Cover letter templates: the structure and the openings

The structure career services agree on

Purdue OWL’s cover letter workshop states that “a cover letter has four essential parts: heading, introduction, argument, and closing”, with “Dear Hiring Professionals” as the fallback when no name turns up. Its argument section treats the résumé as material to expand on, not repeat — an instruction restated below.

Yale OCS gives “three to four paragraphs”: an opening ending with “a short statement highlighting 2-3 related skills”, a middle that must “not simply restate your resume”, and a closing. Columbia CCE frames the whole document as “a one-page business letter where you convey why you are interested in the position and why you would be an excellent candidate for it”. Berkeley adds one more: open with “a compelling paragraph that tells a story” and show knowledge of both the position and the company.

The UK’s National Careers Service describes the same shape at a different length: “a short letter, usually 3 to 5 paragraphs long”, written fresh for every application. MIT CAPD teaches US undergraduates to “tailor to the position and the company”; MIT UPOP labels the paragraphs directly as First, Second and Third Paragraph, the first introducing the applicant by degree programme and graduation year, and states the purpose in the opening sentence.

Harvard Griffin GSAS teaches the same skeleton for a narrower readership only: doctoral students and postdocs, with middle paragraphs on “your dissertation/current research”, future research plans and teaching experience — not a private-sector job. One layout note, not a fourth structure: Purdue OWL separately names block “the most common layout of a business letter”, with modified block and semi-block as variants.

Where the free templates already are

All three of the programs already installed on most machines open a free template gallery the same way: from a File menu. In Word, Microsoft’s own instructions are to go to the File tab and “select New”, then “select Blank document, or double-click a template image or type the kind of document into the Search for online templates box and press Enter”, reachable afterwards “from a computer, tablet, or phone via OneDrive”. In Google Docs, the instruction is one line: “Click File > New > From a template.” That page, read in full on 15 October 2026, never names a letter or cover-letter example among its categories, so this page does not claim Google’s gallery has one.

Apple’s Pages follows the same pattern — “Click the New Document button in the dialog, or choose File > New”, then double-click a template — and for mostly-text documents recommends “one of the Basic templates” rather than a graphics-heavy design. None of the three pages names a cover-letter template specifically: the gallery supplies the blank page, and the structure above supplies what goes on it.

What the template galleries actually sell

A separate set of sites sell the design, not the words. Canva’s letters page files job cover letters and thank-you letters in one general letter library. Template.net’s own FAQ describes “an AI-powered tool that generates structured letter documents from prompts in 3 to 10 seconds”, listing Cover Letter as one of roughly twenty letter categories on the same page. Adobe Express promotes creating letters “in minutes from your browser”, with no cover-letter category of its own.

Microsoft’s separate, browser-based gallery at word.cloud.microsoft promises “a wide range of letter templates and letterhead examples to customize, download, and print for free in Microsoft Word”, including a job-facing letter of interest category. TheGoodocs holds 74 templates under Letters, where Cover letters appears only once, filed separately under its own Contracts menu. None of these five is cited above as a structure source — named only for what they sell.

Openings career services say to avoid

MIT CAPD’s Dos and Don’ts list is the most direct of the career-services guides read for this page: “Don’t start with ‘To Whom It May Concern.’ It’s impersonal. Use ‘Dear Hiring Manager,’ or the person’s name. Don’t submit a generic cover letter.” The same office calls repeating the résumé “probably the biggest mistake” it sees — the same warning Yale and Columbia give above about the middle paragraphs.

The fallback salutation itself splits by country when no name can be found. Yale suggests addressing it to the hiring manager; Columbia offers the same route, or “Dear Recruiting Team”. The UK’s National Careers Service recommends the opposite convention for British applicants, already set out in the table above: Dear Sir or Madam, closing with Yours faithfully. MIT UPOP, writing for US undergraduates, states the reverse: “Do not address your letter to ‘Dear Sir or Madam.’” Whichever opening a candidate chooses, the claims it makes usually resurface at interview, the subject of preparing for an interview that is being scored.

Using AI to help — without losing your voice

Columbia’s Center for Career Education is the only one of the career-service guides read for this page that gives AI assistance its own section. Its position is that the tools can help a candidate identify relevant experiences and qualifications worth emphasising, refine a draft, and tailor the letter to a specific role or employer, but that the result should not replace the candidate’s own material: “it should still reflect your own experiences, perspective, and voice.” A stated position, not a measured outcome — the measured numbers are next.

What the data says about AI-written openings

The one study that measures rather than asks is a preprint, not peer-reviewed: Signaling in the Age of AI: Evidence from Cover Letters (arXiv:2509.25054), analysing 5,499,707 job bids from 264,082 workers on an online freelance market in 2023. It found 17% of cover letters had AI assistance; after the tool arrived, the correlation between a letter’s wording matching the job and getting a callback fell 51%, and with receiving an offer, 79%. The authors’ own conclusion is that widespread AI-assisted writing diminishes the informational value of a cover letter as a hiring signal, pushing employers to weigh alternative signals, such as past work experience, more heavily instead. The sample is freelance work, not fixed-position hiring, and the authors note that in other markets, such as those for first-time job seekers, alternative signals may be weaker or absent.

Three other reports measure perception, not outcomes. SHRM’s 2023 article cites a ResumeBuilder.com survey — a vendor’s data, not SHRM’s own — in which 46% of over 1,000 job seekers said they used ChatGPT for a résumé or letter, and 11% both had the interviewer discover it and failed to get the job. Resume Genius, which sells a competing builder, reports “58% of hiring managers have encountered AI-generated resumes or cover letters”, though its own Methodology section states a sample of 1,000 against 1,500 in the article’s opening, unresolved. Insight Global, a staffing vendor, reports “88% of those surveyed say they can tell when candidates are using AI”, from an Atomik Research survey of 1,005 hiring managers whose Methodology section dates fieldwork to 17–22 October 2024, though the article’s body says November 2024. None of the three tests whether that self-reported recognition is actually accurate.