When you’re applying for a job as an administrative assistant, your cover letter is incredibly important.
This vital document accompanies your resume and is your opportunity to introduce yourself and sell your skills and abilities to a potential employer.
Most likely, this letter will be the first point of contact the company will have with you. If it doesn’t stand out from the crowd, it could well be the last.
Once you secure an interview, you can let your personality shine through, but getting to that stage can be tricky, and for an administrative assistant position, there is likely to be a lot of competition.
So let’s look at how to write a winning, attention-grabbing cover letter, that will give you the very best chance of moving forward to the interview stage.
Tailor your cover letter to the advertised position
This is your opportunity to state why you want this particular job.
Do your research, and find out about the company. What is it about this position that attracts you?
Do they sell a product or service that you’re enthusiastic about? Have you read good reviews of how they treat their staff or positive reports about training opportunities within the company?
Once you’ve outlined your reasons for wanting to work for the company, you can then go on to highlight the reasons why the business should want to work with you.
Read the job advert carefully, determine the needs of the business, and then write about any relevant skills and experience you have that will fulfil all their requirements.
Don’t use a generic letter
When you see a job advertised that you’d love to do, it can be tempting to apply in a hurry to get in early.
However, while it is a good idea to get your application in quickly, you should never rush it, or take shortcuts.
You’ll find plenty of cover letter templates and examples online, but don’t be tempted to simply cut and paste such a letter and send it off with your application.
You can make a good bet that the hiring manager will have seen them all before and be able to spot a copied, generic letter a mile off. Don’t risk your cover letter being thrown straight into the trash!
The employer will be looking for someone with good attention to detail, who does a thorough job and goes the extra mile.
So while giving your details to ChatGPT and asking it to create a cover letter could seem like a great way to get a professional-looking cover letter with the least amount of effort, we certainly don’t recommend this approach.
To the trained eye, an AI-generated cover letter is pretty obvious, and there are plenty of AI checker applications out there these days.
Even if your cover letter was shortlisted, an AI check is quite likely to be part of the elimination process these days.
While it’s not technically cheating, unless the job advertisement specifically said not to use AI, it’s certainly a lazy option and does not demonstrate your own skills.
So by all means, take inspiration from any sources you can find, but ultimately, put the work in yourself and create something unique. It will be worth it in the long run.
Mention your key skills and experience
There will be certain important points that you can’t emphasize enough.
While all your qualifications and previous employment experience will be listed on your resume, anything that is particularly relevant, you can certainly briefly mention again in your cover letter.
For example, this could be several years working in an almost identical job, or a high-level qualification in a computer system you know the company uses.
You have to bear in mind that your resume and cover letter may only get a cursory glance, depending on how many applicants the position has, so you need to do all you can to grab the attention of the person reading through all the applications.
You never quite know how the process will be conducted. Your cover letter may be read by the boss of the company, who will take all the letters home to carefully read over in detail, or perhaps, more likely, especially if the job is a popular one with a lot of people applying for it, someone lower down in the business hierarchy will be asked to weed through the letters and resumes picking out a shortlist of a few of the best few applications and discard the rest.
(If you don’t have experience, then we have an article about how to be an administrative assistant with no experience which is worth a read next.)
Keep it short and to the point
As we’ve established, whoever is dealing with the hiring process is going to have a lot of cover letters to read.
With this in mind, it makes sense to keep your cover letter short and sweet.
If it’s too lengthy, it may not get read at all, and the important details will become lost amid the unnecessary verbiage.
Don’t go overboard talking about yourself. You’re free to mention your hobbies and interests, and a little about yourself as a person, but don’t place too much focus on your personal life.
Ensure your letter is totally perfect with no mistakes
Most important of all, send in a cover letter that has absolutely no mistakes in it.
That’s another good reason for keeping it short, there’s less text for errors to creep into!
You want your cover letter to portray someone who is capable, professional, and reliable. If you’re sending out letters with typos, you’re certainly not putting across the impression you were aiming for. A mistake in a cover letter just shows a lack of attention to detail and that is definitely going to be a minus point on your application.
It would be a shame to lose the chance of getting your dream job as an administrative assistant just because of a spelling error, especially when it is so easily avoided.
Write your cover letter, re-read your cover letter, then read it again.
Once you think it’s perfect, it’s time to send it off right? No!
No one is perfect, but your letter needs to be, so we suggest you pass your letter on to someone with excellent spelling and grammar skills to check it over before you send it.
If you don’t have a friend or family member with these skills, you could hire a professional proofreader or ask at a local college.
If they find even the smallest of errors, it would be money well spent.
