As a nursing student, you’re learning all sorts of nursing skills that will be helpful for your career. Medication administration and caring for patients are important aspects of your education. However, while this knowledge is an important part of becoming a registered nurse, you will need the perfect cover letter to find a nurse position once you graduate. If graduation is nearing, a nursing student needs to learn how to create a professional resume. Here’s an example of a cover letter to draw inspiration from.
First, you want to address the cover letter directly to the hiring manager. The best salutation is one that isn’t generic like, “To Whom It May Concern” or “Dear Hiring Manager,” but is instead addressed specifically with the name of the hiring manager. Then, you can start building the rest of your cover letter with these writing tips.
A hook is an important part of your cover letter. This ensures that from the very first sentence, the recruiter is interested in you and wants to keep reading to find out more about how you can help their company. This applicant talks about becoming interested in healthcare from a very young age, building a unique story that “hooks” the recruiter into reading more.
The second paragraph should be full of concrete reasons why you’re the best person for the job. This means including metrics and plenty of numbers that showcase what makes you such a good candidate. As a nursing student, you might bring up especially high grades, the clinical experience you received as part of your training, or volunteer work that you did in the past. The applicant here mentions a 29% increase in patient satisfaction ratings on average.
Finally, the third paragraph needs to round off your cover letter by repeating why you’re the perfect person for this new job, then including a call to action. This call to action politely requests a follow-up for the job interview. The applicant specifically mentions that he’s looking for a job after he graduates, stating, “I’d be happy to sit down and talk to you about joining your team after I graduate.” This preemptively sets specific expectations for when he would be hired.
Yes. A professional cover letter is a great way to continue discussing what makes you the ideal candidate for the job you’re applying to. A nursing student resume will likely do the bulk of the work when it comes to showcasing the experience you have, but a cover letter highlights that experience into something that a hiring manager can be impressed with. If you’ve never written a cover letter yourself, you can use the ResumeNerd cover letter builder to make the process easier.
Most of the time, experts suggest that you keep your cover letter to about half a page to three-quarters of a page. This is more than enough space to showcase all the skills from the job description and explain what makes you special. But it’s also not so long that a hiring manager would be tempted to just skip over it. A cover letter should be about 250-350 words.
If you’re applying for an entry level nursing job, you may not have yet acquired a lot of clinical experience. However, you do have plenty of experience that can be transferable to the role. Perhaps you spent time working in the medical center at your school rather than at a local hospital but that is still considered relevant experience. Include any types of experience you received as a student nurse, including shadowing as a student, internships and other academic experience.
