Three plain sentences beat two polished hours
Okay you guys. New module. We've spent four lessons getting the résumé right, and now we're doing the thing that goes with it, the cover letter. I'm going to save you a lot of time in this lesson, because most of what people do with cover letters is wasted effort.
Here's the story. I once applied to a job I really wanted and spent two hours on the cover letter. Rewrote it, tightened it, made sure every sentence sounded polished. Got nothing back. A week later I applied to a nearly identical job at a different company and wrote three plain sentences because I didn't have it in me to do the two-hour version again. Got a call the next morning.
That wasn't a fluke. I've watched it happen enough times now, with my own applications and other people's, that I don't trust the long cover letter anymore. Honestly, most hiring managers are skimming your cover letter for ten seconds if they read it at all. They want to know you're a real person applying for this specific job, not a form letter, and that's it. They don't want your life story and they don't want three paragraphs about your passion for the industry.
What actually goes in it
Three sentences. Here's the shape I use.
Sentence one: what job, and how you found it. "I'm applying for the office manager position posted on your website." Plain. Nobody needs poetry here.
Sentence two: one specific thing from your background that matches what they need. Not a list. One thing. If the posting mentions they need someone to manage vendor relationships, and you've done that, say so. "In my last role I managed relationships with twelve vendors and kept us under budget every quarter." That's it. That's the whole pitch.
Sentence three: a plain close. "I'd welcome the chance to talk with you about the role." Done. No "I look forward to hearing from you soon," no "please don't hesitate to contact me," none of that filler. Say the plain thing and stop.
That's the letter. Three sentences, maybe four if sentence two needs a little room to breathe. You are not going to convince anyone to hire you with beautiful prose in a cover letter. You're going to convince them by being specific and getting out of the way.
Where the groveling creeps back in
This is where I want to bring up something we already covered with gaps, because the same instinct shows up here and it's worse in a cover letter, honestly, because you've got more room to do it.
I sat with a neighbor a while back who'd been laid off and was mortified about the gap in his work history. We fixed the résumé line in one sentence, no apologizing, and he felt good about it. Then he showed me the cover letter he'd drafted for an actual application, and the whole first paragraph was him explaining the layoff. Apologizing for it, really. Walking through why it happened, why it wasn't his fault, why he was ready now. Four sentences just on that.
I told him to stop. You already handled the gap on the résumé in one clean line. You don't need to re-explain yourself in the cover letter too. If it comes up, it comes up in the interview. The cover letter's job is to get you the interview, not to pre-defend your whole work history before anyone's even met you. He cut it down to almost nothing and moved the sentence about his experience up front instead. That letter's the one that got him in the door.
Same thing goes for career changers, if that's you. Don't spend the cover letter explaining why you're changing lanes. One sentence if you need it, and only if the job posting genuinely calls for an explanation. Otherwise let the résumé do that work and use your three sentences here to point straight at the job.
How to actually do this at home
- Open the job posting next to your résumé. Not a blank page — the actual posting.
- Find one line in the posting that matches one real thing you've done. Just one.
- Write your three sentences. Time yourself if you have to. If it's taking you more than fifteen minutes, you're overthinking it.
- Read it out loud once. If it sounds like something a person would actually say, you're done. If it sounds like a form letter, cut whatever sentence made it sound that way.
- Don't reuse the same letter for every job. Swap out sentence two for each application so it actually matches that posting. That's the only part that changes.
That last point is worth saying plainly since it's an opinion I hold pretty hard: I'd rather you send five tailored letters than fifty generic ones. A cover letter aimed at "any job" reads like it's aimed at no job, and people can tell.
One more thing. Don't attach the cover letter as a separate mystery file with a vague name. We covered file naming last time — same rule applies here. Keep it boring and clear so whoever's reading it isn't hunting for what they're looking at.
Before next time: pick one job posting you're actually interested in and write your three sentences for it. Bring both the résumé and the letter next class so we can look at them side by side.