Should I Mention My Reasons for Being in The Job Market in My Cover Letter? | writing a cover letter
When writing your cover letter, you may be wondering whether or not you should make mention as to why you are in the job market and whether or not you should state the reasons. This is a question asked over and over again by many job seekers and to simply answer you, maybe, it depends!
Why Are You In the Job Market?
There are many possible reasons why you are in the job market today and before you can see whether or not you should state it in your cover letter you are most certainly going to want to answer the question “why am I in the job market”?
It truly depends on whether or not you are in the job market because you were fired from your previous job, or if maybe you were let go for a legitimate reason such as plant closing. Of course if you were fired from your previous job, you do not want to state that into the cover letter, but if you were let go for a legitimate reason then you may be relaying a positive message by communicating to them the reason behind why you were let go.
You Cover Letter is Your Personal Sales Letter
If at all costs you can avoid mentioning why you are in the job market, you should. Your cover letter is basically a sales letter about yourself selling yourself to the possible employer about your skills and abilities and your past experiences that may be relative and an asset to their company. When you veer off and talk about why you are in the job market it could bring down your value, so it is best to just not mention it unless you really feel like it would be an asset to explain why you are no longer employed.
Remember that your cover letter should be short and sweet discussing a few features about yourself. You basically want them to read enough information about you that they will want to quickly dive into your resume to find out more about your skills and your past work experience.
Your cover letter should not have your whole life story in there and it should not be a place to list all of your accomplishments. Instead, pick out a few things that may stand out that will make the reader want to find out a little more about you. Stating your past skills is a better way to focus on the positives than to remind them that you are in the job market and possibly push them away from wanting to find out more about you.
Overall, you should definitely focus on writing a good, solid cover letter that will make everyone want to know about you. If your cover letter isn’t equally impressive, it’s entirely possible that your resume will never get read. Remember that first impressions are lasting impressions and you really have about 20 seconds to make your case clear and grab the attention of the possible employer before they lose interest.
Filed under FAQs, Writing a Cover Letter by on Nov 18th, 2011. Comment.