As a software developer, you have access to a lot of important information. Your actions can completely change a company’s trajectory and you must be good at handling it. If you want to ensure that a hiring manager sees your resume as a positive for their team, here’s how you can bolster your software developer cover letter.
Your cover letter needs to start with your name and contact information at the very top. This may include information like your phone number, email address and professional social media links, like your LinkedIn profile. Ensure your salutation is direct, using the hiring manager’s name if possible instead of an overly generic cover letter introduction like “Dear Hiring Manager.” From there, take the following cues from our software development cover letter example to build yours.
You must have a hook to immediately bring a hiring manager in and keep them reading through the entire cover letter. You want to list your most interesting achievements early on in the cover letter, which will capture a recruiter’s attention. Here, the applicant immediately brings up her last job, showcasing her achievements.
Now that you know you have the hiring manager’s attention, you can go more in-depth, talking about important metrics and special skills that you have. This is where you can go into software development and what you’ve done as a software developer, such as programming languages you are proficient in and your technical skills and soft skills. In this cover letter example, the applicant mentions her programming language knowledge and the projects she’s been part of.
Finally, in the third paragraph, remind the recruiter why you’re the right person for this job and end with a call to action. The call to action should request a job interview in some way, either by offering extra information or indicating your willingness to attend an interview. This is where the applicant states that she looks forward to discussing previous projects with the hiring manager.
For any job, it’s important that you add a cover letter to your job application if you want the best possible results. A cover letter allows you to talk about your work experience and skills more effectively, giving you a better chance of landing a new job. Plus, it allows you to elaborate on anything that the job description specifically mentioned, which can help you align more closely with what the hiring manager is looking for. Use the ResumeNerd cover letter builder to create yours.
This cover letter example works best if you keep your cover letter between half a page and three-quarters of a page or around 250-350 words. This length gives you enough space to discuss your best experiences and skills, but it won’t be so long that a recruiter might not want to read the entire letter. Remember that a cover letter can be a bit longer or a bit shorter, but you want to avoid a letter less than half a page long or longer than a full page.
You don’t need years of experience to write the perfect cover letter for a job posting, especially an entry-level one. Instead of relying so heavily on your experience, you can instead rely on personal projects, certifications and skills. To prove that you’re the right person for an entry-level software engineer position, you want to show that you have the necessary knowledge to thrive in it.
