Cover Letters: Frequently Asked Questions

A. For the purposes of the Job Search Portfolio project, you should write your cover letter as a traditional, print cover letter for postal mailing. Need help with letter formatting?

A. No. You may not use a cover letter template of any kind. If you use a template, use a fill-in-the-blank sample, use a cover letter generator, borrow phrasing or sentences from a text you didn’t write, or try to game the system some other way, you will get a 0% on the Job Search Portfolio project.

It has happened before. Don’t let it happen to you.

A. Yes. Your cover letter should look like a letter, and letters include a recipient’s name and address. You should look for this information online—try to find a postal mailing address for the company or branch, and try to find the real name of a person who would likely review your materials (a supervisor’s name, an HR person, etc.)

A. You should be able to find some address. If you can’t find the address to a particular division of a company, use their corporate or head office address instead.

A. You should try to find the name of a person who would likely review your materials if you were really applying (a supervisor’s name, an HR person, etc.).

A. If you absolutely cannot find the name of any person who would be likely to review your materials (if you were really applying), then use the next best piece of information you have to use in your salutation. See “Salutations, Names, Titles, and Closings.”

• If you don’t know a person’s name or gender, if possible, use the their job title or role (Dear Recruiter, Dear Claims Adjustor).
• If you are writing to a company rather than a specific individual, use the company name (Dear Pet Smart, Dear E.J.’s Garden Pros).
• When writing to a group, use an appropriate plural noun (Students, Employees, Customers). When appropriate, use a more direct, descriptive, or friendly plural noun (Hello 3213 Pro Writers, Dear FAU Employees, Dear Initech Team)
• Don’t ever write: “To Whom it May Concern”

A. Look in the listing URL—often the URL has a position number or job ID number at the end. See below.

A. Yes! Absolutely!

The work you’ve done as an undergrad is work. Your classroom experiences are experiences. The projects you’ve completed for class are projects. The research you’ve done for classes is research. Your educational experiences are worth highlighting, especially if you don’t have paid experience in your field.

Always keep in mind that your cover letter, resume, and interview responses are intended to “prove” your qualifications for the position. What matters is the experiences, projects, and research that qualify you. It doesn’t really matter whether those experiences, projects, and research are paid or unpaid (or “work” or “educational”).

A. Yes! Absolutely!

Even if you have no experience in your career field, you still have lots of options for what to write about in your cover letter.

First, let’s go back and think about the various purposes and functions of a cover letter:

The lighter font items are fairly easy to do: Introduce yourself and make a good first impression; provide context for your resume set; for an interview: improve your writing skill.

The items highlighted in yellow give you a chance to shine – even if you have no actual experience in your career field. You can do this by…

Showing how your knowledge—likely what you learned in your classes—prepare you for the position. If the employer is looking for someone who upholds high standards of patient care, but you have no experience caring for patients, perhaps you can discuss how you will apply what you learned in Fundamentals of Nursing Practice to your practice of patient care. If the employer is looking for someone who can perform patient health assessments, but you’ve never done a patient health assessment on a real patient, you can talk about a project that asked you to perform assessments as part of your Health Assessment in Nursing Situations Lab class.

Showing how you possess the skills, qualities, and/or abilities the employer is looking for. (sometimes called “transferable skills”) While the employer may be looking for someone who can adhere to government ethics guidelines, if you have no experience with government ethics guidelines, perhaps you can show how you adhered to ethical guidelines or ethical principles in some other way, or in some other role. If the employer is looking for someone who can lead a sales team to meet monthly sales goals, even if you have no formal leadership experience in this area, perhaps you can talk about how you lead your church youth group team to meet a fundraising goal, or discuss how you led a group of classmates through an exciting class project.