Cover Letters Archives - Palladian Career Resources

Proofreading Tips

Checking your resume for typos, spelling errors and grammar mistakes is essential. It is likely you proofread it numerous times and had friends check it for mistakes. This effort will hopefully eliminate all errors. Writing cover letters and filling in text boxes for online job applications is a different story. You can’t work on everything you write for weeks or months with numerous reviewers. So, how can you reduce the likelihood of sending out a bunch of typos?

If you struggle with typos in your writing, I’m going to share some techniques that will help you minimize mistakes. These are the techniques I’ve learned to use with my blog, and can help you improve the quality of your cover letters and other communications.

After writing more than 350 articles for this blog, I’ve gotten much better at minimizing typos. There has been a definite learning curve. I’ve always done a lot of writing, but nothing on this scope. I’ve learned techniques to make it much less likely I’ll publish something with a mistake. Equally important, the techniques I’ve learned haven’t slowed me down. I write, review and publish a typical blog article in a single time block, usually an hour to an hour and a half, first thing in the morning. This gives little time to check an article.

Some people will say I should prioritize proofreading higher and devote more time to proofreading. If I adopted a scheduled where I write and review articles a week ahead of publishing them, and then review them the day I post them, I could do a better job with typos. Even better, I could send each article to a professional proofreader for review. This just doesn’t fit my posting schedule. I want to write and immediately post. This requires other techniques to quickly and effectively review each document.

The challenge with proofreading your own work is you know what you meant to write. I have a lot of trouble with this. I can type 30 to 40 words per minute with decent accuracy, and over 50 with mistakes. As I write, I get impatient and push my speed beyond what I can do. This will produce incorrect letters and even skipped words. I’ve found lately I’ve been typing “you” for “your” by leaving the “r” off a lot. I’ve also been leaving out small words – is, be, are, of, at – are a few examples. Even worse, I’ve caught places where I miss contractions. In Friday’s article, I found a place where I typed “can” but meant to type “can’t.” This completely changed the meaning of the sentence. Fortunately, I found it before I published the article.

As I proofread, I read what I meant to type. If the sentence is supposed to have “your” and I type “you,” I read the “your” because I know that’s what it says. Someone else reading it would immediately see the error, though. There are ways to fix this, and I’m going to share my process.

My review process has four steps:

Microsoft Word

I write everything in Word. The spelling/grammar checker will automatically check everything as I type. This catches a lot of obvious mistakes. You need to have the real-time grammar checker turned on for this to work. You also need to pay attention any time Word underlines something in red (spelling) or green (grammar). By paying attention major mistakes as I type them, I avoid a lot of the errors.

Errors found by Word are the low hanging fruit. They are so easy to see and fix, there’s no excuse for not fixing them. I really hate getting a resume written in Word that has a bunch of underlined red text indicating spelling mistakes. It jumps off the screen before I can start reading the resume. All the job seeker needed to do was turn on the real-time grammar checker. Failing to do this will make a poor impression.

Unfortunately, Word can only catch major mistakes. Using the wrong word often will not be caught by the software. For example, the “you/your” mistake I’ve been making lately is one that Word often misses. This first check will not be perfect. It’s just a starting point to clean up the big stuff.

WhiteSmoke

The second quality check I run is with WhiteSmoke, a standalone grammar checking software package. The software is designed to catch more grammar mistakes than Word or other word processors. In my experience, it works. When I first got WhiteSmoke, I checked a number of documents in Word, fixed the errors, and then ran then through WhiteSmoke. In my writing, this process will find an additional one to two typos for every 200 words I write. Now, WhiteSmoke isn’t perfect. It still will not find everything, and it gives a number of false positives. I would estimate that half the errors it identifies are actually correct, but I’ll take a few false positives to help uncover the mistakes.

I have a lot good to say about WhiteSmoke. The bottom line is I use it. The software is much more accurate than Word, it’s easy to use and the technical support team is helpful and responsive. Despite this, there is one major drawback. WhiteSmoke is supposed to integrate with any software package including Word and Outlook. There’s something in my windows settings that prevents this from working and WhiteSmoke doesn’t have an answer for fixing it.

