Introducing your CV—the cover letter

Introducing your CV—the cover letter What is a cover letter? A cover letter is a letter you send with your CV to a potential employer. It is your opportunity to go beyond the CV and focus the employer’s attention on the experience and skills you possess that are directly related to the position available. A cover letter is basically a sales letter: it promotes your abilities and is written with the potential employer’s interests foremost in mind. Should you write

a cover letter to go with your CV when applying for a job? Absolutely! Your cover letter will be almost as important as your CV. It will introduce you to a potential employer and summarize your specific qualifications for a given position. It is a also a chance for the potential employer to inspect your writing skills. Can you use the same cover letter for all the CVs you send out? No. You should customize the letter as much as possible to the needs of particular employer you are contacting. Customizing requires thinking about the health care company, their patients, and the work you see yourself doing. It means imagining yourself in the position and the situations you’d be facing, and figuring out the abilities and traits that you possess that are important for success. For any position, there are two types of skills: core skills, which any serious applicant will be expected to have, and a much broader range of skills that would be useful to the employer but go beyond the basic requirements. You need to spend some time thinking about both types of skills. Having the first kind will get you considered; having the second kind will...

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