The cover letter to a recruitment agency should act as an introduction on behalf of the job applicant and make it immediately clear what he/she is looking for from the employer. It may help to imagine that the person reading it will only spend a couple of minutes looking it over—in fact, a lot of recruitment organizations will spend even less, so the key lesson is to “get the message across as succinctly as possible.” The letter should absolutely not be longer than an A4 page.

There is no right or wrong format or style for résumés/CVs but there are guidelines. Typically a résumé/CV designed for the UK market should be two pages long.