A cover letter is one of the most important documents to include within a job application, alongside your resume. This is a great place to highlight and go into more detail in some of the skills you explained within your resume as well as stating why you are interested in the job that you’re applying for.

As with a resume, it’s important to write a new cover letter for every job that you’re applying for, and you should always include one unless the company specifically states that they don’t need one. But what else goes into a cover letter, especially a veteran applying for a civilian job? Let’s find out.

Familiarize Yourself with the Job Description

Before you start writing your cover letter, make sure you have a look through the job description because this will be the best place to find out what type of company you’re applying for and what kind of person they are looking for.

Look for things like key industry words they have included, what kind of language and tone of voice they are using and what kind of structure they have used. You can then replicate this in your cover letter, maximizing your chances of securing an interview,” shares Larry Wills, a cover letter writer for Big Assignments.

Match Your Skills to the Vacancy

Being from a military background, you’ll have developed and learned a lot of skills that a lot of people won’t have, giving you a great opportunity to boost yourself above the rest of the candidates.

For example, leadership skills, communication skills and the sorts can all be used to boost your abilities in the eyes of your employers. Once again, the information you’ll want to include should be found in the job description.

Highlight Your Accomplishments

During your time in service, you may have been awarded many accolades, medals or awards for your actions during service. This is a great aspect to include within your cover letter because it shows what kind of person you are in the eyes of others.

It’s also a great idea to try and match what you did in these accomplishments to what the job description says the company is looking for. For example, if you’ve got an award for discipline, you can match this into being a good team player or working well alongside management.

Perfecting Your Cover Letter with Tools

You might not be a professional writer, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t write a perfect cover letter. In fact, there are a tonne of online tools you can use to help, like the ones listed below:

Studydemic & Academadvisor

These are two services full of writing guides you can follow and use when writing your cover letter.

Academized

This is an online writing agency you can use to help guide you through the writing process, as recommended by the HuffingtonPost in Dissertation Writing Service article.

Let’s Go and Learn

This is an online blog that you can use to brush up on your grammar skills.

Paper Fellows & Revieweal

These are two services you can use to improve your skills at securing an interview

Writing Populist

This is a comprehensive blog with a tonne of information on writing techniques and how to craft perfect sentences in the right format.

Ox Essays

This is a custom writing service that can write your cover letter on your behalf, as recommended by Essay Writing Services.

Remember There’s a Lot of Applicants

The job market is becoming increasingly competitive, with more and more jobs available, more and more job seekers but companies are only wanting to hire the very best. With this in mind, it’s safe to say that a lot of companies can receive dozens of applications for a job and may not read your cover letter if they don’t have time.

This means you’ll need to remember that your cover letter should never outshine your resume, but your resume should want to make the recruiter read your cover letter.

Don’t Intimidate the Recruiter

It might be tempting to include certain skills in your cover letter, or accomplishments, that you’re proud of but are typically unsuitable for a cover letter. For example, including your overall kill count, or sharing a ‘gruesome’ story during your time in action can easily put a recruiter off, so save it for the lunch breaks.