How to write a cover letter: what to include, with examples

What is a cover letter when applying for a job?

A cover letter is a short message accompanying an application. The resume gives a structured record of your experience; the letter can explain why a selected piece of that experience matters for this particular job. This guide covers ordinary job applications. Academic appointments and applications with formal selection criteria may require different documents.

In an r/jobs discussion, one applicant described AI letters that echoed the posting and repeated resume bullets. That is a useful editing question: what has the reader learned from this paragraph that the resume alone did not explain? The thread is an individual discussion, not evidence that all recruiters react the same way.

Required, optional or not accepted?

Check the posting and the application form together. Submit a letter when required. If instructions say not to send one, follow them. When it is optional, decide whether you can add relevant context, such as a credible career-change explanation. An empty upload field alone does not tell you how much weight an employer gives the letter.

For an ordinary business letter, a concise page is a useful starting point; the employer’s word or character limit comes first. A form may want only the body text. A document may need your contact details and date. If no recipient is named, MIT UPOP suggests a role-based greeting such as “Dear Hiring Manager.” Do not guess a person’s name.

Choose evidence before drafting: a fictional role

Fictional posting: Alder Desk seeks a Customer Operations Associate. Responsibilities are to triage support requests, send reproducible issue reports to product staff and keep help articles current. Spreadsheet experience is required; SQL is preferred. The letter should explain one relevant example. These are all the requirements for this exercise.

Our fictional applicant, Sam Rivera, has worked in customer support. Sam records issue categories, reproduction steps and ticket links in a shared spreadsheet, sends a weekly issue summary to the product lead, and revises draft help articles after supervisor review. Sam has not used SQL and has no measured efficiency gain to claim.

A complete cover-letter example

The following body is an original fictional example, not a university sample or a real customer letter. Add your actual contact details, date and any required header separately. The sample develops the issue-reporting example and explains Sam’s interest without inventing a company mission.

Dear Hiring Manager,

I am applying for the Customer Operations Associate position at Alder Desk. In customer support, I have maintained issue records and prepared summaries for product colleagues. I am interested in this role because it combines that reporting work with keeping customer guidance current.

When support requests described similar problems in different terms, I recorded the issue category, reproduction steps and ticket links in a shared spreadsheet. I used those records to prepare a weekly summary for the product lead. This gave the lead a record of the reported problems to review; decisions about product priorities remained with the lead. I would bring that habit of documenting the source and the steps to the reporting responsibilities in your posting.

I have also revised draft help articles after my supervisor reviewed them. That experience is relevant to maintaining your help content, while the reporting responsibilities would let me continue developing my customer operations work. I would welcome a conversation about the team’s current process and how I could contribute. Thank you for considering my application.

Best regards, Sam Rivera

Sam leaves out SQL because there is no evidence for it. If a form asks about SQL, answer it directly and accurately. The letter also avoids claiming that the weekly summary reduced resolution time. A lack of measured results does not stop you explaining a real process and your part in it.

What if you have no relevant work experience?

MIT UPOP advises applicants without directly related experience to discuss experience they do have that may interest the employer. Keep the setting visible: a class project remains a class project, and volunteer work remains volunteer work. Pick an example that lets you explain an action relevant to the posting.

Fictional student paragraph for a junior software-testing application: “In a class project, I tested our booking form with empty inputs and invalid dates, recorded the steps and expected behavior, and checked the changes after a teammate fixed the validation. This was coursework, not a production system. I would like to develop that testing practice in a supervised junior role.” The posting in this example asks for clear bug reports; it does not require professional testing experience.

For a career change, explain the connection and the gap. A teacher who organized parent meetings can describe scheduling and follow-up when applying for coordination work, but should not claim commercial account-management experience on that basis. If you cannot support a required qualification, a letter cannot supply it.

Use Evarlio for the draft, then check the letter

Start with your master profile and the target job’s evidence review. A completed tailoring uses one credit and includes a resume draft and interview prep brief. From Applications, you can subsequently draft a cover letter; the first saved letter draft for that application uses no additional generation credit. Review the draft before using it.

A useful review prompt is: “Compare this letter with [experience notes] and [job posting]. Mark unsupported claims, repeated resume sentences and company statements without a source. For each paragraph, say which requirement it addresses. Ask about missing facts instead of supplying them.” Do the comparison yourself as well; an AI review can miss errors.

Evarlio supports downloading cover letters as Word documents. Resume Studio exports resumes as PDF. If you preview the accompanying resume in template #002 Clarity, check that names, dates and responsibilities agree with the letter; the template changes the resume’s presentation, not the truth of the letter. Follow the employer’s file requirements for both documents.

Questions before you submit

Can I reuse a cover-letter template? Reuse the outline and verified experience notes. Recheck the employer name, role, instructions and the example you chose for each application. A paragraph that only changes the company name may miss what this job asks you to explain.

Should the Chinese and English versions be identical? Keep the facts and responsibility level consistent, but use the language requested by the employer. “求职信” can also mean a short application message in some Chinese hiring contexts; do not attach a full English-style business letter when the form asks for a brief introduction.

Does sending a letter guarantee it will be read? No. These examples help you prepare an accurate document when it is appropriate. They do not establish a universal recruiter preference, an ATS advantage or a higher interview rate.