Cover Letter Checker

About the cover letter checker

Most cover letters fail in quiet ways. They run long, open with "I am writing to apply," name the company once, and end with "thank you for your consideration" instead of asking for a conversation. None of that is a typo, so a spell checker will not catch it. This free cover letter checker reads the letter you paste and flags the problems a hiring manager notices in the first read.

The checks run in your browser on the text you provide. You get a short report covering length, greeting and sign-off, how specific the letter is to this employer, generic phrases, numbers, and whether you close with a clear request. Add the job description and it also lists the posting's key terms your letter never mentions. The report tells you what to fix; the rewriting is up to you.

How to use it

1. 1

   Paste the whole letter

   Include everything from the greeting to your signature, or upload the file. The checker needs the greeting and sign-off to judge them, so do not paste only the body.

2. 2

   Add the job description if you have it

   Paste the posting to see which of its key terms your letter skips. This step is optional, but it turns a general review into a check against the one job you are applying for.

3. 3

   Work through findings by severity

   Fix high-severity items first. A missing call to action or a letter that never names the employer costs more than a slightly long paragraph or one stock phrase.

4. 4

   Edit, then check again

   Make your changes in your own document, paste the new version, and run it again. Stop when the remaining findings are ones you have decided to keep on purpose.

What the cover letter checker looks for

Each check maps to a question a reader asks, often without realizing it. Does this person know who they are writing to? Do they know what this company does? Can they prove anything? What do they want me to do next? The opening carries the most weight: in a Resume Genius survey of 625 U.S. hiring managers, 41% said the introduction leaves the biggest impression, more than the body paragraphs or the header.

• Length: word count and paragraph count. Most letters work best at roughly 250 to 400 words in three or four paragraphs.
• Greeting: whether you address a named person or fall back on "To Whom It May Concern."
• Sign-off: whether the letter closes with a standard sign-off and your name.
• Specificity: how often the company and the role are named, and whether the opening could be sent anywhere.
• Generic phrases: stock lines such as "team player," "hit the ground running," and "I believe I would be a great fit."
• Numbers: whether any claim is backed by a figure, such as volume, revenue, time saved, or team size.
• Call to action: whether the last paragraph asks for a conversation or only thanks the reader.

The swap test for a generic letter

The fastest way to judge specificity is the swap test. Replace the company name in your letter with a direct competitor's name. If every sentence still makes sense, the letter is generic, and the reader will feel it even if they cannot say why. A tailored letter breaks when you swap the name because it refers to this employer's product, customers, recent news, or the specific problem the job post describes.

Tailoring is worth the effort. In a ResumeGo field experiment covering 7,287 applications sent between July 2019 and January 2020, applications with a tailored cover letter received 53% more interview callbacks than those with no cover letter at all. In the same study's survey, 81% of recruiters and hiring managers said they valued tailored letters significantly more than generic ones.

You do not need to rewrite the whole letter for every job. Rewrite the opening two sentences and one body paragraph so they name the role, connect to something real about the company, and address the posting's top requirement.

How to fix the most common findings

Most findings have a standard fix. Treat these as starting points and keep your own voice.

• Too long: cut the paragraph that repeats your resume in sentence form. The letter should add context the resume cannot, such as why this role or how one result happened.
• Generic greeting: search the job post, the company's team page, or LinkedIn for the hiring manager. If you cannot find a name, "Dear Hiring Manager" or "Dear [Team] Hiring Team" reads better than "To Whom It May Concern."
• Stock phrases: replace each one with the fact behind it. "Detail-oriented" becomes "reconciled 1,200 vendor invoices a month with zero late payments."
• No numbers: add one figure per body paragraph, even an approximate one you can explain, such as "about 40 tickets a day."
• No call to action: end with a specific request, for example "I would welcome 20 minutes to walk through how I would approach your Q3 onboarding goals."
• Missing keywords: work the posting's top two or three requirements into sentences about your experience, not into a list.

What a checker cannot tell you

A checker reads structure and wording. It cannot verify that your claims are true, judge whether your story is the right one to tell for this role, or know the culture of the team you are writing to. It also cannot tell whether a phrase it does not flag will land well with a particular reader. Treat a clean report as a sign the letter has no obvious problems, not as proof it is persuasive.

For that judgment, ask a friend in your field to read the letter for 60 seconds, then answer two questions: what job is this person applying for, and what one thing do they remember about you? If they cannot answer both, sharpen the opening or swap in a stronger example.

Examples

Frequently asked questions