Quick Question?

[khall]

Should a cover letter be the body of the email? Or an attachment to it? I vote attachment to it. But...that seems clunky and counter-intuitive?

K.

Comments

[hollyqueen]

There is a big disagreement about this among hiring managers so there really is no right answer. Some people want it one way and won't take it the other and there is no way to know which they are.

The comments here might be helpful. http://www.askamanager.org/2013/07/what-is-a-cover-letter-anyway.html#comments

[ironphoenix]

I prefer it as the e-mail body; you could cover your bases and indicate that you are attaching it a pdf for convenience.

[bound_dragon]

If it's in a resume type situation then I write a formal cover letter and put it in the same document as my resume and create a pdf of the whole to maintain formatting. If it's being emailed then instead of putting the same exact thing from my cover letter in the email body I write a modified and shorter version of my cover letter because as previously said most are printed off to be handed off to someone else.

If it's a cover letter for professional correspondence then it doesn't need to be a separate attachment because most likely you're sending the email directly to the person that is receiving the document so the cover letter is in the body of the email.