Researching the company will help you determine the best tone to take in your cover letter. If they’re a young startup whose online presence takes a casual tone, it might be beneficial to do the same. If it’s a more established institution or a bank or a law firm, it’s best to keep it formal.

When writing your cover letter, let go of any feelings of modesty and be bold. Write confidently about your skills and experience rather than highlighting any potential shortcomings or areas of inexperience. Use direct language and qualifying words like ‘strong’, ‘expert’, ‘specialist’, ‘highly capable’ and ‘successful’ and powerful action words like ‘led’, ‘managed’, and ‘facilitated’.

While a template can make things easier, don’t forget that your cover letter must be tailored to showcase your unique skills and experiences.

A concise cover letter that effectively demonstrates why you’re a good fit for the role might mean the difference between a busy recruiter picking up the phone to call you or not. Let this structure give you some guidance:

There are no hard and fast rules on how to approach this, so keep in mind the below.

If your career break has been relatively short (a few years or less), there’s no need to make a specific reference to it in your cover letter. Use the valuable space in your cover letter to tell them why you are the best person for the role.

In your opening paragraph, make mention of the fact that you are making a career transition in a sentence that focuses on your previous professional experience and the valuable transferable skills that you will be bringing to this role..

In your second and third paragraph you might want to elaborate further on your career transition and why it will be so beneficial to your new employer. This is an opportunity to stand out, either because of your previous experience or because you’re highly motivated to start something new.

To help you get started, we have created three example cover letter templates. 

These templates have been created in Google Docs so you can easily make a copy and start populating it with your information. Read the front page of the resume template for more guidance on how to save a copy that you can edit by yourself.