The letter, four parts, and what each one asks of you

The cover letter builder has four parts and only one of them involves typing prose. What follows is the journey as it runs, with what each part actually asks for.

Your résumé, read in and checked

Choose Start with your résumé, then upload the file or paste the text, and the review shows what was read before anything else happens: the roles, the degree, the skills, each one editable. That review is the whole of your evidence, which is why the letter is quick: the slow part was done when you wrote the document. The paper is a separate choice. The gallery shows complete letters rather than thumbnails, which is argued in why a letter gallery shows whole letters, and Change design switches between them at any time.

Details and drafting: the job

The role, the company and the posting, with the recipient's name, title and city as optional extras. The posting is read to find what the employer is asking for, and the builder tells you how many requirements it recognised before you press Create new draft.

What the engine does with that

It selects. Every evidence sentence is a line from your own résumé, carried with a reference to the line it came from, so Details on a paragraph can show where each claim came from. It never composes a new claim. Where it cannot find real evidence it writes less rather than padding, which is described in why a letter only claims what the résumé shows.

Your letter: read and adjust

The draft arrives as blocks, greeting, opening, experience, relevant skills, closing and sign-off, each an editable field with its own word count. The builder drafts in one plain, direct voice, and every paragraph is yours to reword; Save version keeps a copy first, so nothing is lost by trying. Versions are covered in versions and restoring a draft.

Review and download: the part worth slowing down for

The finished letter sits beside a Before you send checklist: the recipient and role it is addressed to, the signature, and the length in words. If the posting asked for something your résumé cannot support, the draft has already named it, once, as something you have not used, and claimed it nowhere. If there is no name on the letter, the checklist says so. That refusal is the unsigned-letter rule.

Then the download

Print / Save PDF and Download DOCX, free, in any of the 12 designs. If you would rather paste it into the message body, Copy text is beside them, and that decision is weighed in the cover letter in the email body, with the envelope around it in emailing a résumé.

What to change before you download

Three things are worth a minute each. The opening, because a letter that names the role and the company and one real reason reads as written for this application rather than adapted to it. The evidence, because the strongest line should answer whatever the posting put first. And the closing block, which is where a required detail goes if the advert asked for one. Every block is an editable field with its own word count, so all three are direct edits rather than a rewrite, and a saved version is there if you change your mind.

What this page does not claim

A time. The slug says twelve minutes and we have not stood over anybody with a stopwatch, so this page will not pretend to a measurement it did not take. What is true is structural: three of the four parts are choices rather than writing, the evidence is selected rather than composed, and the only part that takes real thought is your reason for wanting the job, which nothing here will write for you.

There is a reason the product will not write that sentence, and it is worth stating. A motivation paragraph is the one part of a letter that cannot come from a résumé, because the résumé does not contain your reason for wanting this job. A generator would produce a plausible one, you would send it, and you would be asked about it in an interview. The engine returns a shorter letter instead, which is the same principle as what we refuse to generate and the reason the gaps are named at all.

One final thing the four parts make possible that is worth using. Because the evidence comes from the résumé rather than from you, a weak letter is usually a signal about the document rather than about your writing. If the draft comes back with two thin paragraphs, the material is not in the résumé yet, and the repair is in the builder rather than in the letter. That diagnosis arrives free with every draft, and it is more useful than any amount of rewriting at the letter stage.