To use WhiteSmoke, I copy what I write over into the WhiteSmoke window and run the check. I then review the edits and make them manually in the original document. This is a little tedious, but works. The way the software is supposed to work, you highlight the text in Word, hit one of the function keys and WhiteSmoke will then open a window and check the document. As you review the errors, you can simply click the corrections. At the end, you click Apply and WhiteSmoke will copy the changes back to the original document. This is great when it works, but in my experience, it rarely works, so I use the more tedious manual method. Even though it is a little tedious, the software works and makes me more efficient and reduces errors.

(WhiteSmoke Review: This article was 1770 words when checked. WhiteSmoke identified 2 spelling errors, 14 grammar errors and 1 style error. In reviewing the errors, the spelling errors were places where I failed to capitalize the “s” in WhiteSmoke. Of the 14 grammar errors, I made six changes and found the other eight were actually correct. The style error was also a good suggestion resulting in a change. So in total, I made 9 separate changes to the article on top of Word’s suggestions because of WhiteSmoke.)

Read Out Loud

The third step in my review process is to read the text out loud. I really shouldn’t call this reading. When done right, I read each word individually out loud. Reading full sentences quickly causes me to see what I meant to write, not what actually ended up on the screen. Going slow and reading each word is the best way to find places where the writing is awkward, or where I used the wrong word. It is much more effective when reading out loud. Start at the beginning and say each word individually. Go slow and you will pick up on errors. This process is a little tedious. If you read any of my articles in the last six months and see some obvious errors, it’s very likely I skipped this step.

Another technique when reading out load is to read from the bottom up. Read each sentence individually, starting with the last sentence of the document. This process is a little slower, but can be more effective. It keeps you from getting into a rhythm with what you know should be there.

(Reading Out Loud Review: I printed the article and read it out loud. This identified 29 additional changes. Many were corrections to grammar errors. A few were changes were to text that was correct, but the changes made the text read better.)

Google Spell Check

After checking a document in Word and WhiteSmoke, and reading it out loud, there shouldn’t be any obvious errors. Despite this, I always run a quick spell check from the Google Toolbar before publishing each article. I do this in case I added new spelling errors as I edit and format the document in the browser window. It’s rare that I catch a mistake with this last minute check, but I still do it. I know I can’t write and review an article in under an hour several days a week and never have a mistake. At the same time, I really don’t want obvious errors that jump off the page, and running spell check one last time can’t hurt.

You can get the Google Spell Check function with the Google toolbar. All you have to do is hit the button, and it will spell check any form boxes in the browser window.

Other Techniques

This is my four step process. It’s not perfect. My goal for this blog is to provide a lot of high quality advice. Minimizing errors is important to me, but at the end of the day, this is just a blog. I write quickly and will not be perfect. Every time I write a blog article about typos or proofreading, I get comments from readers who are deeply offended by every typo I make. Hopefully, the majority of people will learn from my articles. In this article, I hope you get something that helps your writing, especially for your job search. There are other techniques we can employ and further improve the quality of our writing.

Proofreading in a different location than where you wrote the document can help the review process. It will get you out of the thought process you had when you wrote the document. Printing the document can help this too. Both techniques will allow you focus more on what is written instead of what you meant to write.

Letting a document sit for several days can make it much easier to proofread. You will forget what you meant to write, and read the document as if you weren’t the author.

Get a second opinion. Ask a friend, co-worker or family member to review important documents. They will pick up on errors you may have missed.

Hire a professional proofreader. I can’t overstate the benefit of a professional. Not only will they give you a second set of eyes on a document, but they are trained to spot mistakes. When I wrote my book, Power Up Your Job Search: A Modern Approach to Interview Preparation, I used two professional proofreaders. The first reviewed a preliminary copy of the book and corrected a number of major mistakes. I used the second proofreader late in the process after we had completed a number of rewrites. The results were fantastic and the two proofreaders help cut months off the editing process.

