As a professional resume writer, you’d think that writing a killer cover letter would come easily to me. Yet, I regularly dreaded having to sit down and write a compelling, original cover letter—from scratch. Résumés were easy in comparison; I had awesome templates and a formula that worked every time. So I did what anyone who hates a task does: I procrastinated for an embarrassing amount of time, and then found a way to make the dreaded task quick, easy and effective. I surveyed my clients to find out which of their cover letters had received the best response and then created the following cover letter template that I could use over and over again. In the hopes that I can spare you some of the pain associated with your own job search, here are some of the tips and tricks I use to make the cover letter writing process pain-free.