My covering letter

DanBol

I am at the moment trying to get a work placement in my area and have drafted this letter to try and apply for one. I need a third opinion on it see as my tutor has already made a few changes.

Dear Sir/Madam

I am writing to you to enquire whether you may consider me as a placement within your accountancy team on a fixed term of possibly 3-6 months. I would not expect remuneration for this, I am looking to gain experience in practice.

I am committed to pursuing a career in accountancy and am studying AAT at Cornwall College, Saltash. I have completed the foundation level and am due to sit my final for the Intermediate level in June 2010.

I have applied to other accountancy practices around my area. However the majority of places require some form of relevant work experience, which I currently lack. With this in mind I am therefore willing to work on a temporary basis without a salary.

I am currently employed at the 118118 call centre in Plympton, where I work to high levels of customer service whilst being constrained by a limited timescale. I am often required to work independently to team targets on the basis that failure to meet these will let the entire team down. I have discovered I thrive in these environments.

I hope to hear from you soon and would, of course, be more than delighted to attend for an interview if required. I have also included a copy of my CV detailing my current experience.

A-Vic

It looks good to me.

At the end tho i would add

Many thanks for your kind consideration and if you would like to discuss this please contact on the above number at anytime.

Bluewednesday

Hopefully not to put a dampener on you but I've just read an article about people volunteering to get work experience and how employers should be very careful as if it can be proved that they should be paid for what they are doing then the minimum wage would be applied and HMRC would consider the volunteer as an employee.

This might be the reason that you could get rejections so, if so, don't take it personally.

A-Vic

I know the NHS sometimes has openings for volenteers might be worth a look

coojee

Just a thought, but I was always taught never to start a letter with "I am writing...." it's obvious you're writing, you don't need to tell them that you are. I would start with something like, I'm hoping to persue a career in accountancy but I need experience to get that first job so I was wondering if you would consider taking me on on a voluntary basis.

Have you tried your local volunteer bureau? Sometimes small local charities are after book keepers to do the job that their Treasurer is meant to do but can't because they don't know anything about book keeping. My local pre school has just advertised in the village newsletter for just such a person. This would be great experience for you as you'd be doing everything. If you're looking to go into practice unpaid then the chances are they'd just have you making tea, filing, setting up files and ticking bank statements if you're lucky.

Good luck with your search. I wish I could help you out.

blobbyh

DanBol wrote: »

I have applied to other accountancy practices around my area. However the majority of places require some form of relevant work experience, which I currently lack. With this in mind I am therefore willing to work on a temporary basis without a salary.

I'd lose the first sentence of this paragraph - and rework the rest to get your point across - as you're insinuating they're not your first choice and are second, third or even more best.

Apart from that, the rest will be nicely written once combined with the thoughts of others on this thread.

blobbyh

coojee wrote: »

Just a thought, but I was always taught never to start a letter with "I am writing...." it's obvious you're writing, you don't need to tell them that you are.

I think most of of us were taught this at school but I've always ignored it, believing it to be an apocryphal piece of advice passed down from teacher to teacher without anyone ever really questioning the reasoning why or coming up with a decent alternative. All things formal should have a polite introduction and we'd consider it rude to simply just jump straight into a topic without one. If we sample some of the letters we receive from other professional organisations, we will often see that some of them open this very same "incorrect" way.

If the police arrive at your door, they might say "We've come to inform you..."

If we receive a phone call from the bank we might hear "We're calling you to..."

So yes, although the delivery method is clearly obvious and doesn't need stating it's often difficult to think of any other way to start the conversation, letter, phone call etc even if it is supposedly 'incorrect'.