Getting a second opinion or a professional proofreader will work in a lot of situations, but isn’t practical for everything. You can’t stop in the middle of every job application form and send your text to a proofreader. Even a lightning fast turnaround of a few hours will cause your job search to grind to a halt. At some point, you will need a DIY approach, and I hope my techniques help you to write a little more effectively and accurately.

Tailor Your Cover Letter

Each time you apply for a job, you are sending an advertisement for a product, you and the work you are capable of doing, to a sales prospect, the employer. The more you can learn about your prospect, the better you can tailor your sales pitch. The key is tailoring your presentation to what is important to the prospect – not what is important to you.

Many job seekers send the same generic cover letter to every employer (or worse, fail to send any cover letter). This might work if you were the only person sending out a resume and the employer was desperate to hire. They won’t care what your sales pitch was. This isn’t the situation, though. We know there is a lot of competition for jobs. You are not going to be the only option for an employer. This makes it essential to craft the best sales pitch possible.

Gaining intelligence is an important first step. The more you can learn about the priorities and expectations of the employer, the better your chances. A hiring manager will be looking for much more than just someone who can do the job. Hiring managers have specific objectives and will prioritize skills and abilities differently. A lot of this comes from the team that is in place. If a team is extremely strong in some areas and weaker in others, the hiring manager may prioritize the areas of weaker skills in order to elevate the team’s performance in this area.

If you can learn the specifics of a hiring manager’s goals, you can tailor to them. To get this information, you need to network. You have to meet people within the company and learn details about the organization few know. The more you learn, the better your chances. Networking takes time and effort, but it works.

Once you gather the research you need to tailor your cover letter, it’s time to get writing. Your cover letter should be brief. Your goal is to make a quick positive impressive and to generate interest in reading your resume. Think of it like a car ad. The purpose of the ad isn’t to sell you a car – it is to get you visit the showroom. Your cover letter is like the ad – it needs to motivate the hiring manager to want to read your resume closely.

There are number of elements of a cover letter you should customize. First, you should have a specific statement why you are interested in the company. This shows interest and that you have taken the time to research the company. Most hiring managers will assess your resume more closely if you show you have put a lot of time into learning about their company. Second, you should tailor the skills you highlight to the specific position and needs of the company. This is where your research becomes incredibly valuable. Finally, you should include a couple accomplishments showing your past successes with the skills you highlighted. The accomplishments are the key to the presentation. They show what you could accomplish for the company and will help you stand out from your competition. The more you can tailor the accomplishments to the job, the better the impression you will make.

This may sound like you have to write a completely new cover letter for each application. It’s actually a lot easier than this. Once you develop a structure you like, you are just changing a little information. It really doesn’t take much customization to develop a really strong cover letter.

Telling Hiring Managers What They Want

I receive cover letters on a regular basis that try to define the hiring criteria for the hiring manager. Most hiring managers know what they are looking for when hiring. They might have some flexibility in the criteria, but generally they know what types of skills, experiences and abilities will make someone successful. As a job seeker, it’s a waste of time to try to persuade them to change their criteria. Despite this, some job seekers lead off their cover letters with instructions for how to hire.

The cover letter I read today did just that. Below are the first few lines of the letter:

Today's market require a sales representative that is versatile, competitive, unrelenting and strategic. If that set of skills can also harness the new technologies found in the marketplace, then you have a solid member to any organization that is positioning, marketing and selling their product. I am such an individual.

The qualities mentioned above sound good… versatile, competitive, unrelenting, strategic and able to harness technologies. They may not be the top priorities for the hiring manager. An ability to cold call, generate referrals or up sell clients into higher margin products may be the key concerns of the hiring manager. Focusing on a different set of skills will not win the hiring manager over.

This tactic has one other major problem. There are hiring managers who will read the cover letter and picture the person telling them how to run the department. A manager does not want someone who will question and challenge every decision and assignment. This is too time consuming for a manager. The manager may want input and ideas from time to time, but they also want a person who will follow the systems and processes.

