My first question is ‘have you been asked to include a cover letter’?

If yes then you must include a cover letter with your CV. If the answer is no, I’m not saying exclude a cover letter but what I want graduate applicants to consider is their target audience.

I continue to see a strong emphasis put on the cover letter. However, I did not see this matched on the other side during my years as an employer. My experience of cover letters when I was in HR was poor. Much of time, I felt that candidates were confused as to what should go into their cover letter. Most of the time I was getting what was on page one of the CV twice written slightly differently in a cover letter. For busy recruiters after a while this gets old. Some HR people started to disregard them completely, while most gave only a cursory glance.

Before my HR career, I, like most applicants, had this mental picture that, after slaving for hours on my CV and cover letter that the people on the other side would stick on the kettle and sit back and devour every word I had written in fine detail. I soon learned that application reviewers are dealing in volume and under time pressure. They say the average time for the yes, no or maybe decision is between 10 and 30 seconds and at most 90 seconds. Not a lot of time, and this should inform the applicant, especially with regard to the amount of text and how it is formatted. I would say it depends on where the CV and cover letter are going. The size of the employer and the amount of openings they might have will give you a yardstick on how much time they might give to reading a cover letter.

If you have a small owner / manager operation that may have a graduate opening at most once a year with a manageable amount of applications to go through, I would say your cover letter is likely to get the attention it deserves. However if it is an in-demand global multinational with thousands of applications, your cover letter may not receive the same amount of attention. There is no hard and fast rule on this: some line managers in large multinationals will tell you that a cover letter is very important to them, so individual preferences come into play also. One thing is for sure: nobody wants a long cover letter.

My rule of thumb is no less than two paragraphs and certainly no more than four or five paragraphs. Most employers will at least have looked at page one of your CV before they come to your cover letter, so they know the basics. Try not to repeat yourself, give them some information that is not on your CV i.e.: why you think you are a good fit. Elaborate your USPs (unique selling points) and why you applied to their company (some complimentary language works well here). Go easy on the flowery language; too much flattery can be a turn off. A little mental exercise to do to keep you on track is imagine you must walk up to them and read your cover letter out loud without getting embarrassed.

Brendan Lally

CECD Careers Advisor
Cooperative Education & Careers Division

University of Limerick