I am applying for a sales engineer position in an European MNC that is advertised through a recruitment firm, Anmozel. The main points regarding the position as stated in the online advertisement in JobStreet are as follow:
Responsibilities:
The Job
Together with a dynamic team, you shall be trained to play a key role in building on the existing well-established customer base and expand market share for its renowned brand name range of products and services.
Requirements:
You possess a passion for sales and have a 'never give up' spirit.
You possess a Diploma/Degree in Chemical Engineering/Chemistry/ Biomedical/ Biotechnology Engineering or equivalent.
While you are dynamic, you are very teachable and do not have a fixed mindset.
Fresh graduates with vacation job experience related to sales or those who wish to switch to sales from other job nature are also welcomed to apply.
Some sales experience would be a plus factor!
You are a Singaporean and possess class 3 driving license.
My application letter for the above-mentioned postion is as follows:
Blk 175 #07-51
Lompang Road
Singapore 670175
+65 96435717
U0705188@nus.edu.sg
2nd September 2010
Recruitment Officer
Anmozel Private Limited
30 Cecil Street #15-00
Prudential Tower
Singapore 049712
Dear Sir/Madam
APPLICATION OF SALES ENGINEER POSITION
I am writing in response to your advertisement on JobStreet website on 27 August for the position of Sales engineer who is Chemical/Biotechnological/Biomedical Engineering trained that your client, a European MNC, is currently seeking for.
I graduated from National University of Singapore (NUS) with a Bachelor Degree in Bioengineering and attained a Second-upper Class Honours. Having a strong foundation in bioengineering concepts and knowledge, I am eager to apply what I have learnt in class to real-world scenarios as a sales engineer and I believe I would be adept in doing so. Furthermore, from my various vacation job experiences, I have discovered my interest in sales-related jobs and my capability to excel in jobs of this nature. Therefore, I believe I would make a strong candidate for the position that you have listed since it is a hybrid of both sales and engineering fields that I am able to excel in and more importantly, that I have a strong interest in.
You specified that you are looking for someone with sales related job experience. During my summer vacation in 2009, I took up an outdoor sales position with Lumiere Slimming center to promote and generate sales of their products and services at various outdoor events. I was met with various obstacles due to my lack of knowledge about this industry and the public’s cynical view on slimming and beauty centres. However, with my high versatility, I displayed quick on-site learning of products and services knowledge, and executed flexible and creative sales techniques while leveraging on my effective communication skills. I successfully established an outstanding sales target with a high commission payout that was nearly 50 percent of the basic salary. My dedication, pro-activeness and self-motivation are also key factors that contributed to the exceptional sales outcome.
I am confident that my ability to work well in a dynamic team and my organizational and problem resolution skills would qualify me to handle the responsibilities of the position. Last year, I was given the opportunity to intern at Singapore Technologies Kinetics. My main assignment as a project coordinator of an innovation engineering project honed my organizational skills as I actively managed the project scheduling, budgeting, task allocation, and overall liaising. I worked well in a dynamic team consisting of interns from various schools, engineers, technicians and sales engineers. As the project is a new idea, we were faced with various technical problems during the concept development and system implementation. As a result, I played an active role within the group to help in solving these issues by using the quantitative and analytical skills that I have acquired in part through active participation in my engineering coursework. These attributes, combined with my enthusiasm to learn, were essential to my contributions and success during this internship.
With my proven track record of successful sales experience, strong bioengineering background and high versatility, I believe I would make an ideal candidate for this position in your client’s company. I am eager to apply these skills to a position within the company and strive to improve on them. My resume is enclosed for your reference. I will be in touch with you within a week, and if you need to reach me, feel free to call or email me. I look forward to discussing the position with you or your client in more detail. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Yours faithfully
Signature
Tan Hsiao Wei (Miss)
Hi Hsiao Wei!
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be an excellent application letter and I'm tempted to use it as a template for my very own letter :P
Overall, your letter serves its purpose well and definitely highlights your skills and job experience as excellent matches to the job in question. However, the letter does seem a tad lengthy! Will it be able to fit into a single page?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Hsiao Wei, your letter has successfully marketed your skills and abilities. You have brilliantly linked the qualities that the potential employer are looking for to your accomplishments and experiences. There is also no problem with the formatting.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I agree with Darryl that it is a little too lengthy. I also have trouble squeezing everything into one page. I wonder if it is alright to sign off on a new page? Anyone has any idea?
Hi Darryl,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your compliment. You're right that my application letter being unable to fit into a single page. Part of the last paragraph and my signing off are on the second page. However, I have no idea which part I should further cut down to make my letter more concise. Do you have any suggestions for me?
Hi Leng Duei,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I think it should be fine to sign off on a new page. However, I feel that it is on condition that your application letter is already very concised and everything included is relevant and necessary. Maybe you can try to cut down on your application letter further? I will try to edit mine further to make it more concise too. Any suggestions? =)
Hi Hsiao Wei, here are some suggestions for you:
ReplyDeleteFirstly, you can try to eliminate negative statements which I feel will tend to induce negative feelings in the readers. One example from your application letter would be:
"I was met with various obstacles due to my lack of knowledge about this industry and the public’s cynical view on slimming and beauty centres."
You might want to make it sounds more positive.
Secondly, you might also want to notice that there are some repetitive phrases in your letter, two of such would be "work well in a dynamic team" which appears twice in the fourth paragraph, and "high versatility" which appears twice in the whole letter.
It is not wrong to reinforce your points but maybe you can try to substitute them using other phrases, otherwise I personally feel that it might be a little overwhelming for the readers, and also makes your letter appear too lengthy and repetitive.
I hope this is helpful. =]
Hi Hsiao Wei,
ReplyDeleteHere are some comments that I have with regards to each paragraph. I think that HR managers generally do not like to see lengthy application letters, especially when they have to sieve through a few hundred at one go. As such I think the most important tweak you need to make to your letter is the length. No offence but I spotted a few grammatical errors as well!
For the 2nd paragraph, you seem to have elaborated quite a lot on the qualities you have. Perhaps this is not necessary since in your introduction what you want to do is list out briefly the qualities you have that you think will best suit the company. You can provide further details in the following paragraphs instead. For example, the sentence with "what I have learned in class" seems unnecessary. Your second-upper or even first-class honours already tells people that you are academically sound. Also for example, you could declare your interest and suitability without going into so much detail.
For the third paragraph, you may want to reconsider how you place the last sentence as it seems to be included as an afterthought. If these are strong qualities you possess, you should integrate them into the paragraph instead of just adding a "by the way" sort of remark at the end.
For your fourth paragraph, I believe it all boils down to your phrasing. Perhaps you can leave out some details? Keep the ones you think the employer would be interested in looking at, such as your managerial abilities.
That's it for now! I hope that my points can contribute to your revised application letter! Sorry if they don't!
Cheers
Ming Yi
Hi Ming Yi,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments!
I agree with you that my second paragraph seems to have a lot of redundant information that is like stating the obvious. I would work on making it more concise and not beat about the bush.
As for my fourth paragraph, you are right that I am writing too detailed about my internship experience. I should provide just enough information to highlight my achievements and arouse interest in the reader so that I would be called up for an interview to talk me about the experience. I should leave myself so stuff to talk about during the interview too!
I will work on shortening my application letter and making the content more concise. Thanks! =)