The job seeker could easily change the cover letter to highlight the same skills but not lecture the hiring manager. For example:

I am a committed, competitive and unrelenting sales professional, able to adapt quickly and focus on strategic activities that will grow sales. I have consistently used new and cutting edge technologies to gain an edge over my competition in the marketplace.

This intro focuses on the job seeker, not the hiring criteria.

Cover Letter Credibility

The cover letter l read this morning contained several statements designed to make a personal connection with a hiring manager, but failed dismally. The cover letter was too wordy and faked an interest in an employer.

How can I be so sure the interest in the employer is faked? Easily, the cover letter and resume were posted online. They were not sent to a specific company. There is no way for the job seeker to know who is going to read his resume. Below is how he started his cover letter:

I am looking for a dynamic and challenging position where I can utilize my leadership, operations, and human resources expertise. I am familiar with your organization and am extremely interested in working for a company of this caliber.

Making the claim of being familiar with the organization, when the job seeker has no idea who is going to read the resume hurts the overall impression and credibility of the job seeker. My reaction is to consider this a bunch of BS and to expect the rest of the cover letter and the resume to more of the same. The job seeker now has an uphill battle to win me over.

The cover letter would have been much stronger if it had skipped this first paragraph entirely. The next paragraph focused on the candidate’s skills and abilities. It’s not perfect, but makes a fair impression and would be fine without the intro in the first paragraph.

Remember your audience, a resume screener or hiring manager, will be skeptical when reading your resume and cover letter. They know each job seeker tries to create the best sales pitch. Part of the assessment is looking for claims that are not credible and exaggerations that overly inflate the candidate’s experience. You do not want to hurt your credibility by including information that is obviously untrue. Your resume may only get a 15 to 30 second look initially. You have a lot of competition and it is easy for a hiring manager to reject you and move on to the next resume. Don’t give them a reason at the start to reject you.

Ten Cover Letter Introductions

Read the greeting and first sentence of 10 cover letters from active job seekers.

You should have a cover letter when you are sending your resume to an employer. The cover letter demonstrates professionalism (most of the time) and introduces you to the employer. Cover letters are typically skimmed very quickly by hiring managers, so they need to be short and concise. They also need to grab the reader’s attention quickly.

I collected the greeting and first sentence from ten cover letters to show what some job seekers write:

Hi,

As you can see in the enclosed resume…

Assessment: “Hi” is too informal and the intro makes me want to skip the cover the go directly to the resume. Don’t start a cover letter with something saying you are going to repeat information in the resume.

Dear —. Whomever: (if you do not have a name, eliminate this line completely)

Throughout my management career , I have delivered strong and measurable results, meeting the many challenges presented.

Assessment: If you use a template, make sure you change it. A cover letter like this may be the fastest way to get rejected.

I am currently looking for a management or staff position in environmental and/or safety.

Assessment: A cover letter should have a greeting – “Dear Hiring Manager,” “To whom it may concern,” or “Dear Sir/Madam” all work and take very little effort to add. Ideally, you will address a specific person, but often this isn’t possible. The first line is all about the candidate and not about the company. A better way to start is to describe your strongest attribute.

Dear Sir, Madam

I am a results-oriented, high-energy, hands-on professional, with more than 15 years of business development experience, working in multinational firms.

Assessment: This isn’t bad. It’s professional and focuses on the skills of the job seeker. It’s vague – business development is very broad. This could be better by being a little more specific.

I am a highly motivated self starting project manager that is capable of handeling multiple projects.

Assessment: The cover letter should have a greeting. The sentence is very vague – “project manager” can be used to describe numerous different jobs and fields. Finally, a simple spell check would catch the misspelling of “handeling.”

Dear Personnel Director:

I would like to express my enthusiastic interest in a Supply Chain/Logistics Manager/Materials Manager position with your organization.

Assessment: This is a simple statement of objective. It isn’t a bad way to start, but could be stronger will some statement of the skills and abilities of the job seeker.

