I found this advice at the following blog and I think it is good advice. As a manager at a company that publicly recruited employees dozens of times, I primarily received communications from applicants by email and they seldom treated the email like a cover letter. They should. Of the 50 or so applicants who applied by post and sent cover-letters they were mostly generic and meaningless.

From blog http://www.joelonsoftware.com/index.html (ex microsoft manager)
Please do not use cover letters that you copied out of a book. If you write ‘I understand the position also requires a candidate who is team- and detail-oriented, works well under pressure, and is able to deal with people in departments throughout the firm’ then at best people will think you're a bullshit artist and at worst they will think that you were not born with the part of the brain that allows you to form your own thoughts and ideas.”


The following is also some good advice on how to get your resume read. From http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ResumeRead.html

So here are a few hints to review, if you're sending out résumés.

A résumé is a way to get to the next stage: the interview. Companies often get dozens of résumés for every opening ... we get between 100 and 200 per opening. There is no possible way we can interview that many people. The only hope is if we can screen people out using résumés. Don't think of a résumé as a way to get a job: think of it as a way to give some hiring manager an excuse to hit DELETE. At least technically, your résumé has to be perfect to survive.

If you don't have the right qualifications, don't apply for the job. When the job listing says "summer intern," don't ask for a full time job. You're not going to get it and you're just going to waste your time. (It won't count against you in the future, of course, because your original application was deleted so quickly I'll have no memory of you when we do get a full time opening and you apply for it.)

OK, this one really bugs me. Learn where spaces go in relation to other punctuation. Attention, the entire population of India: whenever you have a comma, there is always exactly one space and it's always after the comma and never before it. Thank you.

In the olden days résumés were sent out in the mail and included a cover sheet on top which explained why the résumé was being sent. Now that we use email, there is no reason whatsoever to send the cover letter as an attachment and then write a "cover cover" letter in the body of the email. It's just senseless.

Even stupider is submitting two big Word documents with no body text in the email. This just gets you spam filtered. I don't even SEE these.

Please do not use cover letters that you copied out of a book. If you write "I understand the position also requires a candidate who is team- and detail-oriented, works well under pressure, and is able to deal with people in departments throughout the firm" then at best people will think you're a bullshit artist and at worst they will think that you were not born with the part of the brain that allows you to form your own thoughts and ideas.

The personal pronoun "I" is always capitalized. All sentences must end in a period. If your cover letter looks like this I will not even look at your résumé:

i m interested in your summer job.
here is my resume
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!

And while I'm on it, anonymous email accounts and AOL accounts just don't send a good message. They won't exactly disqualify you since so many people use them, but crazydood2004 at hotmail.com does not really impress me as much as name at alumni.something.edu. Do you really need to know if I Yahoo!? Do you really want to advertise Yahoo! SiteBuilder, a competitor to one of Fog Creek's products, when you're actually applying for a job at Fog Creek?

In most of the English speaking world it is not considered polite to open letters to a Mr. Joel Spolsky by writing "Dear Spolsky." One might write "Dear Mr. Spolsky," or "Dear sir," or perhaps, "Hi Joel!" But "Dear Spolsky" is usually followed by some story about embezzled funds and needing to borrow my bank account.

Don't tell me about one of the requirements of the position and then tell me that you don't want to follow it. "One of the requirements for Summer Internship says that you need to interview in person in New York City. I am interested in the position but I stay in East Nowhere, TN." OK, that's nice, hon, you stay there. Another PS, I thought we said in the requirements "Excellent command of written and spoken English." Oh, yes, indeed, that was our first requirement. So at least do yourself a favor and get someone to check your cover letter for obvious mistakes. Like I said, don't give me an excuse to throw your résumé in the trash.

I don't know why I need to spell these out because they're probably listed in every single "how to send out résumés" book on the planet, right there in chapter 1, but I still get more résumés that show an appalling lack of concern for what it takes to get an interview.

Let me try not to be so negative and provide some constructive advice.
Proofread everything a hundred times and have one other person proofread it. Someone who got really good grades in English.

Write a personal cover letter that is customized for the job you are applying for. Try to sound like a human in the cover letter. You want people to think of you as a human being.

Study the directions that are given for how to apply. They are there for a reason. For example our website instructs you to send a résumé to jobs@fogcreek.com. This goes into an email folder which we go through to find good candidates. If you think for some reason that your résumé will get more attention if you print it out and send it through the mail, that you'll "stand out" somehow, disabuse yourself of that notion. Paper résumés can't get into the email folder we're using to keep track of applicants unless we scan them in, and, you know what? The scanner is right next to the shredder in my office and the shredder is easier to use.

Don't apply for too many jobs. I don't think there's ever a reason to apply for more than three or four jobs at a time. Résuméspam, or any sign that you're applying for 100 jobs, just makes you look desperate which makes you look unqualified. You want to look like you are good enough to be in heavy demand. You're going to decide where you want to work, because you're smart enough to have a choice in the matter, so you only need to apply for one or two jobs. A personalized cover letter that shows that you understand what the company does goes a long way to proving that you care enough to deserve a chance.

Some of this stuff may sound pretty superficial. Indeed, what we're really looking for when we look at résumés is someone who is passionate and successful at whatever they try to do. We like people who are passionate about software. Writing a shareware app when you're a teenager is just as good a qualification to us as getting into MIT. This is your life story, and by the time you're applying for a job it's probably too late to change that.

