the employer’s or hiring manager’s identity information. Include hiring manager name, living address, city, state, zip code, and contact information. Place employer’s address down below your addresses, after mentioning the date. Moreover, use space among your address, date, and employer’s address. This will give a clean and formal visual. After mentioning the employer’s address, use an extra lining space to start the greetings and opening paragraph.
Express Your Interest and Efficiency
The cover letter is your own platform to describe your excellence and efficiency. Start the opening paragraph by introducing yourself and expressing your interest in that job role. In your cover letter, you have to discuss the job and the company you are applying for specifically. When the employer/hiring manager saw that you had done proper research about the company before providing your specification, they will keep you on the selected interview list.
Along with these things, if anyone refers you to the job position, mention their name in the opening paragraph. Describe your opinion on why you would be perfect to fulfilling the job’s responsibility. Moreover, please give them a glance at how your potentiality will help them to grow their company.
Express your interest and efficiency along with a warmly greeting at the opening paragraph. Try to be more professional while choosing words to describe the same things. Don’t repeat the same words in the whole entry-level resume and cover letter. Use power words to make a difference between other candidate’s submitted applications. Here are some examples of power words that you can use to describe things.
- Awarded
- Introduced
- Reduced
- Chosen
- Lessened
- Revitalized
- Completed
- Mastered
- Streamlined
- Consummated
- Maximized
- Surpassed
Describe Your Specific Skills and Expertise
In an entry-level cover letter, skills and expertise show the candidate’s potentiality and sturdiness. When observing the cover letter, a hiring manager looks that you have qualitative skills instead of working experience. At this moment, your skills mentioned in your cover letter will give them a glace before making their decision about you because people want such kind of potential role who can learn new things easily.
The middle part of this writing should give a detailed description of your knowledge, training, skills, experience, and strengths that makes you a perfect candidate for that job. Check the job description to find what kind of keywords you have to mention in this entry-level cover letter. Because of your limited working experience, the hiring manager can probably check that your strength and expertise are enough to maintain this job role. To grab their attention, you have to mention how impactful you are for that job position.
End Your Letter In a Conversational Way
The last and the most important part of this whole writing is how engaging it will perform. After getting detailed information about you, the hiring manager will take his decision to either call you or keep your resume aside. This mostly depends on encouraging them to give you a chance to prof yourself to them.
Start this final paragraph with something attractive about your excellence to this specific employer or hiring manager. Through this, they will get knocked again that you have done research about the job role and the company values.
At last, close your writing after asking for a call to action sentence, such as seeking an interview. After that, please give thanks for giving their valuable time and effective consideration.
Include a Signature Line
The last thing you have to include in this writing is a signature line. Select a standard and professional respect, for example, “Sincerely.” Add your physical signature on this cover letter if you are directly sending it or mailing it to a hiring manager or the employers.
After adding your signature, write your full name right below the signature. End your final writing with an enclosure or attachments accompanying your letter. This shows that you are concern about your resume and cover letter.
Let’s take a look at an example of including signature line,
Sincerely,
Your physical signature
Felix R Salmons
Enclosed: Resume
Proofread and Alignments
Provide your words efficiently to get a positive result from the hiring manager or employer. Along with creating a worthy and sturdy entry-level cover letter, you have to maintain a specific alignment and ordination. To get rid of this situation, you can choose an entry-level resume and cover letter template. It’ll release you from half of your work of formatting and aligning. Change the dummy text and make your sturdy resume and cover letter to apply for your dream job.
To make your cover letter look sturdy and professional enough, you must maintain proper margins and alignments. Follow these steps to make your cover letter aligned.
Margins and Line Space: Keep one-inch margins are acceptable for both sides of the letter. And use 1.0 or 1.15 line spacing to separate the sentences.
Font: Use a unique but professional font that gives your writing neatness and easy-readability. For example, Times new roman, Georgia, etc., are the general fonts are considered as professional. Use the same font you are using in your resume.
Fonts sizing: For headers, use 14-16pt font size. And for normal text, use 11-12pt font size.
Letter Length: Make sure that the letter isn’t excited one page while printing. Or, if you need to submit it through electrical mailing, try to make it more informative, along with keeping it in a full-view length.
Your cover letter is your personal description, through which a hiring manager will take his/her decision. If your cover letter contains valuable information, along with plenty of grammatical mistakes, then how it’ll perform?
So, proofread your full resume and cover letter to fix grammatical errors. After finishing the writing, take a break to make your mind calm to accurately observe that whole thing because one mistake can decrease your value and efficiency.
Entry-Level Cover Letter Template
Aligning a cover letter is not much time consuming as building a resume for the purpose of making it designed and professional, better to choose a cover letter template.
Get a sturdy Entry-level resume and cover letter template on ResumeInventor, based on your profession. The most attractive thing about these templates, you can change any design as your wish. Matching resume and cover letter give a sturdy and efficient look at your application, which works much better than a usual resume and cover letter.
Conclusion
Your cover letter is ready to rock and roll. Writing a cover letter for an entry-level job is not like the experienced one. You have to prove your efficiency and accuracy to handle the job role. The writing quality, word selection to describe things, template choice, etc., gives you an easy way to make your job-related papers.
Make your move! Get your entry-level resume and cover letter template now to build an effective application.
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