Behind every CV should be a strong supporting cover letter. The two work in tandem to help you find the right person that can help drive your business forward. A strong cover letter can be the difference between candidates standing out from the competition or throwing yet another application in the bin.
57.1 percent of professionals rank a cover letter as the most important document in the job application process. So, candidates can’t afford to mess it up.
Top cover letters save employers huge amounts of time, which is convenient for their no doubt busy schedules. So, what makes a good cover letter? We’ll explain the key factors that you should look out for when searching for the right tech marketer.
We’ll cover:
Quite simply, generic cover letters are a massive no-no.
They show a lack of care and time taken from the applicant. Blanket cover letters are lazy and show no passion for the position that’s being applied for.
Applicants will have most likely sent a generic cover letter to a handful (or more) companies for a range of jobs, which straight away shows they have no real particular interest in technology or marketing.
Tailored cover letters show good attention to detail, which is a great start when it comes to looking for a writer or videographer, for example. They show that a candidate is capable of carrying out research and that they take pride in their work, two areas in which all good tech marketers excel in.
A well-tailored cover letter should include:
A headline on a cover letter is the first thing that will catch your eye when picking it up. Like an interesting news article, the headline has to be appealing to keep you reading further, drawing you into reading more about the potential candidate.
If the headline doesn’t excite you and lure you in, it’s unlikely that you’re going to carry on reading the cover letter.
This is the first opportunity that the candidate has to sell themselves to you and it’ll set the tone for the rest of the cover letter to follow on from too.
A first impression will be formed from reading a headline and a good one will live long in the memory, whereas a bad one will be remembered for all the wrong reasons or blend into the crowd.
A catchy headline is a glimpse of the creativity that the candidate can produce. Whether it be super professional or a clever little pun, you’ll be able to gauge the potential from this little snippet.
Confidence is key. Tech marketers have to be confident to take risks and step out of their comfort zone to achieve greatness. You don’t want to recruit a team full of people who only play it safe and are scared of failing.
By playing it safe with your marketing efforts, you’ll soon start to see your success levels plateauing and your content may soon become outdated.
This is something that you obviously want to avoid, so you need a workforce that is confident enough to take a little risk to reap great rewards.
Confidence should ooze out of the cover letter from the moment that you pick it up. If there’s a severe lack of confidence, bin it. If the candidate can’t be confident in a cover letter, then it suggests they aren’t confident within their abilities.
Look out for uncertain phrases too. “Possibly”, “probably” and “I think” are all words that suggest a lack of confidence in a cover letter. You want the candidate to be confident and showcase what skills and experience they can bring to the position, not make you feel like you’re taking a chance on them.
Like all good things, confidence should come in moderation. Overconfidence can soon turn into cockiness – which is a trait that nobody wants to have on their team.
As well as talk the talk, you need to see if your candidates can walk the walk too. You can gain this credibility by asking for examples of their previous work for you to take a look at, allowing you to see how their working style will fit within your business.
If you’re looking for a tech marketer, you need to be sure that they have a good level of technical knowledge, so that you can trust them to get the job done right. However, if they don’t have the desired knowledge, then a good place to start is to see whether they’re able to show diversity and research technically complex topics.
Words are all well and good but you need physical proof that what the candidate is saying is actually true. Examples of work are an effective way to judge whether their standard of work is up to the same level that they’ve previously informed you of.
Perhaps the minimum requirement of a cover letter is that it has to make sense. If it doesn’t make sense, then there’s no point even trying to decipher it. By submitting a cover letter that doesn’t make sense, it shows that the candidate is unsuitable for the role.
Not only does it have to make sense, but it should be short and sweet too. Cover letters are meant to save employers time and should be no longer than six paragraphs long.
If a candidate has pages upon pages for their cover letter, it shows that they struggle to be concise – which is a huge trait that a tech marketer needs. When looking at how concise an applicant can be, the number of pages, sentence and paragraph length should all be taken into consideration.
It needs to be easy on the eye too. We’re not suggesting that it has to be professionally designed, but what we are saying is that it needs to be formatted attractively to make somebody pick it up in the first place. Not only this, poorly laid out cover letters are much harder to read.
Overall, a badly put together cover letter means that you can expect the same from the rest of their content too.
In order to grow your tech marketing startup effectively, your recruitment process is something that you shouldn’t take lightly.
We understand that recruiting can take a lot of time out of your busy schedule, however, you want to make sure that you have the right people on your team to help you drive the business forward.
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