Do you still need a cover letter?

Usually not, and most that are submitted are never opened. Write one when it is required, when you are a non-obvious fit, when the role is senior, or when you are sending a direct note to a human — and in those cases write a specific one, because a generic cover letter is worse than none.

When to skip it

• The field is marked optional on a large company’s portal. These go into a field nobody opens. Spend the twenty minutes on tailoring the resume instead, which is read.
• High-volume applications. If you are sending fifteen this week, generic letters on all fifteen is worse than none on all fifteen.
• The application is via a recruiter who already has your context.

When to write one

• It is required. Not writing it is a filter you failed on purpose.
• You are a non-obvious fit. Career change, coming back after a break, moving industry, moving country, applying slightly above your current level. The resume cannot explain a transition; this is the one document that can.
• Small company, or a named hiring manager. At a twelve-person company one person reads everything, and a specific letter is read.
• Senior or leadership roles, where judgement and writing are part of the job being assessed.
• You are emailing a person directly. The email is the cover letter, and it is the highest-yield version of one.

The structure that works

Under 250 words. Four short paragraphs. No “Dear Sir/Madam” and no “I am writing to apply for the position of…” — they already know which posting this is attached to.

1. Why this job, specifically. One sentence that could not be written about another company. If you cannot write it, that is information about whether to apply.
2. Your strongest relevant evidence. One achievement, expanded slightly beyond what the resume bullet says — the part that did not fit.
3. The bridge. Why the thing you have done maps onto the thing they need. For a career changer this is the whole letter.
4. A short close. One line.

What makes them bad

• Restating the resume in prose. The reader has both documents. A paraphrase wastes the only chance to say something new.
• Talking about what you want. “This role would be a great opportunity for my growth” is a sentence about your needs sent to someone solving theirs.
• Adjectives about yourself. Dynamic, passionate, detail-oriented, results-driven. Everyone claims all four, so all four are noise.
• A visible template. The wrong company name is the classic, and it happens constantly.
• Length. A full page of prose does not get read on a phone at 9pm, which is when it is opened.

Does an ATS read it?

It stores it and often extracts the text, the same way it does your resume — but no keyword screen is meaningfully driven by the cover letter, and there is no scoring benefit to stuffing it. Whether it gets read is a human decision, made after the resume has already done the deciding.

Which is the whole answer to the underlying question people are really asking: the letter is never the thing that gets you in, and it is occasionally the thing that explains why you should be.

The career-change case, in detail

This is where a cover letter genuinely earns its place, because the resume is structurally against you: it lists what you have done, and what you have done is the wrong thing. Three sentences:

1. What you did before, in one line, with the transferable part named.
2. The concrete evidence you are already doing the new thing — a project, a course finished, a freelance client, a contribution.
3. Why this specific role is the sensible first step, not a leap.

Where this site fits

GetFinalCV builds the resume, which is the document that is definitely read. It will also write a cover letter — but only against a job you have saved, with the resume you actually sent, and the first thing it does is tell you whether this application is one of the ones above. On a high-volume send to a posting your resume already answers, it says so and suggests you skip it.

That is the same advice as this page, which is the point: nothing here changes because we now build one. A letter drawn only from what your resume can prove, on an application where somebody will read it, beats one generated from the posting. And writing it yourself — 250 words, specific — is still a perfectly good answer.