Cover Letters Editing and Proofreading Services

"I am writing to apply for the position of Marketing Coordinator as advertised on your website. I believe my skills and experience make me an ideal candidate for this role." Four hundred people sent that sentence. The person reading it has ninety applications and eleven minutes, and by the end of the first line they have learned only that you can operate a keyboard.

We edit cover letters and the writing that goes with them — applications for advertised roles, speculative and networking letters, internal application letters, letters accompanying academic and public sector applications, follow-up and thank-you letters, and the short covering notes required by online systems. Our editors work on a page that is read for eleven seconds before it is read properly.

The opening and the connection to this particular employer is where a cover letter earns its second paragraph, and its failure is a first line that could have been sent to anybody. A letter that does not name something specific about this organisation is a letter about you. We work through these so the first sentence says something only this applicant could say about this employer, since the reader's question is not whether you want a job but whether you have understood theirs; so the connection is evidenced rather than asserted — a decision the organisation has taken, a problem their sector is having, a detail from the advertisement that others will have skimmed — because flattery is transparent and specificity is not; so the second paragraph answers the hardest requirement in the advertisement directly, given that a reader is checking whether you can do the thing rather than admiring your enthusiasm; so one achievement is developed with what changed, rather than three listed, as a letter is not a second CV; so anything a reader will worry about — a gap, a sector change, being over- or under-qualified — is addressed in a sentence and not hidden; so the letter says what you would do first in the job where that is possible, since almost nobody does and it is remembered; so the length stays under a page; and so the closing asks for something specific rather than hoping to hear soon. Letters written this way get read to the bottom.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including applications, employment history and material about current employers. We are editors rather than recruiters or careers advisers, and we offer no view on your prospects, any employer or any decision. What we can do is make the first line worth the second.