Cover Letter Mistakes, Ordered by When They Cost You

Almost every list of cover letter mistakes is a pile of unrelated complaints: too long, too generic, too many adjectives, typos. All true, all useless, because they give you no way to decide which one matters for the letter currently open on your screen.

This article organises them differently. A cover letter is read in a sequence, and each stage of that sequence has its own failure. So the mistakes below are ordered by when they cost you: before a word is read, in the first two lines, in the body, at the close, and afterwards when someone checks. A mistake, throughout, means one thing: anything that makes the reader's job harder or lowers their trust in you.

If you want the positive version, what to write rather than what to avoid, that is how to write a cover letter, and there are complete annotated letters in cover letter examples. The CV level equivalent of this article is common CV mistakes.

How the letter is actually read

Before the list, the sequence it follows.

A hiring manager with 90 applications does not read your letter. They look at it for about five seconds, decide whether it is worth reading, then read the first two lines. If those survive, they skim the body for anything specific, then jump to the last line to see what you want. Total elapsed time for a letter that is doing well: under a minute. For a letter that is not: about eight seconds.

That sequence explains why length matters more at the start than at the end, why the third paragraph is where letters are actually won, and why a beautiful closing paragraph almost never rescues anything. Every mistake below is a mistake because of where it sits in that sequence.

Stage one: before a word is read

These cost you before content is even a factor. They are also the easiest to fix, which is what makes them worth listing first.

Not sending one when the ad asked for one. Still the most expensive mistake in the category. Some employers use it purely as a compliance filter: no letter, no read.

Sending one as a wall of text with no paragraph breaks. Usually the result of pasting into a portal text box and not checking. It reads as unreadable, and the reader is not obliged to fight through it.

A file name that says nothing. cover_letter_final2.pdf sits in a downloads folder next to forty others. Name it Firstname-Lastname-Cover-Letter.pdf.

The wrong file entirely. Sending the letter you wrote for a different company is not rare, it is common. So is attaching last year's CV. Open every attachment after you attach it, before you send.

A letter longer than one page. At a glance, before reading, a page and a half signals that you did not edit. Under 300 words is the working target; 400 is the ceiling.

Format the employer did not ask for. If they asked for a Word file, send Word. If they gave you a portal box, use it and also attach if allowed. Choosing your own preferred format is a small act of not listening. The general question of file types is covered in PDF or Word.

Stage two: the first two lines

This is where most letters die, and where almost nobody spends their editing time.

"I am writing to apply for the position of X advertised on Y." Not offensive, just empty. The reader knows what you are applying for; it is in the subject line, the portal, and the file name. You have spent your best sentence on information they already have. Cut it or compress it to a clause, and lead with the sentence you were going to put second.

"Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by..." It buys nothing, and it costs you the reader's belief that the letter will be about them.

"As you can see from my attached CV..." You have just told them to go and read a different document. They may do exactly that and not come back.

Naming the wrong job title. More common than you would think, because letters get recycled. It ends the reading immediately, and rightly: if you cannot get the name of the job right, why would they trust you with the job.

Opening with a quotation. A line from a famous person at the top of a cover letter reads as filler and delays the point. There is no version of this that helps.

Opening with an apology. "Although I do not have all the requirements" hands the reader a reason to stop. If you need to address a gap, address it in the middle, after you have given them a reason to care. There is a full treatment of how to do that in the cover letter with no experience.

What works instead: a first sentence that could only have been written about that job or that company, followed immediately by your strongest fact.

Stage three: the body

The body is where the letter earns its place, and where most letters simply take up space.

Retelling the CV in prose. The single most common substantive mistake. If your letter is a narrated version of your work history, it adds nothing and doubles the reading time. The letter's job is to say what the CV cannot: why this record fits this problem. Some overlap is fine and unavoidable; wholesale duplication is not.

Adjectives instead of evidence. "Highly motivated, detail oriented team player with excellent communication skills" is four claims and zero information. Every one of them can be replaced by a fact that proves it, and the fact is always shorter than the paragraph of adjectives around it.

Before: "I am highly organised and thrive under pressure in fast paced environments." After: "I ran the dispatch desk for four months while we were a driver short, and we did not miss a scheduled collection."

Writing about what you want. "This role would be a great opportunity for me to develop my skills" is true and irrelevant. The reader is not buying your development, they are buying an outcome. Anything you want belongs in one short clause at most, and only if it explains your motivation for choosing them.

Praise with nothing behind it. "Your company is a leader in the industry and I have always admired your commitment to excellence." Interchangeable, therefore worthless, and worse, it advertises that you did not look them up. The fix is small: name one specific thing they did, not one thing they are.

Claims the reader cannot check and would not believe. "I increased sales by 400%." Even if it is true, an unqualified figure with no context reads as invented. Add the base and the mechanism, or use a smaller honest number. How to do it properly is set out in quantifying achievements.

Not answering the ad. If the ad names three things and your letter addresses none of them, you have written a nice letter about yourself. The letter does not need to work through all the requirements, but it should visibly answer the one that matters most. Which requirement that is, and how to spot it, is the subject of tailoring to the job description.

Four half examples instead of one whole one. A letter that touches on four achievements at one sentence each proves nothing about any of them. One example with a situation, an action and a result is worth more than four fragments.

The story with no point. Anecdotes work in cover letters, but only if the last sentence of the anecdote is about the job. If the story ends and the reader has to work out why they were told it, it was a cost, not an asset.

Stage four: the close

The last two lines get read even by people who skimmed everything else, which makes them expensive real estate.

