covering letters
What is the purpose of a covering letter? Quite simply to present your job application and your CV to the prospective employer.
There are many CV writing Companies who will offer to write a covering letter for you and will charge you for doing so. I can’t see how this can be justified. In any event you don’t just want one covering letter, you will need a separate one for each job application.
Yes, I would always help a client who had a reason to express something particular in the covering letter. They might, for example, want to draw attention to the reason for a gap in their employment, or say that they had relocated to a new area which was they were now job seeking. But generally speaking, the shorter and more concise the covering letter is the better. You want the employer to get on with the job in hand, that is considering your CV. You certainly don’t want to repeat all the information in your CV only in different words.
Remember to keep it simple, keep it short, but also try to avoid making it look like a ’round robin’. This can easily be achieved by including just one paragraph that is unique to each application. This could be something like ‘I am particularly attracted to the position you are offering because I have always wanted to live and work in [anytown]‘. Or ‘Having had a good look around your website, I believe that I would be really happy working for [your company]‘. I’m sure that you know the type of thing I mean, and if you can give a genuine reason why you would like that particular job then I believe that would work wonders for your application.
Apart from that, unless you have something particular that you need to say, keep the covering letter as short as possible.