Writing a Motivation Letter When You Have No Experience
No matter whether you are high school graduate, or College / University graduate, letter of motivation should demonstrate you skills and knowledge even though you do not have any formal work experience.
In that line good motivation letter should contain:
1. Your name and contacts on the top right corner of the page,
2. Name and address of the recipient – Company
3. Date of the letter
4. Reference – subject line (RE: Post you are applying for)
5. Formal address to the recipient (Dear Sir, Dear Madam)
6. Introduction statement, where you should try to present yourself briefly to the recipient.
7. Body of motivation statement, which is the most important. Within this paragraph you should highlight you qualities and characteristics, which are relevant to the post. You should also highlight your skills, knowledge, and volunteer experience related to the job being advertised.
8. Closing paragraph where you should state your expectations from this opportunity in terms of gains you will benefit from, and propose a job interview. At the end of this paragraph you should thank for the consideration of your application.
Having in mind that you do not have any formal work experience, you should consider to include following in your motivation letter in order to support your application:
1. Team working skills you developed through activism, volunteering in youth, student organizations, etc. You can also quote some school group project, and present your role in the team. For example how have you motivated the group, what were your duties, how have you resolved possible conflicts, i.e. everything that may be relevant to advertised post.
2. Highlight experience in community work if any, and how have you contributed to thecommunity. What was your involvement, can you present any results? Quote this type of experience, only if you can make connection to the particular post.
3. Eagerness to learn and sustain knowledge and build upon your skills within professional work environment. It would be beneficial if you can further provide some evidence based practices that may be brought in connection with this post. For example, you can highlight some school projects, which required your constant commitment, research, learning new skills, mobilization of resources, etc.
4. What are the strengths that make you an outstanding candidate? What attributes of your personality can contribute to your work?
5. Non formal education, and participation in workshop, courses, where you have managed to upgrade skills required by the post. If you do not have this type of experience, you may find useful to participate in some training, because many youth organizations organize useful free trainings and workshop. Look up online for some opportunity. Such training employer may find interesting because they demonstrate you commitment to professional development, outside of formal education.
6. Do you have hobbies, or other interest that you find relevant to this job, or you can somehow connect to your professional experience?
7. Is there any history between you and employer? Maybe for some school project you analyzed their operations, brand? Are you maybe a customer, or consumer of their good? Have you read a lot about the company, what attracts you in particular?
8. You may also highlight where you see yourself in the upcoming period, what are your career goals, and how this particular vacancy may lead to attainment of your professional goals?
Bear in mind that his motivation letter should demonstrate your personal qualities and characteristics relevant to the post. Nevertheless you should try to keep readers interest and therefore try to avoid to many I statements, because this can disengage the reviewer of your letter.