Tailor Your CV and Cover Letter to the Job

1. In your cover letter, make sure you write down all the skills you possess in the essential and desirable criteria, giving examples where possible of how you achieved them.
2. Although putting more effort into fewer applications is more sensible than spamming multiple potential employers, don’t write only one high quality application and assume you’ll get the job. They may have internal candidates, or someone even more qualified might apply.
3. Link the paragraphs of your cover letter so that they fit together into a coherent story.
4. Talk about your own research and how it links to your potential employer’s research, paying particular detail to the overlap.
5. Prove in the cover letter that you have read your potential employer’s papers by discussing them.
6. If you know the subject area well enough you could suggest ideas of where you might take the research.
7. Discuss your interest in their subject area in the cover letter and give any examples that evidence this.
8. Read your CV and cover letter through several times on different days before sending them off. Make sure they read fluently. If possible, have a friend or family member check them over.

The first few jobs I applied for, I didn’t realise there was a further details link at the bottom of the job description page. Obviously, I got none of these jobs because my CV and cover letter were not as attuned to the job description as the people who knew more thoroughly what the job was about.

The CV and cover letter is all about showing that you have thought about the job, are interested in the subject matter, and proving that you have the specific skills to do it well.