How long should a cover letter be?

Recruiters read many cover letters in a day, often for less than a minute each. A letter that makes its case in three or four short paragraphs gets read; a two-page essay gets skimmed. Length is one of the easiest things to get right.

The short answer

• 250 to 400 words for most jobs.
• Under one page with normal margins and a readable font.
• Three or four paragraphs, each a few sentences long.

Paste your draft into the Word Counter, set 400 as the target, and check the reading time too: a good letter reads in under two minutes.

What goes in each paragraph

1. Opening: the role you are applying for and one sentence on why you are a strong fit. Skip “I am writing to apply for…” as a whole sentence; get to the point.
2. Evidence: one or two specific achievements that match the job's main requirements, with numbers where possible.
3. Why them: something specific about the organisation, its work or its customers that makes you want this job rather than any job.
4. Close: a short, confident line about discussing it further, and thanks.

Openings that work

• “I have spent four years running customer support for a 30,000-user software product, and your Support Lead role is the next step I have been working towards.”
• “Your advert asks for someone who can rebuild a reporting process from scratch; I did exactly that at Northfield last year, cutting the monthly close from ten days to four.”

Both name the role and give a reason to read on in the first two lines.

When shorter is better

• Online forms with a cover letter box often have a character limit. Use the Character Counter, which counts spaces too.
• Email applications where the email itself is the cover letter: 150 to 200 words, with the resume attached.
• Internal moves, where people already know you.

When longer is acceptable

Academic posts, some senior and public-sector roles, and applications that ask you to address each selection criterion can need more, sometimes a page and a half or a separate statement. Follow the instructions; if they ask you to address criteria one by one, use headings for each.

Cutting a long letter

• Remove anything that repeats your resume without adding context.
• Keep the two strongest examples and drop the rest.
• Cut openers like “I believe that” and “I feel I would be”.
• Replace general claims (“excellent communicator”) with one concrete example.
• Shorten long sentences; most can lose a third of their words.

Format

• Same font and header style as your resume, so they look like a set.
• Address a named person if you can find one; “Dear Hiring Manager” otherwise.
• Save as PDF unless asked for another format, and name it clearly: alex-morgan-cover-letter.pdf.

Use the advert's key terms naturally; see finding keywords in a job description. For the resume itself, see how to write a one-page resume.