Do you still need a cover letter?
Not every application asks for one, and many recruiters admit they skim them. But a good letter helps more often than people think, and a missing one can hurt when it was requested. Write one when:
- The job post asks for it, or the application form has a cover letter field (even an optional one).
- You are emailing a hiring manager or recruiter directly. The email itself is your cover letter.
- Your resume needs context: a career change, a gap, a relocation, or overqualification.
- You are applying to a small company or startup, where the founder or manager reads every application.
You can skip it when a portal gives you nowhere to put one, or for high-volume roles where the post says no cover letter is needed.
Before you write: ten minutes of research
The difference between a generic letter and a specific one is about ten minutes of reading.
- Find the three biggest needs in the job post. Usually the first few requirements, or anything repeated. Your letter will answer these.
- Find one specific thing about the company: a product launch, a new office, an award, a value in their careers page, a recent post by the team on LinkedIn.
- Find a name. The hiring manager's name is often on LinkedIn (search the company plus the team name). If you can't find it, that's fine.
- Pick your evidence. For each of the three needs, choose one result from your experience that proves you can do it.
Step 1: Header and greeting
Start with your name and contact details, the date, and (for a formal letter) the company's name and city. In an email, skip all of that: your signature carries your details. The exact layouts are in our cover letter format guide.
For the greeting, use a name if you have one: “Dear Ms. Sharma,” or “Dear Jordan Ellis,” if you don't know their title. If you don't have a name, “Dear Hiring Manager,” or “Dear [Team name] Team,” is perfectly professional. Avoid “To whom it may concern” and “Dear Sir/Madam”; they sound like a form letter.
Step 2: An opening that earns the second paragraph
Your first two sentences decide whether the rest gets read. Don't open with your name or with “I am writing to apply for…”; the reader knows both already. Lead with the reason you fit.
Weak
I am writing to express my interest in the position of Data Analyst at your esteemed organization, which I saw on Indeed.
Strong
In my two years at a Chicago lending startup, I built the collections dashboard that cut 90-day defaults by 11%, and your Data Analyst role, focused on credit risk, is the work I want to do next.
Three openings that work:
- Lead with a result that matches their top need, as above.
- Lead with a connection: “Priya Iyer on your design team suggested I apply; we worked together on a grocery app rebrand.” Only if it's true and they have agreed to be named.
- Lead with specific motivation: “Your move into tier-2 city clinics is exactly the problem I spent three years on at a rural health NGO.”
Step 3: Prove you fit, with two or three stories
The middle is one or two paragraphs that take the job's biggest needs and answer each with evidence. Not a list of qualities; a short story with a result. A simple shape for each: the situation, what you did, what changed.
Your post asks for someone who can turn messy data into decisions. At Kreditly I inherited a collections report that took the ops team two days to compile each month. I rebuilt it in SQL and Power BI as a daily dashboard, and worked with the collections head to define three early-warning flags. Within two quarters, the team was calling at-risk borrowers a week earlier, and 90-day defaults fell 11%.
Notice it uses the job post's own words (“turn messy data into decisions”), names the tools, and ends on a number. If you have no work experience yet, the same shape works with a project, internship or college role; see our internship cover letter example, or the fresher cover letter example for India.
Step 4: Say why this company, specifically
One short paragraph that proves you didn't send this letter to fifty companies. Use what you found in your research, and connect it to you.
Weak
I have always admired your company's commitment to excellence and innovation.
Strong
Your decision to build credit models for first-time borrowers without a credit score is the problem I find most interesting in lending, and I'd like to work on it at the company furthest ahead.
Step 5: Close with a clear next step
End by saying what you'd like to happen and making it easy. Mention anything practical the reader needs: when you could start, your location if you're moving, your visa or work authorization for international roles, and in the UK or India, your notice period.
I'd welcome the chance to talk about how I could help your risk team. I'm based in Chicago, can start two weeks after an offer, and I'm available for a call any weekday after 5 pm. Thank you for your time. Kind regards, Aditi Rao
Good sign-offs: “Kind regards”, “Best regards”, “Sincerely”. Skip “Yours faithfully” unless you are writing a formal British letter to an unnamed reader.
A full cover letter example
Dear Ms. Carter, In my two years at Kreditly, a Chicago lending startup, I built the collections dashboard that cut 90-day defaults by 11%. Your Data Analyst role in the credit risk team is the work I want to do next, and I believe I can contribute from the first month. Your post asks for someone who can turn messy data into decisions. At Kreditly I inherited a collections report that took the operations team two days to compile each month. I rebuilt it in SQL and Power BI as a daily dashboard and worked with the collections head to define three early-warning flags. Within two quarters, the team was reaching at-risk borrowers a week earlier. You also mention experimentation. Last year I designed and analyzed an A/B test of reminder messages across 40,000 borrowers; the winning version, sent in English and Spanish, raised on-time payments by 6%. I'm comfortable with Python for this kind of analysis and with explaining results to people who don't live in spreadsheets. Your work on credit models for first-time borrowers without a credit score is the problem I find most interesting in lending, and I'd like to work on it at the company furthest ahead. I'd welcome the chance to talk. I'm based in Chicago, can start two weeks after an offer, and am free for a call any weekday after 5 pm. Thank you for your time. Kind regards, Aditi Rao (312) 555-0148 · aditi.rao@gmail.com · linkedin.com/in/aditirao
That's about 250 words: long enough to make the case, short enough to read in a minute. For letters written for specific jobs, browse our cover letter examples: software engineer, data analyst, nurse, teacher, sales and more.
Mistakes that sink cover letters
- Repeating your resume line by line. Pick the best two or three points and tell the story behind them.
- The wrong company name. Templates make this easy to do and impossible to forgive. Check twice.
- Making it about you: “this role will help me grow my career”. Make it about what you'll do for them.
- Going past one page. 250–400 words is the sweet spot.
- Apologizing for what you lack (“although I don't have a degree…”). Lead with what you have.
- Flattery with no content: “your esteemed organization”, “a leader in the industry”.
Pick a clean design from our cover letter templates so the letter matches your resume, and save it as a PDF unless you are pasting it into an email or form.