When to write a cover letter (and when to skip it)

You've found a role that fits. The resume's tailored and the form's filled in. Then there's the last box on the page: "Cover letter (optional)". Now you're looking at another evening of writing, for a letter you're not sure anyone will open.

(Optional, in a job ad, usually means optional at both ends.)

Whether it's worth the evening comes down to two things. Will a person read it, and could the decision turn on what it says? When both are true, write it, and write it well. When either one isn't, that evening does far more good spent getting your name in front of the person doing the hiring. This is about that decision. If you've already decided to write one, here's how to write a cover letter as an experienced professional.

Do hiring managers read cover letters?

Some do. Plenty never see them, because the letter has to get past the pile first.

Greenhouse counted 244 applications per job in 2025, up from 116 in 2022. Over the same years, the average recruiting team shrank from about ten recruiters to fewer than five. I'll let you do the maths on how many of those 244 letters get read closely by a team half the size.

The hiring manager usually isn't doing the first sort, either. They say to the recruiter, "Get me ten people to interview." The recruiter works through the pile until they have ten, and once they do, the list is effectively closed. Their job is the list; the decision gets made later, by someone else. Nobody's being lazy there. It's a team with twice the applications and half the people, doing what it can.

So a letter sitting in an applicant system on a busy role may never be opened. A letter that lands in front of the hiring manager, from someone they've already heard of, is far more likely to be.

When should you write a cover letter?

Write one whenever a person will read it and it could change their mind. In practice, that's four situations.

• You've been referred in. Someone inside has said your name, so the hiring manager is going to look. A short letter that says who put you forward and why you fit picks up where that conversation left off.
• You're writing straight to the hiring manager. An email to the person who owns the role is read by the person who decides. That email is a cover letter in all but name, so make every line count.
• Your resume can't explain the move on its own. Changing fields, coming back after a break, moving cities, or going for a role at a different level than your last one. A resume shows what happened. Only a letter can say why this move makes sense, before the reader fills the gap with their own guess.
• The job ad asks for one. If they've said it's required, leaving it out tells them you didn't read the ad. That one's an easy call.

The same goes for a small business where the owner reads every application personally. If a person is reading it, it's worth writing.

When can you skip the cover letter?

Skip it when it goes into a pile and nothing in it could change the outcome. That's most big portal roles where the letter box is optional, and it's especially true once the counter says 100 or more people have applied. If you see 100 people have applied for a job, you seriously need to consider whether you put an application in at all, never mind write a letter for it.

Volume doesn't help much anyway. In Huntr's data, the interview rate was about 8% for people who sent 11 to 20 applications, and about 3% for people who sent 100 or more. Fewer, better applications win, and a letter written for every role you see is the opposite of fewer, better. (More on how many jobs to apply for.)

You can also skip it when a recruitment agency runs the role and they've only asked for your resume. The recruiter puts you forward to their client in their own words, so a short note to the recruiter about why you fit does more than a formal letter would.

And skip the generic one every time. A letter that could go to any company tells the reader you sent the same one everywhere. An empty box says less, and says nothing bad.

What should you do instead of a cover letter?

Put the time into getting your name in front of a person. In a study of 38 million applications, Ashby found 40% of referred applicants got an interview, against 3% of people who applied cold. A letter in an optional box is about as cold as it gets.

Here's what I'd do with the hour the letter would have taken:

1. Find the hiring manager. The job ad often names the team, and LinkedIn usually does the rest. (Here's how to find the hiring manager for a job.)
2. Check who you know there. A former colleague, an old customer or supplier, a friend of a friend, someone you haven't spoken to in years. People you've lost touch with are often the ones who open the door.
3. Send the hiring manager a short message, then apply. Keep it to three or four lines. Name the role and the one thing you've done that matches what they need, then offer an easy next step, like sending more detail.
4. Follow up once if it goes quiet. One polite nudge, a week or so later, is enough.

The first one could be from anyone, about any job. The second does a cover letter's job in three lines, and it lands with the person who decides.

When I was hiring, I kept a warm list. People would get in touch, we'd have a coffee, and if someone later asked whether I knew anyone good, I'd give them a name off that list. That's the side door, and it's how plenty of roles get filled before anyone writes an ad. The resume rarely decides it. What gets someone a call or tips them over the line is a person I trust saying, "You need to talk to Amelia."

How long should a cover letter take to write?

Less than you think. When you do write one, keep it to 250 to 400 words on one page, answering three questions: why this role, why you, why now. The how-to article walks through the four paragraphs that carry it.

A good test: if the letter is taking longer than finding the hiring manager and sending them a note, you've got the order wrong. The note is what gets you noticed. The letter backs it up.

And don't start from a blank page every time. Most of a good letter is proof you already have on your resume, pointed at this employer's problem. The work is in the pointing, and that part shouldn't take an evening.

Where FutureDay fits

In FutureDay, the cover letter is a step in Apply, straight after your tailored resume. The Tailored Cover Letter is drafted in minutes from the same facts as your tailored resume and the job description. Every figure has to come from your resume, and it never makes up news about the company: where the ad says nothing about the employer's situation, it writes about the problem the role exists to solve. Change any line you like before you download it as a Word file.

So when a letter is worth writing, it costs you minutes. And when the person matters more than the letter, FutureDay points you there too: the day after you save a role, if you haven't got a contact on it yet, Home suggests you find a person at the company before you apply. You decide what goes out, and you send it.