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Top Mistakes In A Cover Letter, As Narrated By A Recruiter

In thirty years of management, I’ve read somewhere north of ten thousand cover letters. The first one I remember was typed on Basildon Bond paper. The most recent landed in an applicant tracking system at 11:47 pm last Tuesday. The mistakes, oddly, have not changed much.

What has changed is the volume. A mid-level role at a London firm now pulls 200 to 400 applications inside the first 48 hours. We screen fast. Eye-tracking research published by The Ladders found recruiters spend roughly 6 to 8 seconds on a first scan of an application, and that figure has not improved. Your cover letter has to survive that pass before anything else happens.

So if you want to know the cover letter mistakes that quietly kill a candidacy, this is the recruiter’s view from across the desk, with the polite filters off.

What a cover letter is actually for, from the recruiter’s seat

A cover letter is a small piece of evidence. It is the only freeform writing I get from you before the interview, and it tells me three things very quickly. Whether you can read a job spec. Whether you can write a coherent paragraph. Whether you have done thirty seconds of research on us.

That is the whole job. The CV proves what you did. The cover letter proves who is writing the application and how carefully they’re paying attention.

Most candidates treat it as a ceremony, a formality to clear before the real document. I treat it as the most honest signal in the file, because most of the CV is buffed by templates and AI tools, and the cover letter still has nowhere to hide.

The mistakes that get your application binned

Some of these are fatal at first sight. Some only become obvious on a second read. All of them are common, all are fixable, and all have cost real people interviews I would otherwise have given them.

I’ve ordered them by how badly they damage a candidacy, starting with the worst.

1. Addressing the letter to nobody in particular

Dear Sir/Madam,

To Whom It May Concern,

If a candidate can’t be bothered to find out my name, I assume the same energy will go into their work. The contact name is usually in the job advert, on LinkedIn, or on the company’s careers page. Five minutes of research closes this gap.

A casual “Hi Dude” or “Hey there” is worse. Casual openers signal you haven’t read the room. They land especially badly in financial services, law, and the public sector, where the convention is still formal.

The fix. Use the recruiter’s full name and a polite salutation. If the name genuinely can’t be found, “Dear Hiring Team at [Company]” is a clean fallback. Never open a letter to a senior hire with “Hi”.

2. Misspelling the recruiter’s name, the hiring manager’s name, or the company’s name

I once received an otherwise strong application addressed to “Dear Ms Pattel” when my surname is Patel. The letter was binned. Not because I’m precious about my surname, but because spelling someone’s name correctly is the lowest bar in professional correspondence.

The worst version of this is the wrong company name pasted in from the previous application. I’ve seen “I would love to work at Barclays” arrive in a Lloyds inbox. That candidate did not get a reply.

The fix. Read the first line of your letter three times before you send it. Then read it again.

3. Failing to tailor the letter to the role and the company

Generic letters are the single largest category of cover letter errors recruiters notice. They follow a tell-tale pattern: the candidate’s career story, the candidate’s strengths, a closing line about being a “great fit”, and no specific reference to the role itself.

If I remove the company name from your letter, and it could be sent to any other employer in the sector, the letter is doing nothing for you. I know it. The hiring manager knows it. The other 300 candidates know it too, because half of them did the same.

The fix. Quote one specific phrase from the job description and one specific thing about the company that genuinely matters to you. Two sentences are plenty.

4. Treating the cover letter as a prose version of your CV

Your CV is already in the file. I’ve read it. If your cover letter retells the same career history in paragraph form, it has wasted my time and yours.

The cover letter’s job is to add. The story behind the headline. The reason this role makes sense for you now. The single achievement you most want me to notice on the CV before I scan it. Three things the CV cannot say on its own.

The fix. Open the CV next to the draft letter. If a sentence in the letter says the same thing as a bullet on the CV, cut it.

5. Framing the role as a stepping stone

I see this office assistant position as a useful stepping stone towards my long-term career in architecture.

