Gallery of Best Cover Letters: a collection of quality cover letters by professional resume writers

401 Pages·2012·40.899 MB·English

by  David Franklin Noble

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Careers/Resumes G
Cover Letter Inspiration for a
Variety of Careers a
Best Best
Use the Occupations Index to find samples l
Gallery of
of cover letters targeted to occupations in l Gallery of
these 32 fields: e
• Accounting • Insurance
r
• Administrative • Law
y
Support
• Law Enforcement/

• Advertising Security
o
• Aviation • Manufacturing
Cover Letters
Fourth • Business • Media/Social Media f
Edition
Development
• Occupational
B
A Collection of Quality Resumes • Corporate Training/ Health and Safety
by Professional Resume Writers Recruiting • Personal Services
• Customer Service • Procurement Cover Letters
• Design/Architecture • Public Relations/ e
• Education Communications
s
• Engineering • Publishing/Writing
“David Noble’s books are consistently some of the best-written on • Events Planning/ • Real Estate t A Collection of Quality Cover Letters
the market, with practical information that virtually anyone can use.” Fund-Raising
• Sales and
— Wendy Enelow, cofounder of the Resume Writing Academy and • Finance Marketing C by Professional Resume Writers
coauthor of Cover Letter Magic and the Expert Resumes series • Healthcare • Science
of books
• Hospitality • Social Work/ o
Counseling
• Human Resources
v
• Technology
• Information
Get the Interview with a Great Cover Letter
Systems/ • Transportation/ e
A cover letter is your opportunity to describe the value Technology Travel
you bring to an employer. Learn from the masters how r
to craft a letter that captures an employer’s attention
and lands the interview. This book showcases expert Perfect Your Cover Letters and Resumes with Tips L • 317 sample cover letters for dozens of professions
techniques for highlighting the skills and qualities that
from the Pros
stand out to hiring managers. e • 11 sample resumes
• Hyphenate, punctuate, and capitalize correctly
• Proven contributions from 90 professional resume t • Expert cover letter writing tips and advice
writers from across the country • Use bullets, lines, columns, QR Codes, and other attention-getters t
effectively
• Eleven resume and cover letter combinations to e
show how these documents work together • Avoid pronoun problems and other common grammar goofs
r
• Letters for special situations, such as military-to • Frame your skills and experience to fit your job target
s Fourth Edition
civilian transitions and networking and interview
follow-up
About the Author
• Useful examples for all levels of employment,
Hundreds of thousands of people know David F. Noble, Ph.D.,
from internships to C-level positions
as the author of the resume book that helped them find jobs. His
books on resumes include Gallery of Best Resumes and Gallery
of Best Resumes for People Without a Four-Year Degree. He
has more than 20 years of experience teaching English, writing, More than 65,000
American Literature, business communications, technical writing, Fourth copies in print!
and professional editing at the university level. Edition
ISBN 978-1-59357-917-3
Noble
51895
9 781593 579173 David F. Noble, Ph.D.
www.jist.com $18.95 Higher in Canada
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Fourth Edition
David F. Noble, Ph.D.
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Dedication: In memory of my mother, Christena Brightwell Noble, the letter writer
Gallery of Best Cover Letters, Fourth Edition
A Collection of Quality Cover Letters by Professional Resume Writers
© 2012 by David F. Noble
Published by JIST Works, an imprint of JIST Publishing
875 Montreal Way
St. Paul, MN 55102
E-mail: [email protected]
Visit our website at www.jist.com for information on JIST, free job search tips, tables
of contents, sample pages, and ordering instructions for our many products!
Acquisitions/Development Editor: Heather Stith
Copy Editor: Lori Ryan
Production Editor: Jeanne Clark
Senior Design and Production Specialist: Ryan Hamner
Cover Designer: Alan Evans
Proofreader: Linda Seifert
Indexer: Ginny Noble
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the Library of Congress.
