The cover letter length that gets read is shorter than you think. Here is how long it should run, what to cut, and the opening line that earns the next sentence.
A hiring manager opens your cover letter with one question already loaded: should I keep reading or move on? If the answer is not obvious in the first few seconds, the rest of your careful prose never gets read. Length is not the point. Getting read is the point, and length is how you protect it.
The short version: aim for 150 to 250 words, three or four tight paragraphs, on one screen. Long enough to make a specific case, short enough that a busy person finishes it.
Nobody is required to read your cover letter to the end. A recruiter scanning a stack of applications gives each one a quick pass, decides whether it is worth a closer look, and moves on. A wall of text reads as effort, but effort spent on you, not on them. Three crisp paragraphs that name the role, prove one relevant thing, and ask for the conversation respect the reader's time and signal that you can think clearly under a word limit. That second signal matters more than most applicants realize: clear writing is a job skill, and the cover letter is a live sample of it.
Your first sentence has one job: make the second sentence worth reading. Most openings waste it. "I am writing to apply for the Marketing Coordinator role" tells the reader something they already know from the subject line. It earns nothing.
Open with the specific thing that makes you a fit, or a reason you care about this employer in particular. "Your job post says you want someone who can run paid social without an agency. I have done exactly that for the last two years, on a budget half the size of yours." Now the reader wants the proof. That is the whole trick: every line should make the reader want the one after it. If a sentence does not do that, it is filler, and filler is what you cut to hit your word count.
Most cover letters are bloated in predictable places. Cut these and you will land near 200 words without losing anything that mattered.
After the cut, every remaining sentence should point at one of two things: why you fit this role, or why you want this one specifically.
"Keep it to one page" is the advice everyone repeats, and it is not wrong so much as lazy. A page can hold 600 words at a small font, and 600 words is far too long for most cover letters. The real rule is about the reader's attention, not the paper. One screen, no scrolling, finished in under a minute of reading. That is shorter than a full page almost every time.
There are exceptions. A career-change story sometimes needs a sentence or two of context to make the leap make sense. A senior role with a relationship-heavy brief might warrant more. But "I could write more" is rarely the same as "they will read more." When in doubt, cut.
Be honest about the cases where the cover letter does little. For a high-volume online application that gets filtered by a tracking system first, a strong, well-tailored résumé does most of the work, and a generic cover letter changes nothing. Spending an hour on it there is misplaced effort.
It earns its keep when a human will read it before deciding: a smaller company, a role you are genuinely targeting, a referral, a career change that needs explaining, or a posting that explicitly asks for one and means it. In those cases, a short, specific, well-aimed letter can be the thing that moves you from the maybe pile to the interview.
Most people get this backwards: they write a long generic letter for every job and a short rushed one for the job they actually want. Flip it.
JobScalr fits the part that takes the longest: it reads the posting, drafts a cover letter aimed at that specific role, and shows you an honest 0 to 100 match score with the reasoning behind it, so you can see where your fit is real and where it is thin before you send. It never invents experience you do not have, and the final cut is still yours to make. That is the part you should not outsource.
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