How to Write a Cover Letter and Get a Job Faster

There are well over 300 million people in the USA today. Looking for a job as one of them can prove to be no easy chore...in fact, according to national statistics, you could be at it for nine months or more! Chances are good that you're going to need a serious edge over the competition if you want to get a good job.
Luckily, such an edge does in fact exist. Nothing in the world is guaranteed to make bosses line up and beg you to join their company, but this particular edge can seriously boost your shot at nailing a great job and rip apart your time spent unemployed. This edge, my friend, is your cover letter.
The right cover letter is like showing up to your interview in a beautiful, perfectly-fitted Armani suit. It exudes professionalism, makes you look good, and makes you appealing to employers. Now imagine that same interview, except you show up in a ratty pile of rags that look like you stole them off of a bum on the street. Imagine that interview going a little differently? That's what the wrong cover letter is like. And the worst thing is, to use no cover letter is like showing up naked! Yikes!
Your first round to get through is the cover letter round. It's the first thing they'll look at, and it's the first chance for you to impress them. In the initial culling, the Armani cover letters keep going, while the ragtag and nonexistant cover letters get thrown in the incinerator where they belong. Clearly, a good cover letter is important.
So how does one go about the acquisition of an Armani cover letter? One of the tried-and-true methods is to find somebody who's written one and learn from them. Look at some cover letter examples and see what makes them so great. Learning from the best has been a classic way of improving one's own skills for almost as long as the human race has existed.
And another good thing about taking this particular road is that you'll also be building important critical thinking and analysis skills. That sounds boring and difficult, but it's really not a big deal, and it looks really good to employers. Skills like that make you valuable as an employee, and that means job security.
But I feel I must stress to you one thing right now. A great cover letter has two things required of it that it simply MUST do in order to really be a success. First, it has to present your qualifications. That goes hand in hand with a resume, to which a cover letter is attached anyways. That's kinda common sense, and not too difficult to understand.
Most important, however, is that a cover letter MUST pave the way for an interview. If your cover letter doesn't broach the subject of an interview or even flat-out try to set one up, you're not achieving the full effect of what a cover letter can do for you. It's the job of the cover letter to make an employer stop seeing you as just another sheet of paper in an endless stack cluttering up his desk, and get you in front of that person as one of the few well-qualified people for the job. The cover letter is the conduit for you to move from textual communication to face-to-face communication. If your cover letter can get you into an interview, you can finally call it a success.
To get started, you can find some free cover letter examples by visiting this site. There you'll find all you need to learn how to write a cover letter. With that knowledge at your disposal, you can get a job faster.

Tendulkar opts out of captaincy

Former India captain Sachin Tendulkar has apparently opted to continue being referred that way by declining the captaincy of the test team caused by Dravid's resignation in September.I am really elated and strongly hope that the news agencies and sources have got it right!

Indian Premier Cricket League?

The race between the Indian Cricket League (their website finally loads up) and the BCCI's Indian Premier League has just started getting more interesting.The BCCI's league boasts of the "Who's who" of international cricket (primarily current players, with a couple of former stars thrown in). Zee's Indian Cricket League boasts of the "Who was who" and "Who's that" of international and Indian domestic cricket.The ICL has no access to most of the good cricket grounds in India since the BCCI has leases on/ownership of all of them. So it has to make do with unknown grounds. Ditto with the player roster. The ICL's major problem remains that they do not have a single star Indian player signed up. When Dinesh Mongia has the most internationals in your lineup of Indian players, you do have a serious problem!The main problem both leagues are going to face is how to squeeze in the tournaments in between the various international commitments. I don't really know if the BCCI has some clue about how the IPL will shape up given that the star players will hardly be available over the next 1.5 years or so. The team owners, rights owners, sponsors, spectators, audiences, etc. will undoubtedly demand that the star players turn up for the IPL when they are not playing for India. The BCCI has just confirmed a triangular one-day series in Bangladesh next May to fill in the gaps.Some pride will have to be swallowed, but I really don't see any scope for the two leagues co-existing and functioning according to the current hype. The ICL is meant to showcase former stars and wannabes. The IPL is meant to showcase the stars. The ICL doesn't have the sponsors, grounds and audiences, but they have the players who have the time to play. The IPL has the sponsors, grounds and audiences, but they don't have players who can spare the time.Under these circumstances, perhaps the best option is to merge the two leagues and call it the "Indian Premier Cricket League" and have all games played at the IPCL ground with a lot of sponsorship by Reliance Industries Ltd. Stop press! Reliable BCCI sources inform me that the BCCI, continuing with its theme of creating ODI series out of thin air, will be arranging for a Twenty20 international at the end of each day of the test matches against Pakistan. The BCCI's reasoning is apparently that since each Twenty20 game only takes up 3 hours and test match days end by 5 pm, there is enough time for a Twenty20 game before the cricketers eat & sleep. Rumours about the BCCI jettisoning the warm-up games in Australia and replacing them with Twenty20 internationals are yet to be confirmed.

