Effective Tips for Writing a Killer Electrician Cover Letter
Do cover letters have any sway with recruiters who are hiring professional electricians?
Since the position is sensitive and requires a high level of expertise, hiring managers try to be thorough with their evaluation. As such, a well-written cover letter is a crucial part of the recruitment process as it highlights an electrician’s level of experience, knowledge, and even detail-oriented skills.
Cover letters for electrician positions may be short, but they are not necessarily easy to construct. That’s because you have limited space to fit all the relevant information potent enough to impress the hiring manager.
This article covers tips for using the right information to stand out as the best applicant when gunning for a position with a big electrical company.
With these tips, you will not only be able to condense your resume and get hiring managers to take it seriously; you are also more likely to land the job.
Header of Cover Letter
Cover letters have several sections, even though these sections are not as spelt out as you have them in modern resumes. The first section introduces you to the hiring manager, detailing personal information such as name and address.
The format of the header section is different from the others. It is usually center-aligned. As such, it is the section that first draws the attention of hiring managers, especially if you use slightly larger fonts than the rest of the cover letter.
All you need in your electrician cover letter header is listed below:
- Your full name. Ensure that your first, middle (if applicable), and last names are written in the same order as you have them on your ID card.
- Cite the abbreviated titles of the most relevant certifications you have. These may be professional certifications such as ETC, EMTC, and CEI-R or educational/managerial certifications such as BEng (Bachelor of Engineering), PMP (Project Management Professional), and CSEP (Certified Systems Engineering Professional).
- Include your current residential address. You may decide to use your email address if you don’t want to reveal your exact location. However, if the job position has location as one of its criteria, make sure to include your home address.
- Modern cover letters also include dates of submission in the header section.
Cover Letter Greeting
An effective cover letter greeting is more related to HR protocol than anything. There are salutations that you cannot use in a modern cover letter, and there are others that you can use but may not impress hiring managers and prompt them to read further down the cover letter.
For an electrician cover letter, the address of greeting is usually general. Unless the hiring company tells you to use a particular address, you are more likely to be favorably placed when you use ‘Dear Hiring Manager’ or ‘Dear Hiring Team.’
This address carries a formal tone because the employment process for electricians is almost always formal. As such, you have to be formal from the very beginning of the cover letter.
Without question, you cannot use ‘Dear Fellow Engineer’ or ‘Dear Fellow Electrician’ in an attempt to cozy up to the hiring manager. It never works, at least not in your favor.
Also, refrain from using the name of the hiring company. If you want to subtly tell the hiring team that you have done your research, use the name of the hiring manager. Many times, this is the person whose name is on the job advert.
Cover Letter Introduction
The Introduction section of your cover letter comes immediately after the greeting.
Unlike the format of an application letter, cover letters don’t include a separate heading detailing the purpose of the letter.
So, instead of writing ‘Application for the Position of Electrician at ABC’ after the ‘Dear Hiring Manager’ greeting, you simply introduce yourself.
Now, even though hiring managers expect a ‘simple’ introduction from you in this section, they also want to get something of a summary about who you are and what you can do.
You can think of the Introduction section of your cover letter as the Summary section of your resume.
Thus, if the hiring manager decides to read only the introduction, you would have provided enough information to convince them to approve your application.
The information you can include in the introductory section of your electrician cover letter includes:
- Your full name, certifications, and years of active experience. If age is one of the requirements of the job, hiring managers will be on the lookout for this information, so include it. So, rather than writing, “My name is Alex Harvey and I am 40 years old,” write, “My name is Alex Harvey, a 40-year-old ETC electrician with 18 years of active experience.”
- But hiring managers almost never ask for age because it is considered sensitive data. So, you won’t be breaking any rules if you don’t disclose your age. Instead, your years of experience will be more valuable.
- Mention the names of some of the places where you recently worked and some of what you were required to do in these jobs.
- Relate some of the requirements in the job description to your skills, and press home the fact that you are qualified for the role.
- Keep everything to 5 to 7 sentences, just enough to pique the interest of the hiring manager.
One of the things you must avoid in the introductory section is a whiny tone. So, don’t write ‘please help me’ in the introduction (or anywhere else in your cover letter). Hiring managers are more impressed with confidence.
Middle Paragraphs of the Cover Letter
The middle paragraphs will take more space in your cover letter than any other section. These paragraphs are effective when they contain only the most relevant information about your abilities and work as an electrician.
Anything extra that is not directly related to your competence will not impress the hiring manager or help you get the job. So, the focus of the middle paragraphs in your cover letter is relevant detail.
You can draft an effective cover letter middle section in 3 paragraphs of 4 to 5 sentences each. Each of these paragraphs should be precise about your abilities, work history, and accomplishments. This is also where you can make the most use of the keywords in the job description.
You can use the following tips as a framework for the middle paragraphs of your electrician cover letter:
- Make a note of the requirements of the job requirements. This helps you connect to the hiring manager and better relate your qualifications and suitability for the role.
- State your qualifications. Use your academic and professional certifications as evidence of valid endorsements from acclaimed agencies. If your occupational accreditations come from sources that are not well-known, briefly describe these certifications, making a note of the training process, academic requirements, and the overall objective of the certificate.
- Briefly highlight recent engagements or some of the services you rendered as an electrician. Use bullet points to cite some of what you accomplished in these positions and how.
- Add supplementary information that is not directly related to the job but depicts you as a useful electrician with, for example, conceptual, managerial, accounting, or self-management skills.
Conclusion and Closing
The conclusion and closing section of cover letters do not contain any particularly useful information. However, they help to tie up the cover letter and whatever impression the information rendered in earlier sections has had on the hiring manager.
This is also the section where you invite the hiring manager to reach out to you for clarification on any subject related to your application.
The closing section of your electrician cover letter should also suggest to the hiring manager that you expect a response from them.
So, make use of moderately compelling verbs such as ‘anticipate,’ ‘hope for,’ ‘look forward to,’ and ‘await’ instead of forceful verbs like ‘expect.’
You can further tie things up by including a work or email address where you can be reached at any time for clarifications and interview invitations.
Finally, close the cover letter with ‘Thank you’ and nothing else. ‘Best regards’ works as well, but it is not a very effective closing, so you should avoid it.
All in all, how you construct your cover letter for an electrician job posting can determine whether the hiring manager will go on to read your resume. So, make your electrician cover letter not longer than one page using the same font style, slightly larger fonts for the header and greeting, and bullet points to highlight outstanding skills and achievements.
How can we help?
Registered Users have an access to creating, editing, viewing and storing of up to 2 documents (1 resume, 1 cover letter).