Writing a cover letter when you have no work experience

A cover letter is not a summary of your CV in prose. It is the answer to a question the CV cannot address: why this job, and why you. When you have no formal work history, that answer has to come from evidence of how you work rather than a list of where you have worked.

Keep it to one page and four short paragraphs. Nobody has ever been hired for the length of their letter.

Paragraph one: the specific opening

Name the role and where you saw it, then say one true thing about the organisation that made you apply. That is it.

Cut "I am writing to apply for the position advertised on your website". the letter is self-evidently an application. Cut "It has always been my dream" as well, because it usually is not, and it reads that way.

Instead of "I am a hardworking graduate seeking an opportunity in your esteemed organisation", write: "I am applying for the Junior Accounts Officer role advertised on 14 March. I have followed your expansion into the Western Region since the Takoradi branch opened, and the reconciliation work in the posting is exactly what I did for a 400-member student association."

Paragraph two: your best piece of evidence

One story, told in three or four sentences, that shows you doing something relevant. It does not have to be paid work. A final-year project, an attachment, a role in an association, a business you helped run at home. all of it counts, provided you say what you actually did and what came of it.

Choose the story by re-reading the job description and asking which of its requirements you can prove. Prove that one properly rather than gesturing at five.

Paragraph three: the honest bridge

Name the gap between what they asked for and what you have, and close it with something concrete. This is the paragraph most graduates leave out, and the one that builds trust.

"The posting asks for two years in a similar role. I have eight weeks of attachment at a firm doing the same work, a final-year project on the same problem, and I am halfway through the ICAG Level One papers." That is a candidate a manager can defend hiring.

Paragraph four: the close

Say you would welcome the chance to discuss it, note that your CV and references are attached, and stop. One line.

Before you send

• Address a person wherever you can find one. "Dear Sir/Madam" is the fallback, not the default.
• Match the words in the posting. If they wrote "stock reconciliation", do not write "inventory management".
• Never send a letter with another employer's name in it. It happens constantly, and it ends the application.
• Check the file name and the format. A PDF called with your own name and the role.
• Read it aloud. Any sentence you stumble over is a sentence to cut.
• Have one other person read it. You cannot proofread your own writing.

The version that scales

Write one good letter, then keep the second paragraph as a set of three or four interchangeable stories. Tailoring an application should then take fifteen minutes, not an evening. which matters, because the graduates who get hired are usually the ones who sent thirty considered applications rather than three perfect ones.

When you are ready to start sending, browse what is currently open and pick the five roles you can prove something for.