A Cover Letter and a Resume

You definitely need a cover letter. Even a short cover letter is better than nothing. Email has become one of the quickest and easiest ways to submit your resume. I know it is often seen as a casual method of communication. However, when submitting a resume, it needs to be presented as if it were a formal resume submission and this means at the very least, telling the person what you are applying for and a brief description of who you are and why they want to open the attached resume.

Do I really need a cover letter?

I’m often asked if a cover letter is really necessary or is just attaching the resume to an email sufficient.

As an example of how not to submit your resume: Recently I received an email from snugglebunny02 @ somewhere.com with a subject line of “Hi there ;-)” and nothing in the body of the email.

Checking to make sure all of my on-line anti-virus defenses were in place, I opened the attachment. I fully expected my Norton Security software to bark at me. However, the attachment was actually a resume for a senior level, degreed software engineer.

There are so many ways this could have gone horribly wrong: First, it was a minor miracle that my spam filter didn’t kick out the email. Second, I’m extremely cautious and my initial reaction was to just delete it without risking a peek. Third, while I truly believe I don’t pre-judge anyone based on their email address, I also don’t recruit for any positions where being a “snuggle bunny” would be considered a plus.

Yes, You Really Need a Cover Letter

So, a well written cover letter would have been extremely helpful in this case. At the very least it would have helped to have an actual name to reassure me this was a resume from a real person.

If you were wondering why you haven’t heard back from a job application, you may want to rethink how you are applying in the first place. With all the spam being sent, you don’t want your professional resume to look like anything except what it is.

So, when applying for a job by email, be sure to include a relevant subject line, a cover letter (whether that be a couple of sentences or a detailed letter), with your full name and an email address that is professional. There’s enough competition in the job market without adding to it yourself.

Additional Information

For a few amusing examples of cover letters please see my Blog posted Interesting Cover Letters.

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