Spare MacGill please

Sri Lanka are currently making Stuart MacGill's comeback miserable. He has conceded 317 runs for 4 wickets so far (strike rate 80, econ rate 3.5).If this implies that he won't play against India, I consider the Sri Lankans totally responsible for it, especially if in his absence, some other spinner picks up wickets or Australia opt for an all-pace attack.That said, it is entirely possible that he will pick up a five-fer tomorrow to ensure he gets picked against India.

Darren Lehmann retires

Darren Lehmann announced his retirement from first-class cricket today.He is one of two chaps to have hit the winning runs in a World Cup final, and most likely the only one to have authored the final act in two finals. He hit the winning runs in 1999 and caught Zaheer Khan, India's last wicket, in 2003.Lehmann has not played international cricket since February 2005. He was named Cricketer of the Year in 2004. In 2003, he was banned for five games after screaming out a racist comment which was heard by the Sri Lankan team.The fact that he announced his retirement from 'first-class cricket' indicates to me that he will, in all likelihood, join the Indian Cricket League or the Indian Premier League or the Universal Book Cricket League.

Umpires can get away with a 'sorry', the players can't

There've been far too many instances of incompetent umpiring, especially in the last couple of years. Yet, the ICC holds the umpires accountable only during their annual review.The officials who were in charge of the World Cup final in the West Indies were not on duty in the Twenty20 World Cup since the ICC had suspended them for their inept handling of the final when bad light stopped play.Yet, the same officials have handled other assignments. It was just that they were suspended for an ICC event. Presumably the ICC thinks that it is ok for incompetence to be shown in Australia v Sri Lanka, South Africa v Pakistan or India v England test matches.Yesterday, Koertzen apologized to Sangakkara for wrongly giving him out. Two years ago, during the first Ashes test at Lord's, Koertzen did his apology thingy, saying sorry to Kevin Pietersen for declaring him out lbw to a fulltoss from Lee.During India's recent tour of England, Taufel said he was very upset at ruling Tendulkar out wrongly. Ian Howell was consistently poor in the same series.In 2005, the West Indies Cricket Board complained to the ICC about the decisions that were handed out during the team's tour of Australia. Yet, the ICC responded saying that its umpires got 94.8% of their decisions right in 2004, a number that Dave Richardson keeps bleating about.In 2004, Billy Bowden apologized to Sehwag.In contrast, spare a thought for the players. Yuvraj Singh was given out wrongly, with the game poised to go either way, and he was fined for showing dissent. Salman Butt made some comments about the umpiring in the series against South Africa and he was pulled up. During the 2007 World Cup, McCullum was fined for 'dissent'. Graeme Smith and Kevin Pietersen suffered the same fate in 2006.All these players apologized for their actions. Yet, they were penalized monetarily and immediately.The umpires had erred too. They too apologized for their decisions. Yet, they continue to get away with it, and in all likelihood, given the scarcity of good umpires available, will continue to be contracted to the ICC. They can then make more poor decisions and apologize for their actions, completely oblivious to the fact that their poor decisions could have impacted the outcome of a match (or series) or even a player's career for that matter.If the ICC is shielding their contracted umpires, then individual boards should be shielding their contracted players. Maybe the ICC should consider penalizing players only at the end of the year, not during/immediately after the game. Even then, the responsibility should perhaps lie with the board. After all, the players are responsible to the cricket board, not the ICC. If a cricket board has not handled the situation well, then this is something the ICC should take up with the board.PS: Going back to the ICC's comments on the percentage of decisions the umpires got right, it's not too tough to get 95% of your decisions right. In a typical test match, you'd probably have an appeal every over. Assuming that the game lasts the distance, that'd mean 450 appeals. To get to the ICC's benchmark of 95%, the umpires would need to get 428 decisions right. But that means they get 22 decisions wrong, a lot of which could potentially be match impacting. Ok, so 450 appeals in a game could be an exaggeration, but the arithmetic doesn't work out.

More power to test cricket

It's a bit odd, really. The first forty four tests between India and Pakistan yielded 33 draws/no-results. The next 13 tests have seen only 3 draws! Out of those 3 draws, one was drawn due to some excellent rescue acts while the other two games were drawn because of flat pitches.I think the Kotla test was played out on a very good test wicket. The pitch did have some uneven bounce earlier on, but on days 3 and 4, it was very good for batting. Bowlers who were able to exploit the pitch and the swing, did very well. It wasn't a bat-a-thon wicket. Neither was it one of those Kotla specials!I don't know the crowd numbers for yesterday, but I believe around 38,000 watched the third day from the stadium. That is very good going for a test match in India. I really hope Eden Gardens and Chinnaswamy also produce good wickets and ensure players put up a good show.