More and more of my coaching clients, and a fair few of the recruiters I speak to, have been telling me the same thing lately: nobody bothers with cover letters any more.
I've written before about the paradox of job searching with AI. You can now apply for more roles, more quickly, than ever before. And when the recruitment process is increasingly run by AI at the other end as well, it becomes very easy to take the path of least resistance and let speed and volume stand in for effort. The cover letter is where I'm seeing that most clearly. It's usually the first thing to be skipped or handed straight to a chatbot.
I'm not about to claim the cover letter is the holy grail of job applications. Plenty of employers have dropped it, and a brilliant letter won't rescue a CV that doesn't fit the role. Where one is asked for, though, it still gets read, and when so many applications look alike it remains one of the few places you can properly stand out. If you genuinely want the job, that seems like a no-brainer.
If they've asked for one, write one
When an application says a cover letter is optional, it's tempting to take that as permission to skip it. I'd treat it as a small test instead. Writing one costs you an hour or so. Leaving it out risks a hiring manager concluding, fairly or not, that you couldn't be bothered, and when the shortlist is tight that impression can be enough to tip the balance.
Your CV has already said it once
The most common mistake I see is a letter that walks through the CV in paragraph form. The reader already has the CV, so repeating it wastes the little attention you've been given.
It helps to think of the letter as the argument that connects your experience to their problem. The CV holds the evidence, and the letter is where you make the case.
Do the research, then choose what they need to know
Before you write a word, spend some proper time on the organisation: their strategy, recent news, what their people are talking about on LinkedIn and, if you can manage it, a conversation with someone who works there. You're looking for what they're trying to achieve and where this role fits into it.
From that, pull out the three things you most want them to know about you in relation to what they need. Each one should link something you've done to something they care about. Open with that connection. "I am writing to apply for…" wastes the most valuable line on the page.
Then keep it tight: one page, and four paragraphs at most. I've read plenty of epics, and the length alone tells the reader you haven't decided what matters. Remember too that it's often uploaded as a separate document and may well be read without the CV to hand. So it needs to stand on its own: name the role, and give enough context that someone who never opens your CV still knows who you are.
Use AI as an editor and keep the writing yours
The trouble with handing the whole thing over is that the result tends to sound like everyone else's, polished but oddly empty. It won't sound like you either, which gets awkward once you're in an interview.
Used with some judgement, though, it can help. It's good at summarising a long job description so you can see the themes. It's also useful for challenging a draft you've written yourself: ask it what a sceptical hiring manager would question, or where your argument feels thin.
What it can't do is decide which three things matter, or remember the moment in your career that makes the case for you. Write the first draft yourself, however rough, and read the final version out loud before you send it. If a sentence wouldn't come out of your mouth in an interview, change it.
Nobody has ever missed the generic version
The cover letter people say is dead is usually the generic one, lifted from the last application and stuffed with phrases from the job advert. Hiring managers were skimming past that letter when I started in recruitment, and they're skimming past it now. AI has simply made more of them. The letters that have always worked still work, and in a pile that increasingly reads alike, they stand out more than they ever have.
A question to sit with
If the hiring manager read only your cover letter, would they understand why you want this role and why you're the right person for it?
And if you'd said the same words to them in person, would they have sounded like you?
