Another day, another cover letter 

A wise woman once told me that you cannot send the same cover letter and CV to every job that you apply for. Despite the fact that that wise woman just so happens to be a careers adviser, and my Mum, she’s right.

In my opinion, the second you do that, you're immediately shooting yourself in the foot. Think about it, with the number of people who apply to each job, the employer will no doubt be able to spot a generic cover letter a mile off.

The plus side of this is, is that you can really tailor your CV and letter of application to show off your skills and talents which you know match the job perfectly.

However, the down side is that it can be so time consuming. Don't get me wrong, this is by no means me complaining about having to apply for a job- I'm grateful that there are jobs out there to apply for.

When you've been working all day and you've got your mum, tutor, email and every other social networking site going crazy at you with job alerts, the last thing you often feel like doing is sitting down to write a cover letter. 

I'm by no means an expert in writing cover letters, but it's for this reason that I wanted to share my top 5 tips with you for writing the best cover letter possible.

1) Let the company know why you want the job and why you want to work for them. It's tempting to just word vomit all of your excellent qualities across the page, but try and remember that the employer will want to know why you've chosen them. If you love that company for a particular reason- tell them!

2) Get someone else to re-read your cover letter and CV. As a student I know that reading something over and over again, you stop seeing the flaws in it.  Get a friend or another colleague to read over I to check for spelling and punctuation errors.

3) Use your cover letter to showcase your passion and talent for the job. If it's a journalism job for example, show off your writing skills. If it's an art and design job, show them what you can do by setting out your cover letter a bit differently.

4) Find out who you should address the letter to. I think it makes a lot of difference to address the letter to someone other than just 'Sir/Madam' as it shows you've taken the time to find out who it is you are actually applying to and that you are prepared to go that extra mile.

5) Finally, tailor your skills to the job application. There's no point mentioning what you can do if the job doesn't require it. Print off the job specification and role requirements and tick them off as you address them one by one in your cover letter.

I hope that's helpful. They are just a few tips which have helped me so far when applying for jobs. As I embark on another one this afternoon (fingers crossed) I'm hoping they get stronger each time.

Next week I'm on work experience at The Yorkshire Post, in Leeds. I've never been there before so I'm excited to see how another newspaper works and to get stuck in. I'll be blogging my experiences, and hopefully some articles for you, so make sure you keep your eyes peeled.

:)