Best Cover Letter Examples, Graded

Most cover letter examples are given to you unexplained. These three are marked against a rubric, which is more useful, because the point is to grade your own.

The five criteria

1. A specific opening. The first two sentences contain a fact only you could write.
2. One developed example. A single piece of evidence with a result, not a list.
3. Tied to the posting. The example answers something the posting actually asked for.
4. Nothing duplicated. No sentence restates a resume bullet.
5. A clean close. Two sentences, no plea, no promise about future performance.

Four out of five is a good letter. Failing one and two together produces the letter that makes people say cover letters do not work.

Both Purdue’s cover letter guidance and Harvard’s career service materials point at the same essentials: target the role, be concise, use evidence.

All three letters below answer the same fictional posting: an Operations Manager role at Vance Logistics, whose first stated requirement is consolidating suppliers after an acquisition.

Letter A: the enthusiast

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am thrilled to apply for the Operations Manager position at Vance Logistics, a company I have admired for many years and which has established itself as a leader in regional freight distribution.

I am a highly motivated and detail-oriented operations professional with a proven track record of success. I have extensive experience in warehouse management, team leadership, process improvement and supplier relations. I am confident that my skills and experience make me an excellent fit for this role and that I would be a valuable asset to your organisation.

Please find my resume attached, which outlines my career history in full. I would be so grateful for the opportunity to discuss how I could contribute to your team, and I will call your office next week to follow up.

Yours faithfully, Tomasz Wieczorek

Score: 0 of 5.

The opening is enthusiasm plus company history. The middle paragraph is four adjectives and a list of categories with no example in it. Nothing connects to supplier consolidation despite that being the posting’s first requirement. The resume reference invites the reader to go and do the work themselves. And the close both pleads and applies pressure.

The salutation guesses at gender when a collective address was available. See how to address a cover letter.

Note that this letter is polite, literate and grammatical. That is what makes it instructive: it fails on content, not on writing.

Letter B: the resume in prose

Dear Hiring Team,

I am writing to apply for the Operations Manager role at Vance Logistics.

I worked at Halvorsen Foods from 2021 to 2026 as Operations Coordinator and then Operations Manager, where I managed warehouse operations across four sites, supervised a team of 18, ran the weekly reconciliation for 40 accounts, oversaw the transition to a new logistics vendor, and reduced order turnaround times. Before that I was at Brennan Distribution from 2018 to 2021 as a Logistics Analyst, where I built the reporting pack and managed inbound scheduling.

My education includes a BSc in Supply Chain Management from Portland State University, completed in 2018.

I have attached my resume and would welcome the chance to discuss the role. Thank you for considering my application.

Sincerely, Tomasz Wieczorek

Score: 2 of 5.

Passes on duplication being absent from the close, and on the close itself, which is exactly right. Fails everything else.

The problem is that every sentence is already a resume bullet, delivered in a longer form. A reader who has the resume learns nothing, and a reader who does not still gets no argument. This is the most common competent cover letter and it is why the genre has a bad reputation.

It also never mentions supplier consolidation, which the posting asked about first.

Letter C: the one that works

Dear Hiring Team,

I am applying for the Operations Manager role at Vance Logistics. Your posting leads with consolidating suppliers after the acquisition, which is the project I spent most of last year on.

At Halvorsen Foods I took our supplier base from 40 to 12 across eight months without a stockout. The work was less about negotiation than sequencing: we mapped which sites depended on which vendors, moved the low-risk categories first to build confidence, and kept two overlapping suppliers running in parallel through the transition on the categories where a gap would have stopped a line. It took roughly 15% out of our procurement admin load and gave us better terms on the retained vendors.

I should mention that I am relocating to Denver in March, which is why I am applying from out of state. My notice period is four weeks from an offer.

I have attached my resume and would welcome the chance to discuss the role. Thank you for considering my application.

Sincerely, Tomasz Wieczorek

Score: 5 of 5, at 215 words.

What it does that Letter B does not: it names the posting’s own priority in the first two sentences, then answers it with one example developed enough to be credible. The detail about running overlapping suppliers in parallel is the sort of thing only someone who did the work would say, which is what makes the whole letter believable.

The third paragraph handles the relocation in one factual sentence with no apology, closing a question the reader would otherwise have raised. See what a cover letter is for.

And it contains nothing from the resume. The resume says he was Operations Manager at Halvorsen; the letter says how the consolidation actually worked.

Scorecard

	Specific opening	One example	Tied to posting	No duplication	Clean close
A, the enthusiast	No	No	No	Yes	No
B, resume in prose	No	No	No	No	Yes
C, the one that works	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Grade your own

Five questions, two minutes.

Does your first sentence contain a fact only you could write? Is there exactly one example, developed over three or four sentences? Does that example answer the posting’s first requirement? Could any sentence be deleted because it is already on your resume? Does your close avoid both pleading and promising?

The most common single fix: delete the paragraph listing your qualities and replace it with one story about work you actually did.

Related

For structure, see the cover letter outline guide and the cover letter length guide. For openings and closings, see how to start a cover letter and how to end a cover letter. For the shortest workable version, see short cover letter samples.

Or draft one against a posting with the cover letter generator, free at Kazifi.