Sample of Effective Job Application Cover Letter
50 North 2nd St.
Indiana, PA 15701
email: wiba@iup.edu
Ororo Munroe, Safety Director
CUNA Mutual Insurance
225 N. Mills St.
Madison, WI 53076
November 29th, 2010
Dear Safety Director Munroe,
I am writing this letter to apply for your program’s Assistant Safety Supervisor position. I feel my educational training and professional background make me well suited for the demands of this position. Currently I am senior finishing a Safety Science degree at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) and could begin work on June 1st as your ad specifies. I also work part time in IUP's Office of International Affairs. I am especially interested in your company because I see that you are the leading insurance company in the midwest region and also earned a Worker Safety Zone award from the Wisconsin Safety Commission. I'd love to contribute to a company as interested in worker safety as yours seems to be. I believe the rest of this letter will illustrate what a great addition I would be to your work force.
In looking over the job description, I see that your chief need is for someone with a strong working knowledge of OSHA regulations. As you’ll note on my resume, along with a full complement of safety courses, my familiarity with government safety regulations has been developed through an internship at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I worked with the plant safety inspector who supervised operator safety for a paper which had a daily press run of 500,000 copies. During the internship, my most important training came when the paper purchased two new printing presses. I was given the responsibility of reviewing all instructional materials that came with the presses, and designing a simplified operator’s guide sheet to be posted at each press. This guide sheet had to meet all OSHA standards and be easily accessible by 30 press operators of varying skill levels. The plant inspector not only approved my design, but then placed me in charge of updating all the older press safety signs in the building. It is this type of innovative thinking, hard work, and dedication which I would bring to your department as an Assistant Safety Supervisor.
Your ad also mentions a need for a worker with strong organizational skills. As you'll note on my resume, I have been an Office Assistant for two years in the Office of International Affairs. In that position, I performed variety of tasks including filing applications from international students. I modified the office's filing system and added a computer record keeping component that helped speed up application processing time. The office director was so pleased with my work that I was given the 2005 Student Worker Award.
I look forward to discussing my qualifications with you. In fact I will be making a trip to Madison within the next month which might present an ideal opportunity for an interview. In the meantime, if there is any other information I can provide you, please contact me at (412) 555-1234. If I don’t hear from you within the next two weeks, I’ll make a follow up call to see how your candidate search is progressing.
Thank you for taking the time to review my application.
Sincerely,
Tim Barley