Would I reject someone just because they don't quite understand the relationship between the comma and the space? Well, not necessarily. But when I have to find two summer interns out of 300 applicants, here's what I do with the résumés: I make three piles: Good, OK, and Bad. I give the same résumés to Michael and he does the same thing. There are always enough people that we both put in the Good pile that those are really the only people that stand a chance. In principle if we can't find enough people we like that we both rated as "good" we would consider some people who got Good/OK, but in practice this has never happened. Much as I'd love to be able to consider everyone on their merits instead of on superficial résumé stuff, it's just not realistic, and there's just no reason a college graduate can't get this right.

(Added 1/27/2004)

The number one best way to get someone to look at your resume closely: come across as a human being, not a list of jobs and programming languages. Tell me a little story. "I've spent the last three weeks looking for a job at a real software company, but all I can find are cheezy web design shops looking for slave labor." Or, "We yanked our son out of high school and brought him to Virginia. I am not going to move again until he is out of high school, even if I have to go work at Radio Shack or become a Wal*Mart greeter." (These are slightly modified quotes from two real people.)

These are both great. You know why? Because I can't read them without thinking of these people as human beings. And now the dynamic has changed. I like you. I care about you. I like the fact that you want to work in a real software company. I wanted to work in a real software company so much I started one. I like the fact that you care more about your teenage son than your career.

I just can't care about "C/C++/Perl/ASP" in the same way.

So, maybe you won't be qualified for the job, but it's just a lot harder for me to dismiss you out of hand.

You are sitting on a "double edged sword". Some employers will be scared away if they think you are just on a 1-2 year school break to earn some cash before continuing your studies. Most new employees who don't have years of experience usually take at least 1-2 years before they actual become productive employees. The first year of employment can be considered a training period in which they will be lucky to get any real beneficial productive work out of the employee.

Some employers however may see your pursuit for a masters as an admirable goal and not really care much if you are only going to be with them for a year or two before returning to school.

My best advice is to be honest even though some employers may not want to touch you. If you were to not disclose this to them and subsequent leave to continue your studies as you planned all along they may be very disappointed and not give you any positive reference. It is better not to burn bridges because someday you may need to cross that bridge again.

It is true that the best way to get a job is through your network of contacts. Sending applications through email /normal mail is not particularily effective.

You need to build a network of contacts starting with your friends and family and extend it to include the companies you wish to work for. Attending trade-shows is one way of extending your network. Sometimes all it takes is a phone call to someone else in that company that you may not even know to give you the name of a person they know who is hiring.

What makes you think a photo means anything to an employer for a new graduate. They are not hiring people for a modelling job. After interviewing hundreds of new grads I can say that they all pretty much look the same.

Nope. I couldn't care less about the photo. Any sloppy stinky unconfident person can appear decent in a photo. What always stands out to me in new graduate resumes is outstanding content. A person who truly shows an aptitude or interest often shows in the resume and will distinguish them from those who simply studied a subject because someone told them it was a good career.

If you are a new graduate your resume should be no more than 2 pages. You do not need to elaborate at length about all the subjects you have taken but should rather focus on those details that draw attention to you as the best possible candidate.

If you are submitting your CV through email write your cover letter in the email and highlight again why you are the best person for the job you are applying for.

In my experience "walk-in" interviews are usually confined to the areas of "unskilled labour" or "blue-collar" work in which your previous skills and work experience are not critical. Like almost any job, the interviewer will be most interested in your attitude and aptitude which are difficult to convey on a resume. So, I believe you are likely to find that most "walk-in" interviews will not really need your resume. But of course it is best to be as fully prepared as possible including a resume.

In British English, CV is the standard term for what is called a résumé in American English.
Wikipedia

Your cover-letter should not be full of unimportant details such as where you learned about the job posting unless requested by the company. You should focus your effort on using the cover letter to highlight why you are ideal for the position. I can almost recognize a form letter without reading it and it will be disposed off. A personal letter, especially hand-written will however stand out to me and may get some additional consideration.

You may find it helpful to have multiple versions of your resume that each emphasize particular aspects or interests you have. For example if you are interested and experienced in both computational geometry and software quality assurance you would probably want to highlight the computation geometry aspects if you applied to a company like Silicon Graphics and submit the other resume that focusses on software quality assurance if you apply to somewhere else. If you were applying for a managerial position you would want to make that the thrust of your resume instead of all the technical skills that you would highlight if you were applying for a technical position.

In my opinion the more important point in the blog is not to avoid certain words but to rather make sure you can proove to your interviewer that what you say is true. It is even better to do like the article suggested using the example below:

Instead of... "Experience working in fast-paced environment"
Try... "Registered 120+ third-shift emergency patients per night"

That will go a long way to convince interviewers that you are not just fluffing up your resume. Don't avoid the 25 words listed, just make sure you can support any claims you make.

And if you are doing a cover letter, you might think about using the ancient art of hand-writing. Be very neat of course. This will stand out from those who just send a printed out template which they often do nothing more than change the name of the company they are applying to. (And some dont' even do that!).

You might want to explain in the cover letter "I am writing this letter by hand to show you my personal interest in this position. I am very interested to work for XXX because YYY....." And of course your CV/Resume would be printed out nicely showing you can use a word processor.

A handwriting font would be just tacky.

Finding a job is not something like sending out SPAM where you send out as many applications as possible and hope one of them meets success. You must identify a hand ful of companies and focus all your effort on them. That could mean days or weeks worth of effort and not just a few minutes to send a letter. For example if you really want to work for IBM and are not making any inroads there you might try to target their major customers or partners.

If you cannot write a letter in your home without smudging the ink from a sweaty hand you have much bigger issues to worry about.

what you have suggested is sufficient. One sentence is fine as long as it begins with Thank you.l