Ending without an ask. "Thank you for your consideration" is a full stop, not a next step. Give them something to say yes to: your availability, your notice period, an offer to talk through a specific part of the role.

Passive, apologetic phrasing. "I hope to hear from you at your earliest convenience should you consider my application suitable" is three hedges in one sentence. "I am available from 3 September and would be glad to talk" is the same content without the flinching.

Giving a salary figure when nobody asked. In most markets it is premature and it can price you out before anyone has met you. The exception is a country or employer that explicitly asks for salary expectations in the ad, in which case leaving it out reads as not reading the ad.

Volunteering unnecessary private information. Health, family plans, relationship status, immigration status when it does not affect eligibility. It invites bias and it does not help.

Signing off wrongly. If you opened with a name, close formally to match. Small, but it is the last thing they see.

Stage five: the tells of a mass send

These are separate because they do not merely weaken the letter, they cancel it.

The wrong company name. Fatal, and it happens most often in the second paragraph, where people forget to update after the first.

A sentence that fits any employer. If your entire letter could be sent unchanged to their competitor, you have written a form. The test is simple: delete the company name and read it again. If nothing else has to change, nothing in the letter is about them.

The same letter to three people at one company. They talk. Pick the person who would manage you and write to them.

Copy-paste artefacts. A different font in one paragraph, a stray bracket where a placeholder was, "Dear [Hiring Manager]", inconsistent spacing. All of them say the same thing: this letter came off a production line.

A letter that is obviously machine written and not edited. The tells are familiar to anyone who reads applications: fluent, symmetric, enthusiastic, and completely free of specifics. Using a tool to draft is normal now; sending the draft unedited is the mistake, because what makes a letter work is precisely the detail only you know.

Stage six: what surfaces later

Some mistakes cost you nothing on the first read and everything afterwards.

Contradicting your own CV. Different dates, a different job title, a claim in the letter that the CV does not support. Whoever notices it stops believing both documents.

Contradicting your LinkedIn. Same problem, one click away.

Overstating something you cannot defend in a conversation. If the letter says you led a project, expect to be asked how many people and what you decided. An exaggeration that collapses in an interview is worse than the modest truth that got you there.

Typos in the two places that matter most. Everyone knows to spell check. Two spots survive spell check and do the most damage: the recipient's name and the company's name. Check both by eye, every time.

Things that look like mistakes and are not

Half of cover letter advice is superstition. These are worth ignoring.

"Never use Dear Sir or Madam." Use a name whenever you can find one. When you genuinely cannot, a neutral greeting is fine and is far better than guessing a name wrongly or writing "Dear Recruiter".

"Never repeat anything from your CV." Some repetition is necessary; the letter has to name the evidence it is arguing from. What you must avoid is repeating everything and adding nothing.

"Never use the word I." A letter is from you. Trying to avoid the first person produces contorted, unreadable prose. Just do not start every sentence with it.

"It must be exactly one page." It must be under one page. Two hundred words that say something beat a full page of padding.

"You must use a formal address block with both postal addresses." Necessary in some countries and for printed applications, pointless in the body of an email. Match the medium.

"Never mention a weakness or a gap." Naming a gap and immediately answering it is one of the strongest moves available. Dwelling on it is the mistake, not mentioning it. Gaps specifically are handled in explaining employment gaps.

"Humour is unprofessional." A light touch is fine when the sector is light. A joke instead of evidence is not. The risk is not humour, it is using it to fill a gap where a fact should be.

The ten minute check before you send

Do these in order. Each one catches a different stage of failure.

1. Delete the company name and read the letter. If nothing else has to change, rewrite the third paragraph. 2. Read only the first two lines. Do they contain information the reader does not already have? 3. Highlight every adjective about yourself. Replace each one with a fact or delete it. 4. Find your one piece of evidence. If you cannot point at a single paragraph and say "that is the argument", the letter has no argument. 5. Read the last sentence. Is there something for them to act on? 6. Check the recipient name and the company name by eye. Twice. 7. Cross check dates and job titles against your CV. 8. Open the attachment. Confirm it is the right file, and that it opens. 9. Count the words. Over 400, cut. 10. Read it out loud. Anything you would not say in a room, take out.

Common questions

How long should a cover letter be? Between 150 and 300 words for most applications. Length is not a virtue; the only reason to be longer is that you have more evidence worth reading, which is rarer than people think.

Is it a mistake to use a template? Using a template for the structure is sensible. Using one for the sentences is the mistake, because the reusable sentences are exactly the ones that carry no information.

Should I explain why I left my last job? Not unless it is visible and would otherwise be a question mark, and then in one clause without emotion. The letter is not the place to litigate a departure.

Is a cover letter still worth writing if the ad does not ask for one? When your application needs interpretation, yes: career change, a gap, an unusual path, a thin CV. When you are a straightforward match applying through a portal with hundreds of applicants, it matters less. It costs fifteen minutes either way.

Does the ATS reject letters for the wrong keywords? Screening systems mostly parse and store the CV; the letter is usually stored rather than scored, and a person decides. Write for the person. What the system actually does is described in what an ATS is.

What is the single most common mistake? Writing a letter that is about you rather than about the fit between you and one specific job. Almost every mistake above is a version of that one.

The short version

Everything on this page reduces to two questions. Could this letter have been sent to someone else without changing a word? And does it contain one fact that a person would want to ask me about? If the first answer is no and the second is yes, none of the other mistakes will sink you.

CvLaunch can check the CV that goes with the letter, show you how it reads against the specific ad you are answering, and tell you which of your evidence is actually reaching the person on the other end.