A blank page is the hardest part of any job application. You know your experience matters, but turning it into a confident, specific cover letter is where most people freeze. The fastest way past that is to start from a real example and adapt it to your own story. This guide gives you cover letter examples for the three situations that trip people up most, entry-level, career change, and experienced hire, plus the structure underneath them so you can write your own in under twenty minutes.
Watch: how to write a cover letter in four sentences
Do cover letters still matter in 2026?
Yes, more than the "nobody reads them" crowd will tell you. Most recruiters still open the cover letter when a candidate is borderline, and it is often the tie-breaker between two similar resumes. Indeed and most university career centers still teach it as a core application document, because a good one answers the question a resume cannot: why this role, why this company, why you. Treat it as your argument, not a summary of your resume.
The catch is that a weak, generic letter does more harm than no letter at all. "Dear Hiring Manager, I am writing to apply for the position" signals that you sent the same file to fifty companies. The examples below do the opposite: they open with something specific and back every claim with proof. If you want to see how the two documents divide the work, read our breakdown of what hiring managers read first, the cover letter or the resume.
What every strong cover letter includes
Before the examples, here is the skeleton they all share. Four moving parts, nothing more. Once you can see them, every example below becomes a template you can refill with your own details.
The header and greeting
Put your name and contact details at the top, then the date and, where you can find it, the hiring manager by name. "Dear Ms. Alvarez" beats "Dear Hiring Manager" every time. If the name is genuinely unfindable, address the team or department ("Dear Marketing Team") rather than a faceless title.