Noble, David F. (David Franklin), 1935-
Gallery of best resumes : a collection of quality resumes by professional resume writers /
by David F. Noble. -- 5th ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-59357-858-9 (alk. paper)
1. Résumés (Employment) I. Title.
HF5383.N62 2012
650.14’2--dc23
2011026266
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, or
stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews. Making copies of any part of this
book for any purpose other than your own personal use is a violation of United States copyright
laws. For permission requests, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at www.copyright.
com or 978-750-8400.
We have been careful to provide accurate information in this book, but it is possible that errors
and omissions have been introduced. Please consider this in making any career plans or other
important decisions. Trust your own judgment above all else and in all things.
Trademarks: All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service
marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
ISBN 978-1-59357-917-3
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Contents
Introduction .................................................................1
Part 1: Best Cover Letter Tips ................. 5
Best Cover Letter Tips at a Glance ..............................6
Ten Myths About Cover Letters ...............................................7
Tips for Writing Cover Letters..................................................8
Tips for Polishing Cover Letters ............................................14
Part 2: The Gallery of Best Cover Letters ...23
The Gallery at a Glance .............................................24
How to Use the Gallery ...........................................................27
Accounting ...................................................................................................31
Administrative Support ..............................................................................40
Advertising ..................................................................................................50
Aviation .......................................................................................................56
Business Development ................................................................................59
C-level ...........................................................................................................61
Corporate Training/Recruiting ..................................................................67
Customer Service ........................................................................................74
Design/Architecture ...................................................................................77
Education .....................................................................................................81
Engineering ...............................................................................................103
Environmental Management ....................................................................109
Events Planning/Fund-Raising ................................................................110
Finance ......................................................................................................123
Government ...............................................................................................141
Healthcare ..................................................................................................142
Hospitality .................................................................................................161
iii
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iv Gallery of Best Cover Letters
Human Resources .....................................................................................168
Information Systems/Technology ............................................................186
Insurance ...................................................................................................204
Law .............................................................................................................206
Law Enforcement/Security.......................................................................216
Managers and Directors ...........................................................................229
Manufacturing ...........................................................................................244
Media/Social Media ..................................................................................250
Military-to-Civilian Transition.................................................................253
Occupational Health and Safety...............................................................259
Personal Services .......................................................................................262
Photography ...............................................................................................265
Procurement ..............................................................................................266
Public Relations/Communications ...........................................................270
Publishing/Writing ....................................................................................276
Real Estate .................................................................................................282
Sales and Marketing ..................................................................................286
Science .......................................................................................................316
Social Work/Counseling ...........................................................................319
Technology ................................................................................................327
Transportation/Travel ..............................................................................339
Special Letters ...........................................................................................344
Part 3: Best Resume Tips ......................351
Best Resume Tips at a Glance ..................................352
Best Resume Writing Tips .....................................................353
Best Resume Design and Layout Tips ...................................356
Best Resume Style Tips .........................................................360
Exhibit of Resumes ...............................................................365
List of Contributors .................................................385
Occupation Index .....................................................393
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Introduction
Gallery of Best Cover Letters is a collection of quality cover letters from professional
resume writers, each with individual views about cover letter writing. Unlike many
cover letter books whose selections “look the same,” this book contains cover letters that
look different because they are real cover letters prepared by different professionals for
actual job searchers throughout the country. (Certain information in the cover letters and
companion resumes has been fictionalized by the writers to protect, where necessary,
each client’s privacy.) Even when several cover letters from the same writer appear in
the book, most of these letters are different because the writer has customized each let-
ter according to the background information and career goals of the client for whom the
related resume was prepared.
In this fourth edition, 111 of the 317 letters are new to give you some of the latest exam-
ples of cover letters for contemporary job seekers. If you want to know what kinds of
cover letters are helping job searchers find positions in today’s job market under current
economic conditions, this new edition will give you answers. A number of the captions at
the bottom of each cover letter page indicate how a particular applicant was successful in
focusing a job search, securing an interview, or eventually getting the targeted job.
Why a Gallery of Best Cover Letters?
