Cover letter without the buzzwords.
Three paragraphs, no 'passionate about', no 'excited by this opportunity'. Why you and this role fit, honestly.
You're applying to a job you actually want. The cover letter template you'd copy from feels dishonest. Recruiters read hundreds of them. This prompt writes the one that reads like a person, argues specifically for you, and doesn't include the words 'passionate', 'excited', 'opportunity', or 'align'.
THE PROMPT
Write me a cover letter for the following role. Three paragraphs, tight. No exclamation marks. No use of any of these words: passionate, excited, opportunity, align, unlock, journey, thrilled, delighted. Structure: **Paragraph 1**: The opening. Name the specific thing about this role or company that made me apply — a specific thing they've shipped, a specific stated problem, a specific commitment they've made. Not "your mission resonates with me". A specific thing that would prove I did more than read the job description. **Paragraph 2**: The fit. Two things I've done that map to what this role needs. Concrete, cited. Not "I have experience in X" — a specific outcome I delivered in a specific project. **Paragraph 3**: The close. Not "I look forward to hearing from you". Instead, one sentence that acknowledges the range of applicants, one sentence that names the most concrete way I could contribute in the first 90 days, and one sentence that names the next step (I'll email again, or I'll follow up in a week, or please let me know). Voice: confident, not aggressive. Warm, not obsequious. Under 300 words. Role I'm applying to: [PASTE JOB DESCRIPTION] About me — the things that could plausibly connect to this role: [PASTE YOUR RELEVANT BACKGROUND — three or four things, bullet form] The specific reason I'm applying: [ONE SENTENCE — what actually made you want this]
Dear hiring team,
The reason I'm writing is your April post on how you shipped the search rewrite without a dedicated infra team — the specific approach of using vector caching to defer the database rewrite by six months is the kind of engineering trade-off I've made myself. Most companies rewrite the database first and never ship the improvement.
Two things I've done that map to what this role needs. I led the migration of our order pipeline from Postgres to a hybrid Postgres + Redis pattern, which cut p99 latency from 340ms to 42ms and shipped over three weeks (not three months) because we kept the DB schema intact and moved the caching layer only. Separately, I mentored two mid-level engineers who are both now senior — the pattern that worked was pairing weekly on their harder PRs rather than doing formal 1:1 skills reviews.
You'll have strong applicants for this role and I'm not going to argue I'm the best of them without meeting the team. The most concrete thing I could contribute in the first 90 days is a technical audit of the search cache eviction policy — I've seen the failure mode you described in your April post and there's a specific fix I'd want to propose. I'll follow up in a week if I haven't heard back.
Rae Sørensen