Ask ten people what a cover letter is for and you will get ten versions of "show personality and enthusiasm." That is true, but it is not actionable, and it is why so many cover letters read like enthusiastic mush — three paragraphs of energy with no structure holding it up. A cover letter has four jobs, in order, and each one is short. Here is what actually goes in each part.
Header and greeting: the part people overthink
Your name and contact info at the top, matching your resume exactly — same phone number, same email, same spelling of your name. Address it to a specific person if you can find one (a LinkedIn search or the company's team page usually works); "Dear Hiring Manager" is a fine fallback and nobody holds it against you. What to skip: "To Whom It May Concern" reads as a form letter from 1998, and the full mailing-address block is a relic from when cover letters were physically mailed.
Opening paragraph: one sentence of what, one sentence of why
This paragraph has exactly two jobs: state the role you're applying for, and give one specific, real reason you're interested — not a compliment about the company, a reason. "I'm excited about this role because..." needs an ending that only makes sense for this company, not one you could paste into an application anywhere else.
Weak: "I am writing to express my interest in the Marketing Coordinator position at your company. I believe my skills and experience make me a strong candidate."
Better: "I'm applying for the Marketing Coordinator role because I've spent the last two years running lifecycle email for a subscription product, and your job posting's focus on retention over acquisition is exactly the kind of problem I want to keep solving."
Notice the second version could not be sent to a different company without rewriting it. That is the test for whether an opening is doing its job.
Body: one or two paragraphs, each built around a specific proof point
This is where most cover letters turn into a restated resume, which wastes the one thing a cover letter can do that a resume can't: explain the connection between what you've done and what the job needs, in your own words, with context a bullet point can't carry.
Pick one or two things from the job posting that matter most, and for each one, give a specific example — not "I have strong project management skills" but the actual project, the actual constraint, the actual outcome. If you're short on formal work history for this, here is how to build this section from coursework, projects, or unrelated jobs instead.
Weak: "I have excellent communication skills and experience managing multiple projects simultaneously."
Better: "When our team lost our only designer two weeks before a product launch, I picked up enough Figma to ship the launch assets myself and kept the timeline intact — not because I wanted to be a designer, but because the launch date wasn't moving."
One well-chosen story beats three vague claims. If you have a second paragraph, make it a second story, not a second list of adjectives.
Closing paragraph: confidence, not a plea
Restate interest briefly, mention availability, and stop. What kills this paragraph is over-apologizing ("I know I may not have every qualification, but...") or over-promising ("I guarantee I will exceed your expectations"). Neither builds trust. A plain, direct close does more work than either:
"I'd welcome the chance to talk through how my background fits this role. Thank you for your time and consideration."
Length and format: shorter than you think, formatted like a real letter
Three to four paragraphs, well under one page — 250 to 400 words is the real range, not the 600-word essay a lot of templates encourage. Format it like an actual letter: your contact info, the date, a greeting, paragraphs, a sign-off. Save it as a PDF unless the application explicitly asks for something else, for the same parsing-consistency reasons covered in how ATS software actually works — a cover letter is read by a human far more often than a resume is, but plenty of systems still log and store it alongside the resume, and a broken export looks careless either way.
The one-sentence test for the whole letter
Before sending it, read the letter back and ask: could a different applicant, applying to a different company, send this exact letter unchanged? If the honest answer is yes, the structure might be fine but the substance isn't there yet — go back and swap a generic claim for a specific example. That single edit does more for a cover letter than any amount of polishing the opening line.