A resume gets a strong standing when it is presented tactfully. This resume is a document giving details of your qualification and skills. However, it fails to communicate with the employer unless the employer reads it thoroughly and gets back to you. Most of the resume applications are now-a-days sent via email. This makes it important that you write a relevant cover letter with it so that your resume gets a preference. The email body gives you the chance of communicating with the employer. Make full use of it and speak to the employer about your relevance for the said post. Again, note that a generalized cover letter does not serve this purpose. It has to be customized as per the position you are applying for. This customization helps you speak about your relevant skills and abilities. A generalized letter will be more like a normal letter. In this section of resume cover letter examples, we have emphasized on administrative assistant cover letters.
To understand how to write a Cover Letter for an administrative assistant you need to understand the role and duties of an administrative assistant. This will help you understand the skills and abilities required for this job profile. Understanding this is a must because it will enable you to align your skills with the requirement, and make the employer feel that you possess all the required skills.
An administrative assistant performs support activities that help in the smooth functioning of the organization. The duties of an administrative assistant might look very simple and basic, but if not performed well, it will mess up the activities in the office. The job responsibilities and qualification vary from industry to industry. However to list a few, an administrative assistant is responsible for word processing, attending telephone calls, attending visitors, filing, coordinating, faxing, keep a track of incoming and outgoing resources, keep a track of billing and receivables, etc. The list is endless. The basic duty of this person is to assure smooth functioning of all departments. The coordination in work flow, scheduling, maintain manuals and code of conduct to ensure discipline and decorum at work place are some core responsibilities. This might vary from one organization to the other. For example, an administrative assistant of a hospital and an administrative assistant of a manufacturing goods office might require different qualifications and skills. The basic duties and responsibilities remain the same but the actual tasks and methodology might vary.
Before applying for this position and writing a cover letter for the same, analyze and understand the roles and responsibilities of the administrative assistant in that particular industry and organization. Some time spent on research about the industry and the organization you are applying to, will help you understand this. The understanding in terms of industry and organization is again necessary because as mentioned above the requirements might vary. Once you do a thorough research and understand the requirements of the industry and the organization in particular, you can easily align your skills to these requirements. While writing your cover letter, you can mention about the research. You can say that this particular industry or organization has (list the expectations or organization requirements) the said requirements and my skills and abilities stand up to these. This will create an impact on the employer that you have taken the effort to understand what they want, and thus are interested in working with them. This also gives you a chance to make up for the skills you do not possess by presenting yourself skillfully.
Some other skills that an administrative assistant should possess are organization, planning, presentation and multitasking. Use your cover letter to make the employer understand how good you are at all these skills. If you have been doing many things at a time, for example handled multiple projects, or you have been working, and also working for NGO's, concentrating on your hobbies, etc. will make you prove that you are multitasking.
In this way, try to prove that you completely fulfill the requirement, and thus, deserve a chance over the others. For further assistance on this cover letter, refer to the administrative cover letter given in the links below. These sample letters will put forth the idea clearly.
