Is it worth writing a cover letter?

When it is worth writing one

In each case the letter does something the CV cannot. That is the only good reason to write one.

• The form requires one, where a short competent letter costs you nothing and a missing one can cost you the application.
• You are changing industry or function and your CV does not explain the move.
• You have a gap, a relocation or something else that reads oddly on paper.
• You have a real connection to the company, such as using the product or knowing the team.
• The company is small enough that the founder or hiring manager reads every application.

When to skip it

Skip it when the field is optional and you have nothing specific to say. A letter that restates your CV in prose adds nothing and costs you the time you could spend on the next application.

At larger companies the letter is often not read during the first pass at all. Recruiters working through hundreds of applications screen on the CV and the answers to the application form questions.

What a good one contains

Do not summarise your CV. The reader has it open.

• Three or four short paragraphs, under about 300 words in total.
• The specific reason you want this job at this organisation, in the first two lines.
• One example from your experience that maps onto the main thing the job needs.
• Anything on your CV that needs explaining, said plainly and without apology.

The honest trade-off

A cover letter rarely wins an interview on its own, and a weak one can lose you one. The value sits in a small number of applications where you genuinely have something particular to say.

If you are applying to fifteen roles a week, write letters for the two or three you care most about and leave the rest. This is also the part of the process we deliberately do not automate, because a letter generated from nothing is exactly the letter nobody wants to read.