I’ve read that line in roughly that form maybe fifty times. It’s a polite confession that the candidate will leave the moment something better appears. From my seat, that’s a budget I cannot justify spending. Recruitment, onboarding, and the first six months of training cost real money.

A stepping-stone admission reads as low effort. It tells me the candidate has not thought about why this specific role might be genuinely interesting on its own terms.

The fix. Write the letter as if this role is the destination, not the corridor. If you can’t honestly do that, the role might be wrong for you.

6. Filling the page with hobbies and trivia that have nothing to do with the role

Being captain of your Sunday pub football team is admirable. Winning the local snooker league is impressive in its own way. I’ve read bot in cover letters for treasury analyst roles, and neither helped.

Hobbies belong on the CV, briefly, at the bottom. The cover letter is too short and too expensive a piece of real estate to spend on them, unless the hobby is genuinely relevant. A candidate for a publishing house mentioning that they run a small book club is fair game. A candidate for an audit role telling me about their love of competitive eating is not.

The fix. Every sentence in the letter should connect, directly or indirectly, to the role.

7. Bloated waffle with no clear thesis

I am writing to express my keen interest in the position advertised on your company’s careers page, and I feel that my diverse range of skills, accumulated over a varied career path, would make me an excellent candidate for the role in question.

That paragraph contains 48 words and zero information. I’ve read it a hundred times in slightly different costumes. By the time the candidate has cleared their throat, I’ve moved on.

A recruiter scanning at a 7-second pace does not have the patience to mine your letter for the point. If the first paragraph fails to put a clear hook in front of me, the letter is dead.

The fix. Write the letter. Delete the first paragraph. Start at paragraph two. Most letters improve.

8. Spelling slips, grammar errors, and over-reliance on spell-check

Spell-check catches typos. It does not catch “manager” when you mean “manager”, and it does not catch the candidate who confidently writes that they are a “strong asset to any rogue organisation”.

A single typo on a junior application is forgivable on a good day. Two typosares a pattern. There is a decision. For roles where attention to detail is part of the work (analyst, paralegal, copyeditor, compliance), a single typo is often enough to close the file.

The fix. Print the letter. Read it on paper. Then read it aloud. Then ask one other person to read it. Three different passes catch nearly every error.

9. The unmistakable smell of an AI-written cover letter

This is the 2026 addition. After three years of widespread AI writing tools, recruiters have learned what an unedited language-model letter looks like. It opens with a long sentence containing the phrase “I am writing to express my enthusiasm”. It contains the words “passionate”, “dynamic”, and “results-oriented” within the first 100 words. Every paragraph is the same length. There are always three reasons the candidate is suitable.

Used well, an AI tool is a fine drafting assistant. Sent raw, it tells me the candidate could not be bothered to put thirty minutes of their own thinking into the letter. Recent hiring surveys from publishers, including ResumeLab and CareerBuilder, suggest a meaningful share of hiring managers treat obvious AI text as a negative signal. My own informal data lines up with that.

The fix. Draft with whatever tool you like. Then rewrite in your own voice. Cut one paragraph. Add one detail that only you could have written.

10. No quantified achievement anywhere in the letter

Most candidates tell me they’re “experienced”, “driven”, or “highly motivated”. Few of them tell me what those words look like in practice. The candidate who writes

In my last role, I led the migration of 14,000 customer accounts to a new billing platform, cutting average resolution time by 22% over six months,

is doing different work in the second sentence. Numbers prove the claim. They also read as the writing of someone who measures their own output, which is a useful trait in almost every role I hire for.

The fix. Put one specific quantified achievement into the letter. A figure, a percentage, a value, a date, a duration. Something that proves the adjective.

11. A weak or missing close

Looking forward to hearing from you.

A close like that wastes the most valuable sentence in the letter. The last line is the one I read just before I decide whether to open the CV. It should ask for the next step plainly, name the next step, and sound like you.

A strong close confirms the next action (“I’ll be in London on the 14th and 15th if a short call works either day”), or signposts the most relevant attachment (“My CV is attached, and a short writing sample sits on page two”), or both.

