How to write a cover letter in 7 steps: one letter in 3 tones

Your resume is a record: where you worked, for how long, and what you did there. It is written once and sent to many employers. A cover letter is an argument, written for one reader, that this record fits this job.

The difference matters because a common cover letter mistake is to write the resume again in sentences. A reader who has your resume open learns nothing from a paragraph that repeats it. What they cannot get from the resume is the selection: which three things, out of everything you have done, matter for the job they are trying to fill.

Whether a letter is worth writing when the form says "optional" is a fair question, and the surveys on it do not agree. We set them side by side in Do you still need a cover letter in 2026?. The short version: if you are going to send one, it has to be specific to the job, because a generic letter is easy to recognise and easy to ignore.

Do not start with the letter. Start with the job listing and a pen. Many listings bury the real job under a long list of duties, and your first task is to find it.

1. Find what is repeated. A requirement that appears in the summary, again in the duties and again under "about you" is the one to answer first.
2. Find the problem behind the role. Roles are opened for a reason: a new office, a team that has grown, a number that is going the wrong way. The listing often says so in its first few lines.
3. Separate must-haves from nice-to-haves. "Required", "essential" and "you will" mark the first kind. "Ideally", "a plus" and "familiarity with" mark the second.
4. Pick three. Choose the three requirements that matter most and that you can answer with something specific. Those three are the plan for your letter.

Here is how that looks for the example used throughout this guide. Dana Whitfield is a dispatch coordinator applying for an Operations Manager role at a logistics company that has just opened a second depot.

Notice that the second row is not a perfect match: the listing says 15 to 20 people and Dana has led 14. That is normal. State what you have done exactly and let the reader judge the distance. Do not round up, and do not apologise for the gap either.

The header is your name, phone number, email address and the date, followed by the name of the person you are writing to, their job title and the company. If you are sending the letter as an attached document, use the same header as your resume so the two look like a pair. If you are pasting it into an email or a form box, leave the header out and start at the greeting.

Address the letter to a person whenever you can find one. Look at the listing itself, the company's team page and LinkedIn. The name of the person the role reports to is often in the listing ("reporting to the Head of Operations"), and that title is enough to find them.

Use a title and surname unless the company's own writing is plainly informal, and never guess a title you are unsure of: "Dear Sam Okafor," is always safe. There is more on the awkward cases in Who to address a cover letter to.

The first sentence decides whether the second one is read with interest. Many letters spend it on information the reader already has: the job title, where the advert was seen, and that the writer is applying. Spend it on the most relevant thing you have done.

A result is the most reliable opening, but it is not the only one. Three patterns work:

• A result. A number or outcome that answers the listing's main requirement. Use this when you have one.
• A connection to the company. Something specific they have done, and what it has to do with your work. Use this when the company is the reason you are applying.
• A referral. The name of someone the reader knows and trusts, with their permission. If you have one, it goes first.

Whichever you choose, the second sentence should name the role and tie the opening to it. We have sorted forty first lines by what each one proves in How to start a cover letter.

The body is one or two paragraphs, and each paragraph answers a requirement from your list of three. The pattern for each is the same: what they asked for, what you did, and what came of it.

1. Name the requirement, in the listing's own words where that is natural.
2. Say what you did. One or two specific actions, with you as the subject of the sentence.
3. Give the result, with a number if you have one.

If you think you have no numbers

Most people have more than they realise. A number does not have to be revenue. Look for any of these:

• Scale: how many customers, orders, patients, tickets, students or sites you handled.
• Time: how long something took before and after you changed it.
• Frequency: daily, weekly, every release, every shift.
• People: how many you trained, managed, supported or reported to.
• Firsts: the first person to do something, or the person others were sent to for it.

Where you have no number, use a named thing: the system you introduced, the report people still use, the process that was adopted elsewhere. Specific nouns do the same work as figures. What you must not do is invent one. A made-up percentage is the easiest thing in a letter to be asked about at interview.

One short paragraph, sometimes only two sentences, on why you want this job and not simply a job. It is the part of the letter that cannot be reused.

Ten minutes of reading is enough to find your sentence. Look at the listing's first paragraph, the company's news or blog page, and what its people have posted recently. You are looking for one fact: a launch, an expansion, a customer, a stated way of working. Then say what that fact has to do with you.

The last paragraph has one purpose: to make the next step easy. Say what you would like to talk about and when you are available. Thank the reader if you wish, briefly.

Sign off with "Yours sincerely," if your greeting names the reader, "Yours faithfully," if it does not, or "Kind regards," in either case, then your full name. In an attached document, leave your phone number and email in the header. In an email, put them under your name. For more endings, including how sign-offs differ between languages, see How to end a cover letter.

A first draft is usually too long and too polite. Leave it for an hour if you can, then go through this list.

• Cut to under 400 words. Remove any sentence that would be true of most applicants. How long should a cover letter be? shows the same letter at three lengths.
• Read it aloud. Anything you stumble over, rewrite. Anything you would not say to the hiring manager in person, cut.
• Check the three names: the company, the role and the person. A letter addressed to the wrong company is the hardest mistake to recover from.
• Check every fact against your resume. Dates, job titles and figures must match exactly.
• Format it plainly. One page, a standard font at 10.5 to 12 point, margins of about 2.5 cm, left-aligned. Details are in Cover letter format.
• Send what was asked for. If the listing names a file type, use it. If it does not, send a PDF, which looks the same on every screen, named with your own name and the role.

Tone is how the letter sounds. It is not what the letter says. Below is Dana's letter three times, with the same facts each time. The friendly version takes a paragraph to reach the result; the other two open with it. Read them one after another and you will see that the evidence does not move: the 9% and the 4%, the 14 people, the handbook and the second depot are in all three. What changes is sentence length, how much of the writer's own reaction is on the page, and how directly the letter asks for what it wants.

Choose the tone by the reader, not by your mood. A formal employer or a senior role suits the professional version. A small team or a company that writes informally suits the friendly one. The confident version fits roles where directness is the job: sales, operations, leadership.

Use this as a frame and replace everything in square brackets. If a bracket is hard to fill, that is useful to know: it means you need to go back to the listing or your resume before you write that paragraph.

[Your name]
[Phone] | [Email] | [City]

[Date]

[Hiring manager's name]
[Their job title]
[Company]

Dear [Mr/Ms Surname or Hiring Manager],

[Your strongest result that fits this job, with a number if you have one.] [The role you are applying for, and how that result connects to what the listing asks for.]

[Requirement 1 from the listing.] [What you did, in one or two specific actions.] [What came of it.]

[Requirement 2 from the listing.] [What you did.] [What came of it.]

[One specific thing this company has done or is doing.] [What it has to do with your experience, and why it makes you want this job.]

[What you would like to talk about at interview.] [When you are available.]

Kind regards,
[Your name]

For finished letters across different jobs and levels, see Twelve cover letters that work, annotated.

1. Repeating the resume. The letter selects and explains. It does not list.
2. Opening with the application itself. The reader knows you are applying. Start with why they should keep reading.
3. Describing yourself in adjectives. "Motivated", "detail-oriented" and "passionate" prove nothing in any letter they appear in.
4. Writing about what the job will do for you. What you hope to learn matters less to the reader than what you can already do.
5. Sending the same letter everywhere. If the company's name could be swapped for another without changing a sentence, the letter is a template.
6. Leaving the wrong name in. It happens most to people who reuse letters, which is one more reason not to.