Cover Letter Format

ence in customer service both face to face and phone based. 
And you fill in the rest. As a guide, six points is good but there is no real rule. Another tip, be specific. I see a lot of "Excellent Communication Skills" but what does that mean?
Excellent written and verbal communication skills acquired via study and customer service work. 
Career Profile, Career Overview, Career Summary, Career Objective? 
Many people start a resume with a Career Objective. I think this is fine for school leavers or recent uni grads. For the rest of us, a career overview or Career Overview might be better. Employers want to know what you are going to do for them. Putting your expectation of your next employer in the first line of your resume could be off putting. By all means conclude with a career objective eg - "While currently a product manager, my career goal is to move into general management".
A Career Overview should provide the reader with a quick preview of what he or she will find in your resume. It should be a few sentences and written as one paragraph. It should include a smattering of your professional, academic and industry training. Some personal attributes are optional. As stated, your career goal could serve as the last sentence.
For example: Career Overview 
A sales management professional with seven years' experience in the media industry, I have worked on newspaper, web and television products. I have a proven track record of developing new business and motivating a team to consistently exceed targets. I've recently completed a Masters of Business Administration and am now seeking a new professional challenge.
By the way, the example above is totally made up, but you get what I mean.
Also, avoid airy, fairy statements. Ian Napier of Flexiforce says that if a sentence doesn't contain factual information, ditch it.
For example, Ian has seen more than a few candidates describe their career goal as "to utilise my skills in a professional environment for the mutual benefit of myself and employer".
"I hate that line," Ian says. "Where is this sentence coming from? It is stating the obvious and tells me nothing."
Professional history
Outline your career history in reverse chronological order.
The structure to follow for each role is:
Job title, employer, dates, what you did, for whom and when.
Description of employer
This is appropriate for those coming from overseas or in cases where the company might be largely unknown. Organisations like IBM, News Limited, Suncorp or the big banks, to name a few examples, will need no explanation.
I read a resume from a candidate with fabulous IT experience gained while working for the largest children's hospital in India but he didn't say that. The hospital name, without that description, might not ring any bells with an IT hiring manager in Australia.
Responsibilities
People make the mistake of believing the more responsibilities listed the better. Include only the key things you were "responsible for" (accountable for). Don't list every single thing you did. I have seen CVs where people include: "Attended a weekly team meeting". So what? "Chairing" the weekly team meeting is a responsibility. See the difference?
Achievements (up to three per job is good).
This is where you list the things that you did that you were not paid to do. Items would include staff awards, special commendations, suggestions you put forward, scoped out or helped to implement that led to cost savings or an increase in revenue, access to new clients, higher levels of customer service, time efficiencies and so on.
Please note meeting a target is not an achievement - it's doing what you are paid to do. Exceeding a monthly target by an average of 30 per cent with a top result of 56 percent is an achievement.
Achievements show potential hirers what you are made of - and what they can expect you will do for them.
Indent your achievements by one tab on your resume to make them stand out.
Example of a professional history item using the above lay out (again, purely made up): 
Customer services manager, A-1 Clothing Care Service, October 1999 - present day
About A-1:
First opened for business in November 1999, the company provides a national telephone and email consumer service to the end users of its 35 fashion retail or design clients.
Responsibilities:
Manage a team of 30 call centre agents who advise consumers on garment care, product updates and where to purchase particular garments.
Update and distribute new research to call centre agents; manage technology suppliers.
Plan and project manage technology and service improvements.
Achievements: 
Recruited, trained and established a start up team that was fully operational within a month - one week ahead of schedule 
Introduced technical efficiencies that resulted in an improved customer response time of 150 percent. 
Worked with the sales team to create new products and services that resulted in a 40 percent increase in our customer base in 2004-2005. 
Named Employee of the Year 2004 
Follow this format for at least your last two to three jobs.
Education and Training
Start with your highest qualification first. Unless you are fresh out of school, leave your secondary school history out.
Education and Training section can cover university, TAFE training, industry courses, in-house courses, and any other professional training.
Professional Memberships
Include only those relevant to your career as well as an indication of how active you are in the organisation.
Referees
References/Referees come at the end. Names and phone numbers (not mobiles) are the most acceptable presentation. Add a sentence: "Written references available upon request" if you wish.
Hobbies and interests
I have heard mixed views about the wisdom of including a "Hobbies and Interests" section. If you want to include it, place it before Referees.
Some career experts warn that the section could work against you if the reader dislikes or is threatened by the activities you list.
How long should my resume be?
For school leavers and those that have been in the workforce for a few years, two pages is fine but for everyone else three to five pages is advised. That is the advice from career experts like Amanda McCarthy of Brisbane who is currently writing Resumes for Dummies and from Geelong-based business consultant Steve Gray. 
Both warn that hiring managers and recruiters want to see how your career has developed as well as some detail of your achievements, both what they were and how they added value to the business.
However, experts advising mature candidates say don't go back more than 10 years on your resume. You can include a paragraph under the heading "Other professional experience" if you want so you can mention earlier work of particular interest or relevance. Or you can provide a full summary of your professional history. You can end with the sentence: "Full resume available upon request."
My last word
The structure above provides the potential employer with the information that he or she wants - in the correct order - to help them make the decision to interview or not.
No one gets a job based on the resume alone. The purpose of the resume is to get the interview, no more, no less. Send further questions about resumes to me via the Ask Kate link.
THE TOP 10 MOST COMMON RESUME / CV MISTAKES 
Resume readers tend to have very little patience, and will sooner reject your application than consider calling you for answers. Here's a list of the most common resume writing and CV mistakes found on many applications.
Resume is too long or too short –you won't win any prizes for writing “War and Peace”, nor will you gain any extra points for trying to write your entire career history on a postage stamp. 
Too "fluffy" – "conscientious”, “dedicated” or "good communicator” are great words but most companies will expect you to substantiate your claims with skills and corresponding competencies to match.
No value add – if your resume appears similar in skill set to that of 20 or 30 other applicants, there's a good chance you'll go on the "maybe pile" and never actually get a call. Your resume needs to scream out to the reader, offering something others simply don’t have. 
No focus – listing everything will cloud a resume. Is the employer looking for a “one glove fits all”, or do they want someone with focus? We can tell you now...it's focus.
Visually unappealing – how your resume looks is as important as the words it contains. That's why you should be careful with the appearance of your resume. As many as a quarter of candidates with otherwise excellent resumes ruin their chances with bad layout. 
Grammar mistakes and typos – a rushed document can be spotted a mile away, and it’s even easier to spot a badly written resume when there’s a number of redlines under each word!
Irrelevant data – we can all be proud of our extra curriculum activities, but sometimes these can work against you.  Ensure that any additional activities have some direct relevance to your career, for example "trained in responsible serving of alcohol" isn't so relevant if it was 20 years ago and you're now looking for a CEO position!
A picture can say a thousand words - these days it's not always necessary to have your picture on your resume, however if one is required, ensure that it has a "professional image".
Password protection - if you feel it's truly necessary to password protect your document, then only protect changes to the document, don't leave them trying to guess how to open your resume in the first place.
Web based resumes - employers like to collate all resumes before reading them and prefer to read from a standard format. Although on-line resumes are great interactive pieces of work, avoid using these forms of trial service unless you know the reader is expecting more than a word document, or make sure you have a Word version available for download.