What to Put in a Cover Letter

A resume lists what you did. A cover letter is the one place in an application built to explain why it matters for this specific role, in your own reasoning, not just a restatement of the same bullet points in paragraph form. Most weak cover letters fail for one of two reasons: they either repeat the resume with no new information, or they stay so generic they could be sent to any company for any job. Avoiding both is mostly a content problem, not a writing problem.

The opening: one real reason, not an announcement

“I am writing to express my interest in the [Job Title] position at [Company]” tells a reader nothing they don't already know from the subject line or the application itself. A stronger opening names one specific, genuine reason you're a fit, a particular piece of experience, a specific thing about the role or team that connects to your background, stated in one or two sentences rather than a formal announcement of intent to apply.

The body: connect real experience to the posting's actual requirements

This is the part most often wasted restating the resume. The body's real job is drawing an explicit line between something you've actually done and something the posting specifically asks for, in your own words, not your resume's bullet points copied into sentence form. If the posting names a requirement your resume doesn't fully show the context for, the cover letter is where you get the room to explain it.

The close: a specific next step, not a generic sign-off

A brief, direct close, restating interest and inviting the next step, does more work than a long final paragraph. This isn't the place to introduce new content, if something important hasn't been said by this point, it belongs earlier in the letter, not appended at the end.

The two mistakes that undo most cover letters

Restating the resume in paragraph form. If a sentence just describes a bullet point you already listed, it's not adding information, it's taking up space that could explain motivation or context instead.

Staying generic enough to send anywhere. Enthusiasm about “this exciting opportunity” or admiration for a company's unnamed “innovative culture” could be pasted into a letter for any employer. Every sentence should reference something specific, the posting's actual requirements, the role, or your real experience, or it's not doing work a template couldn't do.

When a cover letter is worth the time

If a posting explicitly requests one, write it, skipping an explicitly requested document reads as not following instructions. Where it's optional, a genuinely specific letter (not a generic one) is worth including when you have a real, particular reason for that role that the resume alone doesn't convey, a career change needing context, a specific connection to the company or the work, a gap that's better explained briefly than left silent. A thin, generic letter written just to check a box adds less than skipping it.

Grounding it in your actual resume and the posting

The content that makes a cover letter specific, has to come from somewhere real: your actual resume and the actual job description, not a general template. See the free AI cover letter generator for how pairing those two real inputs produces a draft grounded in your background instead of generic phrasing, and how to tailor your resume to a job posting for the same specificity applied to the resume itself.

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