The fix. End with one specific, useful sentence. Skip the closing pleasantry.

12. Sending a cover letter longer than one page

I read three-page cover letters perhaps once a year, and they are rarely worth the time. The convention for most commercial roles is one page, three or four short paragraphs, somewhere around 250 to 400 words. Any more and the candidate has not edited.

The exception is academic posts, certain senior public-sector roles, and a small number of consultancy applications where a longer statement is invited. Read the brief. If the brief says one page, send one page.

The fix. Cut by 20%. Then cut another 10%. The letter will improve.

What a fixed letter actually looks like

Here is the kind of cover letter I bin in 8 seconds.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to apply for the role I saw on your website. I have always wanted to work for a prestigious global company that pays well. I am a hard-working, motivated, dynamic person with a strong skill set, and I believe I would be a valuable addition to your team.

I am available to interview at your convenience.

Kind regards,
[Candidate]

It is generic. It tells me nothing about the candidate, nothing about why they want this role, and the salutation alone has already cost the interview.

Here is the kind of letter I would read twice.

Dear Ms Carter,

I’d like to apply for the Junior Treasury Analyst role advertised on jobsRmine. I was drawn to it for two reasons. Your team’s recent work on the pan-European liquidity restructure was covered in Treasury Today last March, and the role specifically asks for someone who can build cash-flow models from messy data.

In my current role at a mid-sized retailer, I rebuilt the weekly forecasting model after our finance lead left. The new model cut our variance against actuals from 14% to 4% across three quarters and is now used by the wider FP&A team. I’d value the chance to do similar work in a more complex environment.

My CV is attached. I’ll be in central London on Thursday and Friday next week if a short call works either day.

Kind regards,
Jamie Okafor

Same length. Specific company. Specific role. Specific achievement. Specific number. Specific next step. The candidate sounds like a person.

The pre-send checklist

Run every cover letter through this before you press send.

• The salutation uses the recruiter’s correct name and correct spelling.
• The first paragraph names the specific role and one specific reason for this company.
• The letter contains at least one quantified achievement.
• The letter says something the CV does not.
• There are no sentences that could appear unchanged in a letter to a different employer.
• Every paragraph earns its place. Bloat has been cut.
• The close proposes a specific next step.
• The whole letter sits on one page, and you have read it aloud once.

Frequently asked questions

Do recruiters actually read cover letters in 2026?

Some do, some don’t, and many skim. Surveys from ResumeLab and similar careers publishers have consistently found that a clear majority of hiring decision-makers say a strong cover letter improves a borderline candidate’s chances, even when they admit they don’t read every one. Treat it as an optional document you write anyway, because the cost of skipping it is high on the day it would have mattered.

How long should a cover letter be?

One page, three or four short paragraphs, somewhere between 250 and 400 words for most commercial roles. Academic posts, senior public-sector applications, and some consultancy briefs occasionally invite longer statements. Read the brief and follow it.

Is it acceptable to use ChatGPT or another AI tool to write my cover letter?

For drafting, yes. For sending unedited, no. Recruiters in 2026 spot raw AI letters quickly and treat them as a negative signal. Use the tool as a junior copywriter, then rewrite in your own voice, cut a paragraph, and add a specific detail only you could have written.

What if I genuinely can’t find the name of the recruiter or hiring manager?

Check the job advert, the company’s careers page, LinkedIn, the About page, and the recent blog bylines. If five minutes of research turns up nothing, “Dear Hiring Team at [Company Name]” is acceptable. Avoid “Dear Sir or Madam” and “To Whom It May Concern”.

Should I send a cover letter if the application form doesn’t ask for one?

If the form allows an upload or a free-text field, attach one. A short, well-written letter in the additional information box gives you an edge on candidates who used the default. If the form actively says no cover letter is required, respect the instruction.

Last word

Most cover letters fail for the same handful of reasons, and the candidates who fix those reasons stand out within the first paragraph. Spend an extra forty minutes on your letter the night before you send it. Read it aloud. Cut what doesn’t help. Spell my name correctly. That is most of the job.