Most cover letters fail for the same reasons: a wasted first sentence, no real name in the greeting, nothing that couldn’t have been copy-pasted to fifty other applications. These five tips fix the most common problems — and if you’re using ApplyGen, most of them are handled for you before you write a word.
Before you start
- Install the ApplyGen Chrome extension and create an account.
- Upload your resume PDF in the Settings tab. ApplyGen uses it to pull relevant experience into your letters.
- Navigate to the job posting you’re applying to — ApplyGen generates directly from the page you’re on.
1. Kill the opener you copied from Google
The most-read sentence in your cover letter is the first one. Most people use it to announce that they are applying for a job — which the document already makes obvious.
“I am writing to apply for the Senior Designer role at Acme Corp” tells the reader nothing they don’t already know. It’s a reflex, and it costs you the only sentence a busy recruiter is guaranteed to read.
Replace it with the strongest thing you bring to this specific role. If you shipped a product used by 200,000 people, say that. If you’ve spent five years solving exactly the problem this team is hiring for, open there.
Before: “I am writing to express my interest in the Marketing Manager position at Brandco.”
After: “I’ve spent the last three years running paid acquisition for a DTC brand — from $0 to $4M in annual revenue — and Brandco’s expansion into EU markets is exactly the problem I want to work on next.”
The second version gives the reader a reason to keep reading. The first gives them a reason to stop.
When you generate a letter with ApplyGen, it skips the announcing-that-you’re-applying opener by default and leads with something from your resume that’s relevant to the role.
2. Find a real name to address
“Dear Hiring Manager” is not wrong. It’s just a signal that you didn’t look.
Most job postings are connected to a real person — a recruiter, a hiring manager, a team lead. That person’s name is usually findable in two minutes. Check the LinkedIn page for the company and search by department. Check the “team” or “about” page on the company website. Sometimes the posting itself names them.
When you find the name, use it. “Dear Priya Mehta” is warmer, more specific, and stands out against a stack of identically generic greetings.
If you’ve genuinely looked and found nothing, “Dear Hiring Manager” is fine. The effort matters more than the result — and a letter that’s strong everywhere else will survive an impersonal salutation.
ApplyGen lets you customize your salutation in the Settings tab. Set it to the name you’ve found, or keep your default for postings where no name is available.
3. Write one sentence that couldn’t appear in any other application
This is the test that separates letters that get read from letters that get skimmed and filed.
Read your cover letter and ask: could I send this, unchanged, to five other companies hiring for similar roles? If the answer is yes, it’s not tailored — it’s a template with a different company name at the top.
You need one sentence that anchors the letter to this job, at this company, right now. That might be:
- A specific product feature you use and want to help improve (“I’ve been using Notion’s API to build internal tools for two years — the new automations workflow is exactly where I’d want to be contributing”)
- A line from the JD that isn’t boilerplate (“You mentioned wanting someone who can work across engineering and sales — I’ve spent the last 18 months doing exactly that at a 20-person startup”)
- A piece of company news that’s genuinely relevant to the role (“Seeing that you’re expanding into enterprise this year, I wanted to reach out — my last role was entirely focused on moving a PLG product upmarket”)
One sentence is enough. You’re not writing a research paper. You’re proving you actually read the posting.
ApplyGen pulls from the job description on the page you’re viewing, so the letters it generates are already grounded in the specific role — not generic. That said, adding your own sentence of specific context before you finalize always strengthens the output.
4. Cut anything you can’t back up with a detail
Run a quick audit before you send. Find every phrase that makes a claim about you as a person:
- “I am a strong communicator”
- “I am passionate about product”
- “I am a fast learner”
- “I work well in teams”
Now ask: is there a specific detail attached to this claim? If yes, lead with the detail and let the claim follow (or drop it entirely). If no, cut the phrase.
“I am a strong communicator” means nothing. “I ran weekly all-hands for a 60-person team and managed our external investor updates” shows it.
These phrases appear in every letter submitted for every role. A recruiter at a company like Stripe or Figma has read “passionate about building great products” enough times that it triggers a kind of semantic blindness. The phrase costs space and earns nothing.
This is also where ApplyGen’s emphasis settings help. If you tell it to emphasize achievements over soft skills, it pulls concrete results from your resume rather than personality adjectives. You can configure this in Settings under AI Preferences. For a full walkthrough of personalization options, see the ApplyGen Update v1.9.0: Style Presets and Advanced Personalization post.
5. Stop at 350 words
Set a word limit before you start. Not as an afterthought — before.
350 words is enough for three solid paragraphs: why this role, what you bring that’s specific to it, and a short close. Anything past that is almost always padding. A second paragraph that says the same thing as the first in different words. A sentence restating your enthusiasm. An unnecessary summary of your resume.
Recruiters skim cover letters. The letter that earns 30 seconds of genuine attention is almost always shorter than the one that gets two paragraphs read before being set aside.
Editing to a word count also forces a useful discipline: when you have to cut, you cut the weakest material first. The letter that survives the cut is tighter and more readable than the one you started with.
ApplyGen’s default output is set to 300 words. You can adjust this in Settings, but 250–300 is a good target for most roles. If you’re applying for a senior leadership position or an academic role, longer is appropriate — but for most professional jobs, shorter wins.
If something goes wrong
The generated letter sounds generic. Check that your resume is uploaded and that your AI preferences are configured. A letter generated without resume context will default to plausible-but-vague. Go to Settings, confirm your resume text is there, and regenerate.
The letter doesn’t reference the right role. Make sure you’re on the actual job posting page when you click Generate — not the search results or a company overview page. ApplyGen reads the page you’re viewing.
The tone doesn’t match how you write. Adjust the tone setting in your AI Preferences. “Confident” and “concise” are the settings that produce the most direct, least hedged output. “Friendly” works well for startups and creative roles.
You can’t find the hiring manager’s name. Check LinkedIn (search the company + department), the company’s team or about page, and any email threads or outreach you’ve had with the company. If nothing surfaces, “Dear Hiring Manager” is fine.
FAQ
How long should a cover letter be? Under 350 words. Three focused paragraphs — why this role, what you bring, and a short close — is enough. Anything longer usually means padding, and padding costs you reader attention.
Should I write a cover letter for every application? No. Most ATS-first applications have a cover letter field that goes unread. Write one when the posting says it’s required, when a human clearly reads first (small companies, referrals), or when the role evaluates written communication as part of the job.
What if I can’t find the hiring manager’s name? “Dear Hiring Manager” is fine when you’ve genuinely looked and found nothing. Check LinkedIn, the company’s team page, and the job posting itself. Two minutes of searching is usually enough — and when you find the name, it’s worth using.
Can ApplyGen personalize the letter to a specific job? Yes. ApplyGen reads the job description from the page you’re on and generates a letter built around that posting, not a generic template. It uses your uploaded resume and saved preferences to tailor tone, emphasis, and structure.
What if I’m applying with no formal experience? Lead with projects, coursework, or transferable skills — not enthusiasm. The post Cover Letter With No Experience: Lead With Projects, Not Enthusiasm covers this in detail.
These five things — a strong opener, a real name, one specific sentence, no empty claims, and a tight word count — account for most of the difference between a letter that gets read and one that doesn’t. ApplyGen handles the first draft; these tips are how you make sure what goes out is worth sending.
Install ApplyGen, upload your resume, and generate your first letter from the job posting you’re looking at right now.