What are the six parts of a cover letter?

A cover letter has six parts: header, greeting, hook, body, close, signature. The header repeats your resume's contact block, the hook leads with an achievement, the body ties two or three achievements to requirements in the posting, and the close names one next step. Do not restate the resume, and do not open with "I am writing to apply."

• The header carries your name, a professional email, a phone number, city and state, and the date — not your street address.
• A named greeting beats a named team, which beats "Dear Hiring Manager". "To Whom It May Concern" is last.
• The hook is one or two sentences carrying either an achievement with a number or a specific observation about the company.
• Each body paragraph runs claim, evidence, relevance, and maps to a requirement you can point at in the posting.
• The close names one next step. "I look forward to hearing from you" names none.
• 250–350 words, three or four paragraphs, 10–12pt type, one-inch margins, one page.

What goes in the header, and what does not​

The header duplicates the contact block from your resume, in the same order and typeface: full name, professional email, phone number, city and state, and the date. A LinkedIn URL is worth adding if the profile is current. A professional title under your name is optional, and it earns its place when your current title and the role you are applying for are not the same word.

Leave your street address out — it is a privacy exposure and nobody needs it to schedule a call. Leave graphics and coloured banners out too; the letter is a text document, read rather than looked at. If your email address dates from university, register a firstname.lastname one first.

Because the header repeats the resume, build it once and reuse it. Both documents live on the same Documents hub, so copying the block across takes a minute and guarantees the two match.

Who do you address it to when the posting has no name?​

In order: the hiring manager by name, then the team ("Dear Design Team"), then "Dear Hiring Manager", then the company's hiring team. "To Whom It May Concern" is the one to avoid — not because it is rude, but because it is the only greeting that tells the reader you did not look.

Looking takes five minutes. Search LinkedIn for the company plus "recruiter" or the department name, check the team or About page, and read the posting itself, since some are signed. If five minutes produces nothing, use the team form and move on; a wrong name is worse than a general greeting. Copy the spelling from the source rather than typing it from memory, and use the full name as written instead of guessing at a title.

FluxResume's Cover Letter editor has a recipient field in the Smart Mode panel that searches people you have already saved, or takes a name typed manually. It does not find the name for you.

What makes a hook work?​

A hook is one or two sentences doing one of four jobs.

Lead with an achievement. A line like "When I led the rebranding that increased qualified leads by 156%, I found I do my best work repositioning companies, which is why this Marketing Director opening caught my attention" puts a number in the first clause and the role in the second.

Lead with their problem. "Your recent expansion into the European market needs someone who understands both local regulation and a single global brand voice" shows you read past the requirements list.

Lead with the connection. If someone referred you, name them in the first sentence — it is the one piece of context a resume cannot carry.

Lead with the pivot. "Five years ago I moved from finance into product management because I wanted to build the thing rather than model it" works when the career change is the reader's obvious question.

What does not work: "I am writing to apply for", "I saw your job posting", "I believe I am qualified because", and generic enthusiasm about an exciting opportunity. Each spends your strongest two sentences on what the subject line already said.

How should the body be structured?​

Two or three paragraphs, one achievement each, in three moves: the claim (what you did), the evidence (the number), and the relevance (the requirement it answers). The third paragraph can carry fit instead of a third achievement — something specific about how the company works and where your experience meets it.

Pick achievements that answer requirements, and attach a number to each. Revenue: a line like "Increased revenue by $2.3M, 34% year over year." Efficiency: "Reduced invoice processing time by 67%." Scale: "Managed a team of 15 across three regions." Growth: "Grew the user base from 10,000 to 100,000 in 18 months." These are the same lines that carry a summary of qualifications on the resume — write them once, choose per posting.

What makes the body hard is that nothing in it may simply repeat the resume. The resume says what you did; the letter says why it mattered and how, in the two or three cases this posting cares about.

How do you close without sounding passive?​

Three or four sentences: restate the specific interest, compress your value into one clause, name a next step. "I would like to walk through how the migration was staged, if that is useful before a first call" is a next step. "I look forward to hearing from you" is not, and neither is "please contact me at your convenience". Skip apology ("I hope you will consider me") and overclaiming ("I am perfect for this role") alike.

The signature is deliberately boring. "Sincerely," or "Best regards," then your full name, optionally your title and LinkedIn URL. Not "Cheers", not "Yours truly", nothing personal.

What formatting and length does the letter need?​

One readable typeface at 10–12pt, single-spaced with a blank line between paragraphs, one-inch margins, left-aligned, one page. Consistency with the resume matters more than the specific choice.

In FluxResume, letters sit on the Cover Letters tab of the Documents hub, and that tab appears only when Cover Letter is on for your plan. The editor puts Smart Mode on the left (letter name, job, resume, recipient, tone), the letter body in the centre, and word and sentence counts under the page — the fastest way to check you are inside 250–350 words. Tone options are Confident, Balanced, Creative, Formal and Passionate; Regenerate rewrites from the current settings, and Save, Preview and Download sit in the header.

Two things it does not do, and both cost real work. There is no template library organised by industry, seniority or scenario — saved letters are letters, not categorised starting points. And there is no side-by-side view of a resume and a letter, so checking that the two complement rather than repeat each other means opening both and reading them yourself. Worked examples: https://fluxresume.io/cover-letter-examples/.

With the six parts in place, the failure modes are the separate problem, and most of them are content rather than structure: the mistakes that get a cover letter skipped. If you draft with an assistant, this structure is what you check the draft against — see using ChatGPT for a cover letter.

Common questions​

How long should a cover letter be?​

250–350 words, three or four paragraphs, one page. Below roughly 150 words there is no room for an achievement with evidence, so the letter adds nothing the resume did not already say. Above 400 the reader starts skimming for the part that concerns them, which is worse than a shorter letter. Use the word count under the page in the editor rather than guessing.

What if you cannot find the hiring manager's name?​

Use "Dear" plus the team or department — "Dear Product Design Team". It reads as deliberate rather than lazy, and it is accurate, which "Dear Hiring Manager" sometimes is not when a panel is reading. Spend five minutes looking on LinkedIn, the company's team page and the posting itself first. Do not guess between two candidate names; a misspelled name costs more than a general greeting.

Should the letter repeat the resume?​

No. The resume already lists titles, dates and outcomes, and a letter summarising them wastes its one page. The letter's job is the part a bullet cannot hold: why you made a decision, how you got a result, and which requirement in this posting your experience answers. Pick two or three achievements the resume states flatly and give them the context that makes them relevant here.

Do you need a cover letter at all?​

Send one whenever the application gives you a field for it. Skip it when there is no upload field, or when the posting says resume only — the letter then either reaches nobody or reads as not following instructions. The condition that flips the answer is the form, not the seniority of the role. When you do send one, it has to be written for that company; a generic letter is the version that costs you something.

Originally published March 2025. Reviewed and rewritten for FluxResume in August 2026.