Best Tips for Writing an Internship Cover Letter

You’ve been searching for the perfect internship opportunity for days and you’ve finally found it – now it’s time to submit your application! Besides your updated CV and a shiny LinkedIn profile, there’s one element that you may also need to send with your internship application: a cover letter.

Some companies might require you to write a cover letter, but even when one isn’t expected, should you still submit a cover letter with your internship application? And what is the best way to use a cover letter to highlight your experience and set you apart from the competition?

To Write or Not to Write a Cover Letter? That Is the Question…

When applying for internships, you will come across many different recruitment processes. While some companies just require a simple “Easy Apply” straight from your LinkedIn profile, others have a multi-step selection process that requires you to send in your CV, a cover letter, and maybe even a couple of references!

Of course, the first rule of applying for any kind of job (including internships) is to follow the application instructions. This may seem like a commonsense rule, but you would be surprised at how many applicants break it – and, in most cases, this costs them the chance to even be eligible for the job. This means that if you see the internship application requires you to send in a cover letter, write one and send it!

But when the internship application instructions don’t mention the need of a cover letter, should you still send one anyways? Some may argue that writing a cover letter is always a good way to highlight your past work experience or your relevant extracurricular activities. But the truth is, if hiring managers aren’t asking for cover letters it’s because they either don’t have the interest or the time to read them. In these cases, you’re better off working on your CV to make it stand out from the crowd. If you need some help doing that, there are plenty of online services that can help you create the perfect CV.

Make Your Internship Cover Letter Stand Out

If you are required to send in a cover letter with your internship application, you may be at a loss as to how to make yours stand out in a sea of other candidates. Below, we give you some of our best tips to write your internship cover letter.

Customize Your Cover Letter

One of the most important aspects of any successful internship application is to customize your cover letter (and CV!) to the internship you want. This means highlighting the parts of your personal, academic, and work experiences that are relevant to the job description and skills required to excel in the internship you are applying for. An easy way to do this is to look for keywords within the internship listing and use them to personalize your own cover letter.

Highlight Your Academic Experience

If you’re applying for an internship, chances are you may not have a lot of work experience. And that’s okay! Hiring managers know that most internship applicants are either still in school or are recent graduates with little or even no work experience. But this might still leave you wondering: what should you write about in your cover letter then? Your academic experience (which includes any extracurricular activities you were involved in) is an excellent way to show the kind of soft skills you’ve developed that will be relevant to you as a potential intern. Give specific examples of times when you learned skills like teamwork, time management, and problem-solving to help hiring managers see if you are a good fit for their company.

Proofread Before Sending

At the end of the day, an internship application is still a part of the job application process so you will need to be professional in how you apply. One of the most basic (and yet most crucial) ways to do this is to simply proofread your cover letter, resume, or any other document you send in to ensure they are all error-free.