What is a cover letter, and do you still need one?
What a cover letter is for, when it actually gets read, and how to write one that adds something a resume cannot say on its own.
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A cover letter is a short, one-page letter submitted alongside a resume, addressed to the specific employer, explaining why you are applying and why you are a fit for this particular role. Where a resume lists facts, a cover letter is the one place in an application where you get to write in your own voice and connect those facts to a specific opportunity.
Do you actually need one
If a job listing explicitly asks for a cover letter, write one. Skipping it when it was requested is a fast way to signal that you did not read the listing closely, which is not the impression you want to leave before anyone has read your resume.
If a listing does not mention one, it is optional, and its value depends on the situation. A cover letter is most worth writing when you have something genuinely useful to say that does not fit naturally into a resume: why you are changing fields, a specific connection to the company’s mission, or context around an unusual gap or transition in your history. If none of that applies, a generic cover letter restating your resume in paragraph form adds little and some reviewers skip it entirely.
What makes one worth reading
Specificity is what separates a cover letter that gets read from one that gets skimmed and discarded. Naming the actual role and company, referencing something concrete about the team or the product, and connecting one or two real achievements to what the role needs, all of that reads as a letter written for this application. A cover letter that could be sent to any company for any job, with just the company name swapped, reads as exactly that.
Structure that works
Open with the specific role and a one-line reason you are interested, not a restatement of your resume. In the middle, pick one or two of your strongest, most relevant achievements and briefly connect them to what the role needs, going slightly deeper than a resume bullet can. Close with a short, direct line about wanting to talk further. Three to four short paragraphs, one page at most.
What to leave out
Do not repeat your resume line by line; the reader has already seen it or is about to. Avoid generic enthusiasm with nothing behind it, like “I am a hardworking team player passionate about your mission,” which says nothing a reader could not assume by default. And do not apologize for gaps or weaknesses in your background unless directly asked; a cover letter is a place to make a case, not a confession.
The resume it is attached to still matters most
A strong cover letter cannot rescue a resume that is hard to parse or thin on real evidence. If you are putting effort into a cover letter, make sure the resume it accompanies is doing its job too. resumefromgit.com builds an ATS-safe resume PDF directly from a public GitHub profile, so the document your cover letter is introducing is already grounded in real, verifiable work.