Cover letters
How to write a cover letter that is not your resume in paragraphs
Choose one hiring argument, connect it to two pieces of evidence, and make the letter useful instead of retelling the resume line by line.
A cover letter should make one argument your resume cannot make by layout alone: why this work, at this organization, follows naturally from the evidence in your history. It is not a biography and it is not every bullet rewritten as a sentence.
Decide what the reader must believe
Before writing the greeting, finish this sentence: “After reading this letter, they should believe I can…” Use the central problem in the posting, not a generic trait such as hard-working or passionate.
A useful argument might be that you can steady a messy customer handoff, translate technical work for nontechnical teams, or build a repeatable process where one does not exist. The rest of the letter exists to prove that sentence.
Use a simple four-part structure
Keep the letter short enough that the argument remains visible. Four compact paragraphs are usually enough.
- Opening: name the role and the specific problem or responsibility that drew you in.
- Evidence one: show a closely related situation, your action, and what changed.
- Evidence two: add a different proof point that closes the biggest remaining doubt.
- Close: connect the evidence back to the role and invite the next conversation.
Make the connection explicit
A resume places facts next to each other and lets the reader infer the story. A cover letter earns its space by stating the connection. Explain why the problem you solved before prepares you for the problem this team named now.
That does not mean copying the posting. Use its language only where it accurately names work you have done. A keyword from the employer is context, not evidence about you.
Cut the lines that could go anywhere
Delete any sentence that could be sent unchanged to fifty employers: praise copied from the company website, claims about being a perfect fit, and long lists of soft skills without evidence. Replace them with one detail about the work and one fact from your history.
Then read the letter beside the resume. If every sentence is already obvious from the document, the letter has not added an argument yet. If it introduces facts the resume cannot support, it has gone too far.
Sources and further reading
Turn your evidence into a focused first draft
Start from the job and facts you can defend, then review every suggestion before it enters your letter.
Build a cover letter