Published: Thursday 25th of January 2018; Words Count: 900
A lot of people consider writing cover letters to be a chore, but it’s actually a terrific chance to impress your future employer. Look over our tips and the administrative assistant cover letter example below as you write your own masterpiece of persuasion.
The cover letter examples below for administrative assistants will help you strengthen your application and find a great job. Take advantage of these professionally written samples to build a memorable letter that gets employers’ attention, and helps gets you hired.
Whether you’re looking for jobs as an Administrative Assistant or across the river, you’ve got to be proactive and diligent with your search. Here are a few tips to help you secure the right position.
1. Take the lead. No one is going to knock on your door and give you an offer. Expect to send out dozens of applications. Be sure to cater your cover letter to each job description, and don’t be afraid to follow up if you haven’t heard back after one week.
2. Network. This is the most important job seeking strategy. Stay active on social media, and keep your professional profile up to date. More importantly, try to connect face-to-face with professionals in your field by attending career fairs and community events. Even though everything is online, a referral is still the best way to get noticed.
3. Always send a thank you. Whether it’s a referral or a tip for your cover letter, make it a point to thank people along the way. Sending a card or a quick email makes a big impression and might even open a door to another opportunity.
4. Remain open to contracts. Temporary jobs as an Administrative Assistant may not be ideal, but contract work often turns permanent for employees who prove to be an asset.
5. Look to growing industries. Industries like technology and manufacturing are not going anywhere. Check career pages daily for newly announced positions.
Don’t apply to any jobs as a Administrative Assistant without thoroughly tuning your cover letter. This is your sales pitch, and it needs to be good. Here are a few guidelines on content and style.
1. Be selective about formatting. Most cover letters get less than 10 seconds from screeners. Use bold and italics only for jobs titles and degrees, but make sure you’re consistent. Bullets are also a great way to organization information. Ultimately, you want to easily and quickly draw attention to the most important areas.
2. Focus on accomplishments. Avoid a laundry list of job duties. Instead, use action words to describe what you actually achieved for your company.
3. Include full dates. If you just include a start and end year, employers will wonder whether you mean January or December. That’s a big difference.
4. Quantify your experiences. Employers love numbers. List the number of employees you supervised, the size of your team, how many products you directed or any benchmarks that you can convey with numbers.
5. Choose a summary over an objective. The traditional objective statement is unnecessary; your purpose is already clear. Instead, add a qualifications summary if you want to give screeners a two-second overview.