How to write a cover letter including salary details as requested by employer

  

Date Posted: 12/4/2012 3:33:59 AM

Posted By: fly1234  Membership Level: Bronze  Total Points: 15

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Drafting a good cover letter disclosing your salary details can be a daunting task, especially if you’ve never done it before. Even if you googled ‘how to write a cover letter with salary’, you will still get a billion results, leaving you with nowhere to start. Also notice that in high school, we were only taught about writing official letters, but not including current salary or anything like that.

Career experts say that when quoting your salary, whether on the body or on the subject of the cover letter, one needs to be careful as it can eliminate the chances of an interview invitation. One needs to know their worth, avoid stating your salary expectation before you get hired or finding out the range in which a prospective employer is offering. Also, one needs to do a quick research on what other similar companies are offering for the same post. Once you do that, quote a range instead of a specific figure.

Below is a sample cover letter for a software engineer, as done by career experts at careerpointkenya.com. The cover letter will address issues of where to put the salary as requested by an employer.

Date 4/12/2012

Dear Employer

REF: Job Application: Senior Software Engineer: Ref 03452

In response to your job posting for the software Engineer, I have attached my resume for your view.
My experience includes 7 years of C++ programming in a high volume transaction environment. My passion is coding, and I produce high quality code of which I am proud for.

Most recently, my experience has been in the banking industry, consistently producing systems to assist financial services clients make their way through the tricky portfolio planning and portfolio allocation. I believe that my experience would be an asset to your organization.

I would like to have an opportunity to discuss my

qualification and see how I would fit for the position of a soft Engineer at your company. Please do not hesitate to contact me so that we can arrange a time. I can be reached through phone number xxxx or email felixprofessional@gmail.com.

I look forward to your response.

Your signature.
Felix

As requested, my salary history is:
Company A : starting salary is Ksh74,000 current salary : Ksh 85,000 plus medical cover.
ABC software: Starting salary Ksh55,000 ending salary: Ksh 67,000.

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