How to Start a Cover Letter: Six Openings Graded

The first two sentences are the only part of a cover letter you can rely on being read. Most applicants spend them on something the reader already knows.

The test for any opening

Read your first sentence and ask: could this appear, unchanged, on a letter for a different job at a different company?

If yes, it is not an opening, it is a throat clearance. That single test eliminates most of what follows.

Grade F: enthusiasm

I am thrilled to apply for the Operations Manager position at Vance Logistics, a company I have long admired.

The most common opening in existence and the weakest. It contains no information, it is unverifiable, and every other applicant wrote something similar.

The reason it feels natural is that it is polite. Politeness is not the constraint here; attention is.

Grade D: company history

Vance Logistics has established itself as a leader in regional freight distribution since 1994.

You are telling them about themselves. It also reads as padding, because it is.

Worse, it invites a specific suspicion: that the letter was assembled from the company’s own about page, which is often exactly what happened.

Grade C: the plain announcement

I am writing to apply for the Operations Manager position advertised on your careers page.

Dull, harmless and better than the two above. Its weakness is that it spends a sentence on something the reader knows from the subject line and the form they are looking at.

Acceptable as a first clause if the second half of the sentence does real work.

Grade B: the qualification statement

I am an operations manager with six years of multi-site warehouse experience, applying for the Operations Manager role at Vance Logistics.

Now there is information. It names what you are and how much of it you have, which is a reason to continue reading.

It stops short of an A because it is generic within its category. Many applicants can write the equivalent.

Grade A: the specific result

I am applying for the Operations Manager role at Vance Logistics. In my last position I cut order turnaround from three days to one across four sites.

Two sentences, one of which is a fact nobody else can claim. It is specific, checkable and immediately relevant.

This is the standard opening for most applications, and the work is choosing which result to lead with. Pick the one closest to the posting’s first requirement.

Grade A: the referral

Priya Raghunathan suggested I get in touch about the Operations Manager role, having worked with me on the supplier consolidation at Halvorsen.

If you have a referral, this beats everything else, because it borrows credibility you cannot manufacture. Name the person in the first sentence, not the third paragraph.

Two conditions: ask them first, and be accurate about the relationship.

Choosing which result to lead with

The method that produces a good opening reliably.

1. Read the posting and write down its first requirement, in its own words. Postings are usually ordered by priority.
2. Find your single strongest piece of evidence against that requirement.
3. Write it as one sentence with a number in it.
4. Put the role name in the sentence before it.

Done. This is also why you should write the opening last, once you know what the letter argues. Openings written first are generic because you do not yet know what you are opening.

Both Purdue’s cover letter guidance and Harvard’s career service materials emphasise targeting the specific role over general self-description, which is the same principle applied to the whole document.

When you have no strong result

Common early in a career, and the answer is not to reach for enthusiasm instead.

Lead with the most relevant specific thing you have, whatever category it falls into: a project, a course capstone, a volunteer role, a part-time job where you did something measurable.

I am applying for the Operations Coordinator role at Vance Logistics. As part of my final-year project I mapped and rebuilt the stock process for a 12-person retail business, cutting their weekly count from four hours to one.

Specific beats impressive. A small real thing outperforms a large vague claim, and it is also the version you can talk about confidently in an interview. See the internship cover letter guide and the student resume guide.

Openings to avoid entirely

• Your own name. It is in the signature.
• A question. “Are you looking for an operations manager who delivers?” reads as advertising copy.
• A quotation. It spends your best sentence on someone else’s words. See motivational quotes at work.
• An apology for anything.
• “To whom it may concern” as an opening line rather than a salutation. See how to address a cover letter.

Related

For the rest of the structure, see the cover letter outline guide and how to end a cover letter. For length, see the cover letter length guide. For full graded letters, see the best cover letter examples.

Or generate a targeted opening with the cover letter generator, free at Kazifi.