One reason is that error-free cover letters are more difficult to write than most people
imagine. When you put together a resume, you can work with just phrases, clauses, and
lists. The common writing dangers are misspellings, errors with capital letters, wordy
phrases, and faulty parallelism (for example, not having certain words in a series or
list grammatically parallel). When you write a cover letter, however, you are somewhat
obligated to write sentences that hang together in several paragraphs in a meaningful
sequence. To write sentences and paragraphs is to enter a minefield of all of the potential
errors and stylistic weaknesses that an individual with good communication skills can
make. And many people who try to write a cover letter do make such errors.
This Gallery of Best Cover Letters shows you, example by example, how to create cover
letters that are free of errors and writing weaknesses that could ruin your chances for an
interview. By studying the sentences and paragraphs in these letters, you can compare
your writing with what you see and find new ways to express what you want to say to
win that interview.
Another reason for having a Gallery of Best Cover Letters is that many of the cover let-
ters in cover letter books are—there’s no other way to say it truthfully—models of bad
writing. Often they exhibit not just a stylistic weakness here and there, but grammatical
errors that would sabotage your job search if you used those passages verbatim in your
own cover letters. To browse through the letters in this book is to walk through a mine-
field free of mines.
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2 Gallery of Best Cover Letters
Why Cover Letters by Professional Resume
Writers?
Instead of assuming that “one cover letter style fits all,” the writers featured in this book
believe that a client’s past experiences and next job target should determine the type,
design, and content of each resume and its related cover letter. The writers interacted
with clients to fashion resumes that seemed best for each client’s situation at the time and
to create one or more cover letters for the job(s) the clients were seeking.
This book features resumes from writers who share several important qualities: good lis-
tening skills, a sense of what details are appropriate for a particular resume and its cover
letter, and flexibility in selecting and arranging the resume’s sections and the cover let-
ter’s paragraphs. By “hearing between” a client’s statements, the perceptive resume writer
can detect what kind of job the client really wants. The writer then chooses the informa-
tion that will best represent the client for the job being sought. Finally, the writer decides
on the best arrangement of the information for that job. With this book, you can learn
from these professional writers how to shape and improve your own job search docu-
ments. You can create such documents yourself, or, if you want, you can contact a profes-
sional writer who, for a fee, might create a custom resume and cover letter for you. See
the Appendix, “List of Contributors,” for contact information for the professional writers
whose works are featured in this book.
Almost all of the writers of the cover letters in this book are members of one or more of
three organizations: Career Directors International (CDI), the National Résumé Writers’
Association (NRWA), and the Professional Association of Résumé Writers & Career
Coaches (PARW/CC). Most of the writers are certified. For example, those who have
CPRW certification, for Certified Professional Résumé Writer (again, see the Appendix),
received this designation from PARW/CC after they studied specified course materials
and demonstrated proficiency in an examination. Those who have NCRW certification,
for Nationally Certified Résumé Writer, received this designation from NRWA after a dif-
ferent course of study and a different examination. A few contributors are not currently
members of any organization but are past members of one or more professional organiza-
tions.
How This Book Is Organized
Part 1, “Best Cover Letter Tips,” contains a discussion of some myths about cover letters,
plus strategies for writing cover letters and tips for polishing them. Some of the advice
offered here applies also to writing resumes.
Part 2 is the Gallery itself, containing 317 cover letters, which are grouped according to
38 occupational categories or levels (for these, see the Table of Contents). Note that the
occupational title is usually, but not always, that of the target position the applicant is
seeking, not the applicant’s current or recent title. In resumes, job titles have to do with
the individual’s present and past positions. Cover letters, however, are concerned with
a target position. You should keep this fundamental difference in mind as you use this
book. (If the target position is not stated clearly in a cover letter, the applicant’s current
or most recent job is used to determine the occupational category of that letter.)