Dear Sir/Madam:

Having successfully advanced corporate performance and productivity through skillful development of technical training programs that align employee needs and requirements with the organizational mission,

Assessment: This is only the first half of the first sentence. It is extremely wordy and ineffective. A cover letter needs to be concise and clear. This fails at both.

Dear Human Resources Department,

I am looking for a dynamic and challenging position where I can utilize my leadership, operations, and human resources expertise.

Assessment: The sentence is an objective, but incredibly vague. It essentially says “I’m looking for a job.” The cover letter would be much better is this sentence was deleted.

To whom it may concern;

Below is a summary of my Program Management experience:

Assessment: This cover letter was essentially a bulleted list of experiences and accomplishments. Of all the cover letters in this group, it was the most focused on information valuable to the hiring manager. Despite this, the cover letter is abrupt. There needs to be more than just “Below is a list of stuff…” to start.

Dear Recruiting Officer.

Starting at <company name> in <city, ST> back in 1983, I’ve had a number of exciting, fulfilling, and challenging positions and opportunities.

Assessment: For confidentiality, I deleted the company name and location of the job seeker from the sentence above. This sentence is a terrible way to start a cover letter. This reads like a children’s story… “Once upon a time, at a company far, far away, I had an exciting career.”

A cover letter is a sales pitch with the goal of trying to get the reader excited about reading the resume. It should be short, concise and focused on the value the job seeker would provide the company. The best way to demonstrate value is to give examples of accomplishments and achievements.

Cover Letter Templates

Using a template to write your cover letter can make it a lot easier. We provide a three templates in our Cover Letter Best Practices Report and there are a ton of templates available on the web. If you use a template to get started, make sure you customize it.

Using a template to write your cover letter can make it a lot easier. If you use a template to get started, make sure you customize it. Even the best designed template will not match your situation exactly. There will be changes you need to make.

Failing to customize a template to your situation can make a very bad impression. This is especially true with the resume I received recently. The cover letter started with the candidate’s name and contact information. I have copied below the cover letter, without any changes, from that point to the greeting.

Actual start of a job seeker’s cover letter:

(6 blank lines)

Date

(4 blank lines)

Name
Company
Address
City, ST ZIP

RE: Position Title

Dear —. Whomever:

This cover letter is a disaster, and it’s tough to imagine the job seeker making a worse impression. The job seeker left the two instructional lines, calling for leaving 6 and 4 lines of space. The candidate failed to replace any of customizing tags, such as the date and position title with the actual date and position title.

This isn’t rocket science. If you use a template and it has a placeholder like “Dear — Whomever:,” you need to change this. The cover letter shows so little effort and attention to detail, I have trouble seeing why I would want to read the candidate’s resume, and I can’t imagine ever wanting to interview the candidate.

What is really sad is the number of resumes I receive with cover letters like this. Don’t make this mistake. Spend the extra twenty of thirty seconds to type in the date, position title and some greeting other than “if you do not have a name, eliminate this line completely.”

Addressing Requirements in a Cover Letter

One technique for writing a cover letter is to address each of the key requirements of the job. This approach provides a bulleted list or a table. Each line has one requirement and a short description of the job seekers experience with that specific task.

This technique can be very effective. It focuses on the key experiences the hiring manager wants and organizes them in a very easy to read format. When done well, a cover letter written this was should almost guarantee an interview before the hiring manger reads the resume. Unfortunately, writing a cover letter in this style is often done poorly.

There are three primary pitfalls with this style. First, the cover letter focuses on the key requirements of the position and provides a specific assessment of the job seeker’s experience with each. If the job seeker does not have extensive impressive experience with each requirement, the format will highlight the holes in the job seeker’s background.

Second, you need to have an accurate and complete list of key priorities to write a cover letter in this format. You may be able to get the key priorities from a posted job description. Often, the job description will not list every requirement and the relative importance of the requirements is usually difficult to determine. The reason for this is a result of where the job description originates. Most companies have standard job descriptions for each position. When the position opens up, the standard description is used. The hiring manager may have specific challenges in their department that are slightly different from the job description. Often, the hiring manager will post the standard description but actually assess candidates on the ability to meet the current challenges. This can make it difficult or impossible to understand a position fully from just a job description.

