Employers don't really care about YOU, they only care about what you can do for THEM.

I've lost count of the cases I've seen where applicants with the best education, training or experience lose the job to someone with less education, skills and experience. The reason for this is that the applicant with the better skills or experience simply didn't sell themselves to the employer as well as the less skilled applicant.

This leads us to a really important question: how do you know if your application is selling you as well as it could be?

Well for starters, cover letters are valuable in helping sell you to an employer because they're like mini-ads for your resume. Interest them with a brief summary, and you'll get your resume read and not thrown into the trash.

Secondly, you need to make sure that your cover letter doesn't say the same things as everyone else's! You see � the problem is that we all learned to write our job applications the same way. Following the rules you were taught is the best way to ensure that not only will you not get noticed, but you'll stay unemployed for a long time.

Almost every application uses phrases like: "here is my resume for your position-", "I have been seeking an opportunity such as this-", "I can contribute to your company."

It's the same as a business saying they have good quality and after-sales service. Every business says it, and these days it's just not a good enough reason to want to do business with them.

Apply this logic to your application letter. If it only talks about YOU, how good YOU are and how many years experience YOU'VE had, then you're missing the point! The real purpose of your application should be to show the employer how your skills and experiences will benefit THEM. If your application doesn't do this, you're making it too hard for them to give you the job.