5 Short Cover Letter Samples (& How to Write Your Own)

A standard cover letter should be one page or less. But that doesn’t mean your cover letter should take up an entire page either.

To help you craft a compelling short cover letter for UK employers, here are five short cover letter samples and a copy-and-paste template, followed by a few cover letter writing secrets:

1. For Early Career Applicants

When you’re early in your career, a perfect attendance record is an excellent point to showcase because it shows employers you’re a punctual and responsible worker.

Including numbers also provides context for employers because they can see what you’ll bring to their organisation.

2. For Recent Graduates

This short cover letter sample focuses on the applicant’s knowledge and skills because, as a recent graduate, they don’t have any job-relevant work experience.

Specifically, they’re applying for a tour guide role, and thus highlight their passion for British culture, history degree, and familiarity with locations associated with this company’s tours. Emphasising their relevant interests shows the employer that they’ll fit in well at their organisation.

3. For Mid-Career Applicants

By using bullet points, the writer of this cover letter highlights their transferable skills while keeping their cover letter length manageable.

4. For Healthcare Workers

This brief cover letter example highlights the experience of the applicant and their transferable skills, such as their talent for handling patients with care.

5. For Speculative Job Applications

This is a great example of a short speculative cover letter — in other words, one written to an employer to see if any unadvertised job openings are available.

The applicant immediately explains why they’re writing an unsolicited cover letter, and then uses hard numbers to highlight their relevant achievements to back up their request for consideration.

Short Cover Letter Template (Copy-and-Paste)

Unsure what to put in your cover letter? Below, we’ve provided a short cover letter template you can paste into your word processor and edit to suit your job application.

To help you imagine how your experience will look in this template, the free download file also includes a short cover letter sample with the template blanks filled in.

4 tips for writing the perfect short cover letter

If the thought of writing a short cover letter has you wringing your hands, consider using a cover letter builder that uses AI to write and format it for you. You can then tweak the content to tailor it to your situation.

But if you have time and writing skills, here’s how to write a cover letter that’s brief but still covers all the information you need to earn interviews:

1. Plan your cover letter structure to avoid waffle

Here are all the sections to include in a short cover letter:

• Contact information (yours and the contact person’s)
• Greeting (address your short cover letter to the employer by name to personalise it — for example, ‘Dear Ms Jones,’)
• 1–2 body paragraphs
• Closing (request an interview and repeat your phone number and email for the reader’s convenience)
• Professional sign-off (‘Yours sincerely,’ followed by your name)

2. Use concise words rather than long phrases

A short cover letter is not the place for wordiness. Limit your word use by only using the necessary words to communicate clearly. A helpful way to write more clearly is by replacing wordy phrases with single words or other phrases with fewer words:

• Due to the fact that → Because
• In the case that → If
• In order to → To
• Concerning the matter of → About
• Regardless of the fact that → Although
• A number of → Some/Many
• In the process of → During/While
• With the exception → Except

3. Mention only your most relevant skills and experiences

Focus only on relevant skills and experience for the position that you’re applying for when you write your short cover letter.

Matching the keywords used in the job advert in your cover letter is vital because employers scan cover letters for job-specific keywords to determine if applicants meet their requirements.

See how the applicant in this example tailors their cover letter to the job by using keywords they found in the job advert:

4. Format your cover letter efficiently

Using appropriate cover letter formatting helps you optimise the length of your cover letter.

Good cover letter fonts like Calibri and Times New Roman with a font size between 10.5 and 12 points make it easier for the employer to skim your covering letter for details.

Use 1.5 spacing to make your paragraphs read easily and quickly. Single spacing is also appropriate if you need to save space. However, it’ll also make your writing look denser and appear more of a bore to read.

You should also use the standard 2.5 cm margins for UK cover letters. If you still need more space, then try reducing your margins to 1.25 cm.

Frequently Asked Questions

Still have doubts about writing a brief cover letter for your job application? Here are the answers to four common short cover letter questions:

1. What is a good starting sentence for a cover letter?

A good starting sentence for a cover letter is one that gets the employer’s attention and makes them interested in calling you for a job interview. It should include:

• your desired role
• the company name
• your most job-relevant information (e.g., years of experience, passion for your work, etc.)

Here are two examples of good cover letter openings:

As a published poet with 5+ years’ experience teaching literature at the university level, I jumped at the chance to apply for the open Poetry Professor position posted on the University of York careers page.

I’m a recent graduate with a Bachelor’s in Marketing and an internship at an advertising agency interested in Aviva’s available Marketing Associate role.

2. How short should a cover letter from the UK be?

A cover letter from the UK should never be longer than one page and only use between 250 and 400 words.

Anything longer than that is a pain for employers to read through, while anything shorter could make you appear lacking in qualifications or communication ability.

3. Is one paragraph too short for a cover letter?

Your cover letter should have at least 3 paragraphs:

• An opening that introduces yourself and your experience to the employer while mentioning your desired job and the company name
• A body paragraph that connects your accomplishments to your target role
• A closing that requests a job interview and thanks the employer for reading your letter

Splitting this information into separate paragraphs makes your cover letter easier to read than if you put it in one big chunk of text.

However, you can make each paragraph 1–2 short sentences to keep your cover letter concise.

4. When should I not use a short cover letter?

You should not use a short cover letter when:

• the recruiter asks for a specific word count
• the job advert requires that you show your writing skills
• you want to emphasise relevant skills and experience that you only briefly mentioned when you wrote your CV

More FAQs to help you with your cover letter

Here are a few more cover letter questions you might have:

• How do you end a cover letter?
• What does ‘Mx’ stand for?
• How do you address a cover letter without a name?
• How to write a cover letter for an internal promotion
• Cover letter tips