Third, many job seekers provide vague assessments of their experience. If you outline your experience relative to each job requirement, you need to be specific. Generic answers will hurt the overall impression you make.

The cover letter I read today fell into a couple of these pitfalls. Below are the first few bullets from the cover letter:

Maintain and expand customer base: See resume
Develop marketing plans: I have been doing that my entire career.
Expand company revenues: I was instrumental in growing a small local manufacturing company into a national supplier with plants in three states.
Manage trades shows: I have done them but it was not a major tool for us.

The format of the bullets is good but the content doesn’t work. The first bullet references the resume. If you are going to call out your specific experience, you need to include it in the cover letter. Don’t make the hiring manager go and look up the information.

The second bullet is extremely vague. It says nothing about the role of the job seeker in developing marketing plans, the scope of the plans that were developed or the success of the plans. We don’t know if the job seeker developed the marketing plan for the annual church bake sale for the last twenty years or if the job seeker was the chief architect of the global marketing efforts of a Fortune 500 company.

The third bullet is also vague. It does not show the job seeker’s role, the scope of the sales growth or the time period of the accomplishment.

The fourth bullet highlights the lack of experience with this requirement. Stating that trade shows were not a major tool is equivalent to saying that the job seeker has limited experience in this area. If managing trade shows is a key priority, this bullet could sink the job seeker’s chances by itself.

To rewrite the bullets to be more effect, we need to be specific and focus on the benefits the job seeker has provided in their career:

Maintain and expand customer base: Over a twenty year period, grew a small regional manufacturing business into the leading supplier of a line of precision equipment in North America, expanding the customer base from a limited number of local firm to almost every major company in the industry.
Develop marketing plans: Developed and managed all marketing plans, including managing sales, estimating, proposal development, advertising, and customer relationships over a 20+ year period, resulting in an increase in sales from $2 million to over $14 million.
Expand company revenues: Entered a new market, growing sales from nothing to over $6 million.
Manage trades shows: Managed and attended various industry trade shows over 20+ years in sales management.

The bullets are much more specific. The first three should make a very positive impression. The fourth is vague but much more positive than the original. If the majority of bullets are specific, one or two that are more general won’t hurt the overall impression. Ideally, the job seeker would describe how many trade shows they attended, the sales results from attending and the names of the specific shows.

One final drawback of this style of cover letter is how it focuses on the requirements and not the job seeker’s strengths. If your background matches the position exactly, this isn’t a problem. Most people will not be an exact match though. Your cover letter could be more effective focusing on your greatest strengths and accomplishments. The cover letter is a sales pitch for you and you should chose the structure that fosters the best sales pitch.

If you aren’t going to be specific with each requirement, avoid this style cover letter. It will do more harm than good.

Credible Cover Letters

When a hiring manager starts to read your cover letter and resume, you have no credibility. The reader doesn’t know you. They don’t know if they can trust you or if you are prone to exaggeration and lying.
This lack of credibility is highlighted when a job seeker leads off their cover letter with a boastful statement.

This mistake was exhibited in the cover letter I received today. The first sentence was pure hype:

When I saw your job listing I could not believe the uncanny resemblance of my experience to your specified duties.

Claims like this are common, but are unlikely to be believed. If you were hiring and received a bunch of resumes with claims like this, would you believe all of them? You can’t. Every applicant isn’t perfect.

In reviewing the job and resume closely, the candidate’s qualifications are not ideal. The job seeker had no experience in the industry of the company and the job seeker did not have a key technical skill. The candidate does have experience with most of the responsibilities of the positions.

A much better approach for this job seeker would have been to focus on the experience and skills of the job seeker. The job seeker was pursuing an industrial sales position and has extensive sales experience. A better start to the cover letter would have been:

I am a highly successful sales professional, with more than 25 years of industrial and technical sales experience, and am interested in your technical sales opportunity.

