A hiring manager calls on her impressions and what she reads in cover letters to separate the good candidates from the bad. Who do I see first, who goes to the pile, who gets dumped? The one with experience in our industry or fresh blood? Each aspect of your cover letter is examined and totted up in the calculation of who's worth talking to for the job. Don't trust a free cover letter example to get you to the top.

Here are a few strategies for customizing your free cover letter example to give you an edge over other applicants:

Look at your example of cover letters, cut away half and add back something more powerful.

Pare back your free cover letter example. The normal samples you'll encounter for cover letters run to an entire page. Can you write yours in less space? Don't forgo anything significant. Distill. Refine. Purify. You'll stand out for your brevity.

Then add back a page of personal comments from co-workers in business and non-profit organizations. If you don't have recommendations, you can put together a concise questionnaire for colleagues.

Better yet, register for LinkedIn. They have a a built-in procedure for networking and collecting testimonials. It's one of the best ways to make your example of cover letters far more persuasive.

Be engaging but don't attempt to be funny.

Humor is a good way to lighten up your free cover letter example. Outright joking, though, doesn't work. It's almost never well-executed. The problem is that somebody is usually the butt of the story, and you don't want that in an interview.

Instead of joking, identify with the recruiter in a interesting way. Try - "Last year we were keeping our staff rosters in pencil" Then connect yourself to identify with your hiring manager. "Maybe your staff knows something about that."

Then, transition to describing the help you can add. "That experience was really valuable. It taught me to help my team to get extra done in less time. And I'd be glad to..."

Make yourself the obvious choice.

Maximize every portion of your job packet to attract the recruiter's attention. Go get a system that enables you to modify a free cover letter example so it is absolutely optimized to get you calls.

Find out how to write a cover letter that recruiters can't put down at http://coverletterhelp.info.

Do it now before even just 4 of the other 371 guys competing for your job do.