Your CV should reflect all of your skills and career achievements and should not need to be changed each time you apply for a role; it is your cover letter that needs to be tweaked for each role or company you apply for to enable you to target your application to a specific role or organisation.
Structure
Your cover letter should be 4 or 5 paragraphs in length with approximately 4 or 5 lines in each of these. If applying to a company speculatively, make effort to get a name of someone to contact rather than a general approach to the HR Department; this will show better motivation and commitment to want to join the organisation.
Speculative Letters
When making a general approach to an organisation rather than applying for a specific role, your letter still needs to be targeted. Consider relevant industry events or facts specific to your target company and ensure you incorporate these to demonstrate awareness and motivation.
Consider your most relevant skills, experience and achievements to the target organisation to capture their attention and encourage the audience to want to read your CV. For example, if the organisation is fast-paced and dynamic or you know is setting up a new office, then draw out your contributions to start up environments or experience in a similar paced company.
Applying For A Specific Vacancy
Carefully read the vacancy notice and the requirements of the role and consider where you can demonstrate the skills and experience listed then ensure you cover these in your letter. Be specific and as in your CV, qualify where you have used certain skills and the successes these contributed to.
Remember, skills are generic to many applicants whereas the end results of these are usually unique to you:
If, for example, the vacancy is for a multi-site role and requires team leadership skills, then specify your experience of building and leading a successful team of 80 dispersed across 7 European locations.
If the role requires strong knowledge of Excel, then make sure you note how you have used this, for example, created spreadsheets and formulas to provide user-friendly tracking of over 500 clients, which was key to responding promptly to incoming queries.
In summary, your CV reflects all your skills and achievements; your cover letter is your opportunity to target your application to a role or organisation. Invest the time in ensuring your cover letter provides a strong introduction to entice the recipient to want to spend time in reading your CV.
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