This sentence starts to establish some credibility by showing the candidate’s 25 years of experience. The next step is to show the performance of the job seeker through examples of his track record of success. A couple accomplishments will make a good impression.

When you write your cover letter, make sure you focus on substance and not hype.

Don’t Highlight Your Age

I worked with a job seeker interested in returning to the workforce after several years of retirement. Like many people today, the combination of falling housing values and a large drop in the stock market have reduced the retirement savings well below what was expected. To maintain the standard of living, this individual decided a part time job would help. The job seeker is also excited to return to working after several years off.

I reviewed the cover letter written by the job seeker. In it, he calls attention to his extensive sales experience. This individual worked in sales for just over forty years. This makes it easy to figure of the age of the job seeker.

Many people report encountering age discrimination. How common it is and how likely this job seeker is to encounter it are tough to estimate. There are companies who will not discriminate, and there probably are some who will. Knowing how big a factor age discrimination might be for this individual is impossible to tell.

A job seeker can raise or lower the odds of encountering age discrimination. You are not required to tell an employer your age. You also don't need to tell an employer key information that allows the calculation of your age – for example, a high school graduation date should not be listed on your resume.

The individual's cover letter included a sentence highlighting the 40+ years of sales experience the job seeker possesses. Highlighting the sales experience is good, but there is little need for emphasizing 40+ years.

The job seeker had held several positions over his career, and we decided to omit from his resume several at the start of his career. The resume showed more than twenty years of work experience. Omitting the first few positions does nothing to obscure the candidate's experience or potential. An entry level position forty years ago will not make a difference in a person's marketability today.

In the cover letter, we changed the 40+ years of experience to 30+ years of experience. It is still accurate – the candidate has more than 30 years of experience. It is just less precise. The difference in the presentation expands the potential age range of the job seeker. With more than forty years of experience and several years of retirement, the job seeker should be in his mid to late sixties. Changing the cover letter to thirty plus years changes this potential range to mid fifties and older.

This is a small change but it makes the age of the job seeker less of a factor and this may reduce the chance of age discrimination.

Wordiness on a Cover Letter

A cover letter needs to be clear and concise to be effective. Awkward and wordy sentences will discourage a hiring manager from reading the entire cover letter and will make a poor impression before the reader gets to the resume. Unfortunately, many writers struggle with identifying wordy phrases in their own writing.

Passive Voice

Many job seekers write in passive voice. It provides a weak presentation. The bullet below is written with an indirect passive style that moves the core activity of the job seeker to the end of the sentence.

I've consulted for <company> on a project that involved evaluating, creating then implementing learning paths for <client company>.

This sentence is longer than it needs to be and uses a very weak structure. To improve the sentence, take the primary verb and move it to the start of the sentence.

I evaluated, created and implemented learning paths for <client company> as a consultant at <company>.

Emphasizing the Wrong Information

This bullet emphasizes the job title and company name instead of the experience.

During my stint as the <job title> at <company>, I had to create then implement a rapid development system for developing Flash-based elearning modules to be delivered globally.

The work experience section of the resume details the positions held by the job seeker. There is no reason to repeat the details here.

I created and implemented a rapid development system for designing Flash-based elearning modules to be delivered globally.

Eventually

One word can destroy the impact of a bullet on your resume. The job seeker states that they “eventually” produced a successful result. This implies that path to success was very long… longer than expected.

My team eventually successfully designed and developed 6 hours of WBT that was delivered to support a new software configuration.

A better option is to focus on the verb and object, and leave the “eventually” out.

I led the design team that developed 6 hours of WBT supporting a new software configuration.

Review Your Cover Letter and Resume

Look at each sentence of your cover letter and resume and pick out the single most important verb. Try to rewrite the sentence to start with that verb. Delete any elements that are unnecessary. In each of the examples, I reduced the word count but maintained the core message of the sentence. Cutting out non-essential words and focusing on the actions (leading with the verbs) will improve the impact of your writing.