Brilliant Cover Letters: What you need to know to write a truly brilliant cover letter

Product Author Bios

James Innes is the Founder and Managing Director of The CV Centre – the UK’s leading CV consultancy.

Following more than a decade of experience heading up The CV Centre, James is widely considered to be one of the UK’s leading careers experts.

James regularly participates at recruitment fairs and conferences as a sought-after guest speaker, as well as being interviewed on TV and radio.

Brilliant Cover Letters is the definitive book on cover letters, authored by James Innes, the Founder and Managing Director of The CV Centre – the UK’s leading CV consultancy – responsible for writing many tens of thousands of cover letters annually.  The advice given is tried, tested and proven on a daily basis within The CV Centre.

Brilliant Cover Letter includes free bonuses such as cover letter templates available for download and immediate use – and suitable for pretty much all purposes, from graduates to executives, and including templates for ‘special cases’, e.g. legal, medical, IT, teaching, etc.  There’s also a special offer for The CV Centre’s services.

A key feature of the book – nothing quite like it exists in competing titles – is a chapter covering the 15 most common cover letter mistakes and how to avoid them (based on extensive statistical analysis The CV Centre has undertaken of many thousands of cover letters).  Only a tiny percentage of cover letters manage to avoid all these mistakes and most are victim to several.  Avoiding these mistakes makes all the difference to whether your application ends up in the ‘yes’ pile or the ‘no’ pile – also known as the bin!

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

How to use this book

2.   Speculative letters: getting your foot in the door

3.   Advert-response letters: getting together a winning strategy

4.   Specialist cover letters – including ‘letters of application’

5.   Digital considerations – email and fax

6.   The 15 most common cover letter mistakes – and how to avoid them

7.   Other job search letters

8.   Career development letters

9.   From CVs to interviews ...

10. My five top tips to make your cover letter stand out

Further reading and resources

Appendix A: 250 action verbs

Appendix B: 50 positive adjectives

Index