Systems administrator cover letter

Systems Administrator Cover Letter (With Examples)

Systems administrators play a critical role in ensuring that businesses can operate on a day-to-day basis. By fixing technical issues, installing software, and maintaining servers, they enable all other employees to do their jobs.

If you're applying for such an important role, you're guaranteed to face some tough competition. The best way to stand out in such cases is to impress the hiring manager with a compelling cover letter highlighting your key skills and expanding on your career achievements.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create that winning systems administrator cover letter. You’ll learn the core structure and elements that effective systems administrator cover letter share, as well as read helpful tips and free writing samples to help you along the process.

The Parts of a Systems Administrator Cover Letter

While there’s room for customization when it comes to its specific details, your systems administrator cover letter should follow a general tried-and-true core structure.

The core components of this structure are:

1. The header. List out your name, email, and phone number, followed by the company or hiring manager’s same information.

2. Opening paragraph. State your cover letter’s intent and then immediately jump into an impressive career achievement to catch the reader’s attention.

3. Body paragraph #1. Provide more career achievements to strengthen your credibility further.

4. Body paragraph #2. Explain how you’re going to replicate your past successes for your new employer.

5. Closing. Thank the hiring manager for considering your application and invite them for a follow-up meeting.

Systems Administrator Cover Letter Opening

Hiring managers rarely spend longer than a few minutes reading over each candidate’s job application, so it’s essential to catch their attention as quickly as possible.

This means that if you want your systems administrator cover letter opening to be compelling, it needs to impress as quickly as possible.

Here are the most important guidelines to follow:

• Stay concise. Begin by stating the intent of your cover letter, and then get right to business by providing an impressive career achievement example to hook the hiring manager’s attention.

  Polish your opening paragraph to get rid of unnecessary filler so that your achievements stand out.

• Focus on results. When bringing up your skills, always describe how you’ve used them to generate real value for your employers. Never settle with just describing your basic duties.

• Back up your achievements with data. Always quantify the results of your accomplishments whenever possible. For example, if you fixed a critical bug, provide details on how much money you saved the company.

Here is a sample systems administrator cover letter opening paragraph that showcases these rules:

Systems Administrator Cover Letter Body Paragraph #1

After you’ve caught the hiring manager’s attention with an impressive achievement, the next step is to strengthen your credibility with even more examples.

Generally, it’s best to highlight a variety of key skills rather than just focus on one or two. The exception would be if the job listing very clearly emphasizes that the company is urgently hiring staff to fix a specific issue.

Take note of the following systems administrator cover letter body paragraph demonstrates both technical and leadership skills:

Systems Administrator Cover Letter Body Paragraph #2

At this point, you’ve demonstrated to the hiring manager how you were able to create value for past employers. What they may still be wondering, however, is if you’ll be able to replicate those results when it comes to their organization’s specific challenges and goals.

The goal of your second paragraph is to address that exact question and set yourself apart from any competing candidate.

To achieve this goal, follow these three important steps when writing your second body paragraph:

1. Set the stage. Read the job description closely and identify the main reasons the company is hiring a systems administrator.

   If you can directly link your experience with those needs, it would take a convincing argument to persuade the employer not to hire you.

2. Align your experience. Directly target the company challenge you just identified by sharing your most relevant and impressive career achievement.

   The goal here is to essentially make them an offer: “I’ve successfully tackled this same problem, so let me do the same for you.”

3. Express your interest. Briefly reiterate your interest in the position and align yourself with the company’s goals and values.

   Being able to align your values with the company is one of the greatest advantages that the cover letter format offers over just a resume, so make use of it.

Take note of how the following sample follows the above three steps:

Systems Administrator Cover Letter Closing

Finish your cover letter by:

• Summarizing the skills you offer. Start by briefly reminding the hiring manager of the main skills you’ve demonstrated.

• Thanking the hiring manager. It’s a common courtesy to extend a thank you to the hiring manager for reading your cover letter and considering your application.

• Inviting follow-up action. Indicate your enthusiasm for a follow-up meeting to further discuss what you can bring to the position.

Consider the following sample systems administrator cover letter closing:

Systems Administrator Cover Letter Sample

Here is a complete version of the systems administrator cover letter sample we’ve covered so far:

Systems Administrator Cover Letter Tips

Here are some additional tips to help you maximize the effectiveness of your cover letter:

1. Focus on the specific duties of the job. "Systems administrator" is an extremely broad term that encompasses a vast pool of people that often do completely different jobs and specialize in completely different skills.

   Make sure to read the job listing carefully and make sure that it actually matches your experience.

   You don't want to waste time writing a systems administrator cover letter that covers your database management experience, only to have the company reject you because they’re really looking to hire someone more along the lines of a systems security or network administrator.

2. Spell out your value proposition as clearly as possible. When it comes to applying for technical jobs, hiring managers won’t always have any background in the actual field.

   This means that for any skill or achievement you bring up, you need to be clear about how it’s linked to the company’s current challenges. Otherwise, the hiring manager may assume your skills aren’t related even when it would be obvious to any expert in the field that they indeed are.

   If you can show the hiring manager that you successfully tackled the same types of challenges their company is currently dealing with, you’re almost guaranteed to receive an interview.