Five with Fry

12: Secure the Damn Job - Part #1: The Cover Letter Blueprint

• Dr. Jen Fry • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Welcome to Secure the Damn Job, a special series on Five with Fry where I break down what actually works when you're applying for jobs. Sponsored by Hyreable (the career development wing of JenFryTalks), this three-part series covers cover letters, resumes, and interviews with real talk, real strategy, and zero fluff. Whether you're making a career move or entering the workforce, I’m here to help you show up strong and get hired.

Let’s talk about cover letters. Everyone loves to hate them, but when done right, they can open serious doors. In this first episode, I’m walking you through five essential strategies to craft a cover letter that actually gets noticed. From formatting musts like 0.4" top margins and no fonts smaller than 11.5, to what actually belongs in each paragraph, I’m giving you everything you need to make your letter clean, clear, and compelling.

We’ll talk about why your cover letter should mirror your resume (yep, I said it), how to highlight your strengths with a sharp four-paragraph structure, and why getting to the point is your new best friend. Whether you're actively job hunting or just refreshing your materials, these tips will change how you approach every application you send.

Need some extra help with your resume, cover letter, or interview prep? Head over to Hyreable to work with me directly—and let’s secure the damn job.

Dr. Jen Fry:

Friends, welcome to Five with Fry, where five is the magic number, whether it's five minutes, five questions or anything that fits in five. I dive into the big topics that matter, sometimes alone and other times with a friend. From navigating sports conflict to family dynamics, travel, tech, hard-hitting issues and even politics Nothing and I mean nothing's off the table. This is where curiosity meets conversation, and we always sit at an intersection. I'm your host, dr Jen Fry of Jen Fry Talks. Let's get into it. Welcome to the newest episode of Five with Fry.

Dr. Jen Fry:

This is the first installment in our series entitled Secure the Damn Job. This series is sponsored by Hireable, the career development wing of Jen Fry Talks. At Hireable, we help people with resumes, cover letters and interview prep. If you're interested, head over to hireableco that's H-Y-R-E-A-B-L-Eco to grab the service you need. We are all about helping you secure the damn job, and in this first installment we chat about cover letters. In the second installment we talk about resumes. And in this first installment we chat about cover letters. In the second installment we talk about resumes. In the final installment we talk about interview prep. So y'all get your paper and pen out because you're about to take notes and get taken to school. Why? Because we are here to help you secure the damn job.

Dr. Jen Fry:

So I know everyone has a love-hate relationship with cover letters, probably more on the hate than the love. But it is a necessary evil and it is one that, if you don't do well, can drastically affect your opportunity. So while we have a hate-hate relationship with it, we've got to do a good job with it, and so we're going to talk about these five things that you need to know to have not just a great cover letter but a bomb ass cover letter, because the devil's in the details and we need to make sure the details are done well and it makes the cover letter to be easy and smooth to read. So the first thing we're going to chat about is your overall kind of layout and margins, and you don't want to have too much white space, where it literally is like three inch margins on each side, which I've seen and you also don't want to have too little, where it looks like the words are falling off the piece of paper. You want to have it a nice amount of white space and not too much white space. So the margins I would suggest are going to be 0.4 on the top, 0.5 on the bottom and 0.6 on each side. That, through all of my experience, has been what I feel like the best amount of white space 0.4 on the top, 0.5 on the bottom and 0.6 on the sides, because when you have a solid foundation foundation, it makes the cover letter just read a lot better.

Dr. Jen Fry:

The second part is that don't have the hiring person's name or address, because you sometimes never know who it is and so just take that off. You only need to have your date, to whom it may concern, to hiring committee, whoever it is, and then the bulk of your cover letter. That is it. You don't need to have anything else, and a lot of people want to add a lot of things to it, don't? It just makes it messy and ugly. So we are gonna have only the date, the person who is directed to, and then the bulk of the information.

Dr. Jen Fry:

The third thing let's talk about is font size. Some of y'all be having the font size be 10. Stop doing that. No one's reading font size 10. Also in a cover letter, you shouldn't have that much information. Also in a cover letter, you shouldn't have that much information. So I would suggest that it is eleven, point five or twelve. That is it, and If you need to cut out information, then cut out stuff, but you shouldn't be having two pages of a cover letter. No one's reading all of that stuff and your resume so Kind of.

Dr. Jen Fry:

The fourth thing is make it one page, not two pages, not three. You're not writing a dissertation. You need to have essentially the intro to who you are. One page is enough. If you find it going over two pages and you have an 11.5 font and you have the margins that we spoke about, you need to cut information, because everything in that cover letter isn't going to be needed. I promise you from years of experience. I promise you it's not. So go ahead and just get the scissors out and cut information.

Dr. Jen Fry:

And then the fifth thing is going to be the actual content of the cover letter. The biggest thing with the content is that you're going to be copying and pasting it from your resume. I know a lot of people like to think that they are going to hide information from the cover letter so that when people read the resume it's going to be like boom, but people might not even get to your resume because you've hid so much good content. There are some people that read the cover letter. There are some people that only read the resume. There are some people that read both, and you can't assume that they're going to read both. You want to assume that they're going to read one or the other, and so with that, the content in the cover letter needs to mimic the resume, and so that first paragraph needs to literally be your executive summary, and maybe a line or two more, because your executive summary is the first page of a cover letter. It's giving people the synopsis into what you've done.

Dr. Jen Fry:

Then you have the next three paragraphs two depending on how much content's in there and they talk about the jobs you've done. If you've been at your current job for probably more than five years. That's going to be the bulk of that first paragraph. The second paragraph of content will be a mix of the past jobs, and then the last paragraph is gonna be, you know, kind of a signing off of what you've done, why you want to go to the new institution, how you know how they're gonna contact you, and that's it. You don't want to add too much fluff to it. Make it very simple. So first paragraph is essentially going to be your executive summary. The second paragraph of content is going to be that current job you have, especially if it's over five years. That third paragraph is going to be a mix of your past jobs. If there's one job that has more skills and experiences that you feel are directly correlated to this job you're going to, then it could be 90% of that third paragraph being the content from that past job, and then maybe a line of a job before that. And then the last paragraph is you're summing it up in a few sentences saying I'm so excited for this and here's how it contact me, and that is it. Nothing else needs to be done.

Dr. Jen Fry:

So many times people put in a lot more just wordiness because they think it's their only opportunity. The problem is is it stops being your only opportunity. If you write your cover letter well enough, it's going to help you get to the second round. If you write it bad enough, it's going to be fire for their camp. So don't have your cover letter be just the start of a campfire. Even though it's, like we said, a hate-hate relationship, we still need you to do a really good job with the cover letter, because you have saved the job description, because you are starting to write about your resume in better, nuanced ways. You're going to have great information for the cover letter, so I want you to be very intentional about it, because if you don't, you're not going to get to the next job or the next step. So if you are like, ah, I just don't feel right now I'm qualified to write this cover letter, well, guess what? At Hireable, we help you with those bad boys, and so if you're interested in that service, head over to hireableco H-Y-R-E-A-B-L-Eco, so you can grab that service and we can work with you to help you do what? Secure the damn job.

Dr. Jen Fry:

Well, friends, that's it for this episode of Five with Fry your dose of five insights, ideas and inspiration. If you love what you heard, don't forget to head over to where podcasts are played subscribe, share and leave a review. Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop us a message. We love to hear from you. You can come follow me on IG, twitter, the TikTok at Jen Fry Talks, or join me on LinkedIn. Look for me at Dr Jen Fry. Until next time, stay curious, stay bold and keep the conversation going. See you on the next Five with Fry.