Even though most of the cover letters were written with a target position in mind, you
can learn much by reading any or all of them. That is, to get the most from this book
about writing cover letters, you should look at all of the cover letters in this collection and
not just at those related to your particular profession or position of interest. All of the
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Introduction 3
cover letters form a hunting ground for ideas that may prove useful to you for developing
your own cover letters.
In the Gallery, you will notice a few letters displayed in a plain text or e-mail format. This
format is appropriate for the electronic submission of letters or resumes. Note that any
of the letters in this book can be prepared for electronic transfer. If you intend to apply
online for positions, be sure you follow the submission guidelines posted by the employer.
If they are not clearly explained, phone or e-mail the company to inquire. You don’t want
to be disqualified for a job that suits you well because you did not follow the steps for suc-
cessful submission.
Part 3, “Best Resume Tips,” presents some resume-writing strategies, design and layout
tips, and resume-writing style tips for making resumes visually impressive. These tips
contain references to resumes in an Exhibit of 11 resumes at the end of Part 3. These ref-
erences are to resumes that illustrate a strategy or a tip, but the references are not exhaus-
tive. If you browse through this Exhibit, you may see other resumes that exhibit the same
strategy or tip.
Even though the Exhibit contains only 11 resumes, it offers a range of resumes with
features you can use in creating and improving your own resumes. Notice the plural.
An important premise of an active job search is that you will not have just one “perfect”
resume for all potential employers, but different versions of your resume for different
interviews. The Exhibit of resumes, like the Gallery of cover letters, is therefore not a
showroom where you say, “I’ll take that one.” It is a valuable resource of design ideas,
expressions, and organizational patterns that can help make your own resume a “best
resume” for your next interview.
The List of Contributors contains the names, addresses, phone numbers, and other infor-
mation of 90 professional resume writers from Australia, Canada, and the United States
who contributed cover letters and resumes for this book. The list is arranged alphabeti-
cally by country and state. Although most of these resume writers work with local clients,
many of the writers work with clients by phone, e-mail, and the Internet.
You can use the Occupation Index to look up cover letters by the job being sought. This
index, however, should not replace careful examination of all of the cover letters. Many
cover letters for some other occupation may have features that are adaptable to your own
occupation. Limiting your search to the Occupation Index may cause you to miss some
valuable examples.
Who This Book Is For
Anyone who wants ideas for creating or improving a cover letter can benefit from this
book. It is especially useful for active job seekers—those who understand the difference
between active and passive job searching. A passive job seeker waits until jobs are adver-
tised and then mails copies of the same resume, along with a standard cover letter, to a
number of ads. An active job seeker believes that both the resume and the cover letter
should be modified for a specific job target after having talked in person or by phone to
a prospective interviewer before a job is announced. To schedule such an interview is to
penetrate the “hidden job market.” Active job seekers can find in the Exhibit’s focused
resumes a wealth of strategies for targeting a resume for a particular interview. The
section “How to Use the Gallery” at the beginning of Part 2 shows you how to use the
Gallery for improving your cover letters.
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4 Gallery of Best Cover Letters
What This Book Can Do for You
Besides providing you with a treasury of quality cover letters and companion resumes
whose features you can use in your own letters and resumes, this book can help trans-
form your thinking about these job search documents. If you think that there is one
“best” way to create a cover letter or resume, this book will help you learn how to design
resumes and cover letters that are best for you as you try to get an interview with a par-
ticular person for a specific job.
Acknowledgments
This fourth edition of Gallery of Best Cover Letters was possible because of all the cover
letter and resume submissions of the writers featured in this book. For their names, see
the List of Contributors at the back of the book. It includes submissions by members of
Career Directors International (CDI), the National Resume Writers Association, and the
Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches (PARW/CC).
I also would like to express my thanks to Heather Stith at JIST for her guidance and work
on the many details of preparing this fourth edition for publication. Special thanks are
directed anew to my wife, Ginny, a former professional editor, who worked at home on
necessary tasks for completing this fourth edition, especially the updating of cross-
references in Parts 1 and 3.
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11
P A R T
u u u
Best
Cover Letter
Tips
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