Common Cover Letter Mistakes That Cost You the Interview

A cover letter fails in predictable ways. Most rejections aren't down to a lack of experience — they're down to the same few avoidable mistakes. Spot them in your own draft and you move ahead of most of the pile.

The six most common cover letter mistakes

1. Opening with a generic formality
2. Restating your CV instead of building on it
3. Writing about what the job gives you rather than what you bring
4. Sending the same letter to every employer
5. Getting the length wrong
6. Sending with errors or the wrong company name

Each one is fixable in a single pass of editing.

Opening with a generic formality

The first line of a cover letter is the only one a recruiter is guaranteed to read. "I am writing to apply for the role of Marketing Manager" burns that line on information the hiring manager already has. They opened the email; they know which role it is.

Generic opening:

I am writing to apply for the Marketing Manager position at Greywood Partners. I have five years of experience in marketing and am confident I would be a great asset to your team.

Stronger opening:

The job description mentions you're launching a new brand proposition in Q3. I led Fenwick & Cole's rebrand last year, and organic social reach grew 41% in the six months after launch. That's the kind of campaign work I'd want to bring to this role.

The second version tells the recruiter something they don't know and gives them a number to remember. If you want a full breakdown of how to structure every paragraph after the opening, how to write a cover letter for a job application walks through each step.

Restating your CV instead of building on it

A cover letter is not a summary of your CV. Both documents arrive together — the recruiter has already seen your work history. A letter that says "I have five years of experience in project management" and lists the same roles as the CV is wasted space.

The letter's job is to explain why those five years are relevant to this specific role. Add the context the CV cannot fit: the outcome of a project, what made it hard, what you'd do differently.

"Five years in project management" tells us very little. "I led the CRM migration at Hartley & Sons — scope crept badly in month two, and I recovered the timeline by cutting two non-critical workstreams and pulling in a third-party integrator" tells a story. Put the story in the letter and leave the dates and titles to the CV.

Writing about what the job gives you

"This role excites me because it offers the chance to develop my leadership skills and work in a fast-paced environment." That sentence is about what you get. Hiring managers read variants of it every week, and it does nothing for your application.

Flip the frame. What does your background give them? What problem will you solve in the first 90 days?

Instead of:

I'm particularly keen on this role because it would give me the chance to develop cross-functional skills.

Try:

Your job description mentions improving cross-team delivery speed. At my current role I introduced a weekly sync between the engineering and marketing teams that cut average campaign-to-launch time by two weeks. I'd like to bring the same kind of joined-up approach to your team.

The second version makes a concrete offer. The first makes a request.

Sending the same letter to every employer

A generic letter signals one thing clearly: you did not read the job description. The giveaways are easy for recruiters to spot — vague company references, a skills list that matches nothing specific in the job description, and an opening paragraph that could have been sent to any firm in the sector.

You do not need to write a completely new letter for each application. Keep a strong base structure and change the opening paragraph, one supporting example, and the company reference for each role. That takes 15 minutes and reads as considered.

If the role involves something that needs careful framing — such as explaining an employment gap or career change — that is the moment to deviate from your base structure entirely and address it directly. Leaving it unacknowledged rarely works in your favour.

Getting the length wrong

250–400 words is the target for most UK applications. Too short (under 200 words) and the letter reads as low-effort. Too long (over 500 words) and you're asking the recruiter to do work to find the relevant parts.

A three-paragraph structure — a specific opening hook, two or three concrete examples, and a brief call to action — fits inside 350 words for most applicants. That structure also forces you to cut anything that isn't directly earning its place.

Senior or academic roles can reasonably push toward 400 words. Entry-level roles often work better at the lower end of the range, where concision demonstrates confidence rather than thinness.

Sending with errors or the wrong company name

A typo in the first paragraph can undo an otherwise strong letter. A wrong company name left over from a previous application is an automatic filter-out at many firms. Both are easy to avoid and surprisingly common.

Before sending, do a fresh read with the original job description open beside the letter. Confirm the company name appears correctly at least once. Read from the bottom up to catch dropped words — your brain fills in gaps less reliably in the reverse direction.

If you are applying to several similar roles in one session, pause before each send. One minute of checking is worth it.

If the slow part of this process is writing a strong tailored draft each time, AI Job Answers generates a cover letter from your CV and the job description — use it to get a solid first draft, then apply these checks before you send.