Effective Career Guidance - Career Guide

cuses on the employer rather than on you and to explain and sell your experience.
The friendship covering letter
A friendship covering letter is perhaps the hardest of all of the covering letters to write.
Friendships are won and lost on poor letter-writing so make sure you get it right. Friends
include not just your closest and dearest pals but anyone who knows your name - in fact
anyone who can help you in your job search. Don’t rule anyone out prematurely, because
they may be able to help you. At this stage it doesn’t matter where your friends live, because
your friend’s friend may live near you.
Make sure you rebuild old times, explain your situation, tell them how they could help you
out, ask for advice and ideas and end on a friendly note.
Things to avoid
Most covering letters fail because they don’t empower the employer. In others words, the
candidates focuses too much on their needs and not on the employer’s needs. So the cov-
ering letter doesn’t add anything to the application and sometimes it can even destroy the
message of the CV itself. This could be because the letter is:
X - A ‘weak’ letter, which states only that the CV is enclosed rather than reconfirming your
areas of expertise. This type of letter gives the power back to the employer: the power to say
‘yes’ or ‘no’ to your application. Unfortunately most covering letters fall into this category.
X - An ‘arrogant’ letter, which will put off employers. Perhaps it implies or states why the em-
ployer should take on the applicant, or explains how the company should run its business.
Try to avoid this approach, as it normally gives the employer a negative image of you.
X - A ‘humorous’ letter, which will normally misfire. The joke will almost certainly be on you.
Save your sense of humour for the times when you are face to face with the recipient. You
can then judge the response and modify your approach accordingly.
X - A ‘creative’ letter, which has its place in the PR, advertising and marketing fields. Here
almost anything goes and a letter of this kind will be appreciated, rather than going over the
top of the employer’s head. If this is not your line of work but you want to be creative, you
can be subtly different by choosing a different ending to ‘Yours sincerely’ or ‘Yours faithfully’.
You could try ‘With confidence’, ‘With great interest’, ‘Your friend’ ‘With warm thanks’ and
so on.
X - An ‘old-fashioned’ letter, which puts the reader off. So many candidates change person-
ality in their covering letter. They use terms which were probably used over fifty years ago,
including ‘in the furtherance of’, ‘for your perusal’ and ‘prior to migrating my career’. Only
use words in your covering letter that you would use when you talk to the employer.

The Europass Cv template