Article: Compelling cover letter can be the key to getting an interview

Eager to snare a hot job opening, you quickly scribble a cover letter and attach it to your flawless resume.

Too bad. You probably just blew your chance to be hired. Your hastily written missive missed the mark -- and you misspelled the target company's name.

A great cover letter is the golden key to any job search. Yet despite a glut of advice books and Web sites, an estimated 85 percent of cover letters are so flawed that senders never land an interview, career coaches say. Even experts err. An "ideal" letter sent to me by one career counselor contained this sentence fragment in the first paragraph: "With a great deal of interest."

Looking elsewhere for how to craft a compelling cover ...

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