Does the perfect cover letter exist? If yes, what does it contain?

Let's look at what a winning cover letter contains. It is addressed to someone in the company you are targeting; it calls out an opportunity in which you are interested; it includes your qualifications for the position; and it ends with an action-oriented statement such as, "I will call your office to request an interview." If your cover letter does not include at least these basic elements, it won't get the job done.

Now, let's entertain the first challenge... to whom should the letter be addressed? If we're striving for the "perfect" cover letter, it should not be sent to "To Whom It May Concern" or "Dear Hiring Manager". It should be sent to a specific key individual in the firm. In the ideal situation, this will be the person making the employment decision, the manager to whom the hired individual will report. Your second option is a key manager in the department or a manager that will likely forward your resume on receipt to the right person. Lastly, you could send your resume and cover letter to a manager in the HR department. This should at least ensure your cover letter a quick review before it gets passed on or placed into the resume management system used by the company.

If you know someone that works at the company, see if you can't get him to forward on your resume. Or, get a email address and name from them and ask if you can use their name in the email... "I got your contact info from John Smith, your Account Director." An intro this personal will usually get your cover letter read and forwarded to the right manager. Don't immediately presume that you know no one at the company. Check out internet sites like linkedin.com which allow you to search by company. Not only can you search for current employees, but you can tell if someone has previously been an employee at a company. There may be someone you know quite well that left the firm recently that can give you an introduction and allow you to use them as a reference.

Without knowing someone at the organization, how do you find the contact information for a person in the company? This is fairly easily done these days with the amount of information available on the internet. You can spend some time on the company's website and a search engine like Google. You can usually find this kind of information on the "about us", "executive team", "contact us", or "news" pages of the company's website. Most firms have a unique pattern to the their email addresses (something like firstname.lastname-at-company.com or firstinitial+lastname-at-company.com). Once you have the pattern used for email addresses and the name of your contact you can construct their likely email address confidently. You may have a little challenge with nicknames; sometimes "Robert" will go by "bob" in his email address. If this is a senior level person or it is a small company, frequently the mail server will be set to send emails addressed to either address through. If you send an email and it is returned undeliverable, simply try again with a different address.

Following this approach should get your cover letter and resume in the door. In later conversations we'll talk about what else to include in your cover letter so that your resume gets read.