The executive cover letter,
and the question it has to answer.
A CV states what you have done; a letter states why you are writing to this company, in this month, about this seat — three things a CV structurally cannot say. Most executive letters are discarded because they restate the CV in prose, at greater length and lower density. The ones that get read are shorter, and harder to write.
What a cover letter is actually for
A CV is retrospective and impersonal by construction. It records what happened and leaves motive out, which is correct — motive on a CV reads as pleading. The letter is where motive belongs, and motive at this level is not enthusiasm. It is a reading of their situation, and a reason you are the person to walk into it now rather than in two years.
Know who opens it. Usually a search consultant, who is deciding whether to put you on a longlist of twelve. Sometimes a chair or an outgoing incumbent, reading four letters over a weekend. Occasionally nobody: a portal with a 2,000-character box and no route to a human. In that last case, write three sentences in the email body and put your effort into the CV. A letter without a reader is a letter you wrote for yourself.
Why this company — a specific reading of where they are, taken from public evidence: a filing, a new facility, a market entry, a change of ownership. Admiration without evidence reads as a mail merge.
Why now — what has changed for them, and what has changed for you. A move with no stated reason invites the reader to invent one, and the one they invent is rarely flattering.
Why you rather than the other four on the longlist — the single closest match between their situation and something you have already survived.
What you are not claiming. One candid line about the part of the brief you do not cover buys more credibility than three paragraphs of coverage you cannot defend at interview.
The four-paragraph structure
Four paragraphs, one page, white space left on it. The order carries most of the work; the prose only has to stay out of the way. Nothing below asks you to summarise the CV, because the CV is attached and the reader can see it.
Paragraph one, two sentences: the seat, and the specific thing about their position you are writing about. Open on them. “I am writing to apply for” spends the only line that is certain to be read.
Paragraph two, three or four sentences: the nearest thing you have done to what they need, told once and told fully, with one figure and the mechanism behind it. One example told properly outperforms four gestured at.
Paragraph three, two or three sentences: your reading of what the first year actually requires. This is where judgement becomes visible, and where most letters have nothing at all to say.
Paragraph four, two sentences: notice period, location, work authorisation if it is a question — then one sentence proposing a conversation rather than requesting one.
The line above your name: not “I look forward to hearing from you.” Say what you will do. That you will call on Thursday, or that you have attached nothing further because the CV covers it.
Length: 250 to 350 words. A letter that runs to a second page is a document nobody commissioned, and the decision was taken by paragraph three anyway.
Where they go wrong
Three failures account for almost every executive letter that is skipped. None of them is a failure of writing ability. Each is a failure to decide what the letter is for before starting it.
The letter that summarises the CV. If it can be deleted with nothing lost, it will be — and the reader turns to the CV slightly less patient for having been delayed.
The letter about you. Passion, excitement, alignment with values: every sentence describing your internal state, none describing their problem. Replace each one whose subject is “I feel” with one whose subject is their business.
The letter sent to everybody. A tailored opening bolted to a stock body is visible instantly — the first paragraph names the company and the rest names nobody. Search consultants read hundreds of these a year.
Three lines, rewritten.
The same fact, made checkable. Every figure is illustrative of the shape an evidenced line takes — nothing here is invented on your behalf.
The claim on the left is not wrong. It is simply unreadable as evidence: nothing in it can be checked, compared or priced. The version on the right makes the same statement in a form a search partner can act on.
I am writing to express my interest in the Chief Operating Officer position advertised on your website.
You are commissioning a third plant while the first two run at 71% OEE. I have taken a two-site operation through that exact sequence, and the order in which the two problems are solved decides whether the new site inherits the old one.
With over 22 years of progressive leadership experience across FMCG and retail, I believe I would be an excellent fit for this role.
Your last two results show gross margin holding while volume fell. That is a mix problem, not a pricing one. I spent three years reversing the same mix in a business half your size — private label from 34% to 21% of volume, with shelf space held.
I have long admired your organisation's commitment to innovation and its position as a leader in the sector.
I have followed your API business since the capacity expansion two years ago, mostly because I competed with it and lost two accounts to it. I can tell you precisely why we lost them, and what it would have taken to hold them.