You could have the most qualified, awe-inspiring résumé on earth, but a boring cover letter will ensure you remain jobless.

The cover letter introduces you to the recruiter in a personal way. It briefly highlights your strengths and expresses your interest in the position.

Recruiters often discard 80% of applications based on the cover letter alone. If you want the recruiter to even glance at your résumé, your cover letter has to impress.

Put yourself inside the head of your employer. If you had a huge stack of applications in front of you, what kind of cover letter would make you place a candidate in the “maybe” pile? What mistakes would place an application straight into the trash?

Writing a stand-out cover letter employs the same techniques as writing a marketing campaign or sales letter. This time, you’re selling yourself. Here are some tips for writing professional cover letters that stand out.

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While we all know a good job is about more than just the money, having money is nice too, especially if there’s a lot of it.

Unlike many other sectors of the market negatively affected by the economy, salaries in the web sector remain high and may continue to rise as more companies extend their web presence.

In order to help you better target your job search to higher-paid position, we’ve reviewed some of the highest-paid jobs in the web industry.

Each of these jobs usually offers a starting salary of over $40,000 a year (based on figures from PayScale.com), and some individuals may earn over $150,000.

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Whether a choice position is about to be offered at your work or if you just want to set yourself up to be the prime candidate for when a promotion becomes available, take steps now to make sure that your name is the first one mentioned when the Higher Ups start looking for someone to promote.

Consistency is key: On Monday you feel like you can conquer the world and it shows in your work because you beat every deadline and attack every task with vigor.

By Thursday, however, you’re pretty sick of the workweek and would really rather just hang out by the snack bar and talk about how much you hate your job.

If you think your bosses are going to remember your Monday work ethic over your Thursday doldrums, think again.

Be consistent with your work because you never really know when someone who has the power to promote you will be watching over your shoulder.

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Consider yourself lucky if you find yourself in the enviable position of having multiple job offers.

After you’ve finished patting yourself on the back, however, it’s time to get to work figuring out which job is the best one for you. Hint: There is more to it than the paycheck.

Have you ever encounted this situation in your career and if so, how did you proceed and what were your results?

Please share any information in the comments’ area so you can help readers in similar situations.

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When you are trying to stand out among thousands of applicants for a great job, you have to think beyond proper formatting for your résumé and spell check for your cover letter.

If you want to have any hopes of standing out, you have to think outside the box.

First things first: Make sure you follow all the requirements of the application process.

Ignore the instructions and it really won’t matter how innovate you are because you might not even be considered for the job.

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