Cover letter advice needed

[Cakedoesntjudge]

I haven't written a cover letter in a couple of years and I am questioning myself.

Am I right in assuming they should be kept fairly concise and offer enough information to get employers interested without laying all your cards on the table?

IMO a good cover letter should add something beyond the information provided in your CV - why you want that particular job, for example, or to proactively address any ‘gaps’ between their spec and your experience. Concise is good too :-)

My cover letters are always tailored to the personal specs of the role. The cover letter sells you, the cv provides the evidence IMO.

I always limit mine to one A4 sheet and as the pp highlighted it should cover the areas your cv doesn't.

When I read a cover letter, I'm looking for the applicant to ideally point out 2 - 4 reasons why/how their experience matches the requirements of the role. If there are loads of applications, I don't want to have to 'join the dots' myself, I want quick reasons to put an application on the 'look at these first' pile.

Concise, yes - so no waffle, but not so concise as to just be a 'I want this job, please find my CV attached/enclosed'.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if that put all or most of the cards on the table, because the cover letter should attract my attention and (hopefully) make my job easier.

Thank you everyone :)

I have tailored the ones I've sent out tonight to the firms I've applied to and also highlighted why the skills I have should suit the roles I'm applying for and I stuck to one A4 page max so I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed now!

Pennypent out of interest, do you plump for the strictly formal cover letters? I try and stick with formal but I can't help but think that if I had to read cover letter upon cover letter the ones with personality injected into them would stand out.

Obviously I don't mean making it informal as such I mean just being a bit more interesting than "the skills I have are x,y,z and would make me suitable for the role because of 1,2,3...I find this aspect of your company particularly attractive because or bla bla bla" etc etc.

I need to stand out as much as possible because although I am academically qualified I reckon I could sell myself in person at an interview, doing my degree via the OU rather than at a brick uni means I haven't had the opportunity to do any practical experience and it's counting me out before I've started 😫

Thank you for the advice everyone - I’ve been offered an interview already for one of the jobs I applied for so it obviously did the trick!! Fingers crossed!