How to Write a Cover Letter That Gets You Noticed

You’ve probably heard contradictory things about cover letters lately. “Nobody reads them anymore.” “Always write one.” “Just use ChatGPT.” “Recruiters can spot AI a mile away.” All of those are partly true, which is why the picture is confusing. The honest 2026 answer: cover letters still matter for many roles, AI has changed what works, and the rules differ between a Rijksoverheid traineeship, a regional SME, and an Amsterdam scaleup. This guide covers what recent recruiter surveys actually show, the Dutch motivatiebrief format that dominates Dutch hiring, how to use AI as a real collaborator (not an autopilot) without producing detectable AI-tell text, and three short example letters you can learn from.

Multiple recent surveys converge on roughly the same picture.

• When a cover letter is submitted, most recruiters read it. A Resume Genius survey of 625 hiring managers (2023) found 83% read cover letters when received, only 4% never read them.
• Final decision-makers read more than initial screeners. A Novoresume study (2025) found 39% of recruiters skip cover letters at the screening stage, but only 23% of hiring managers (the ones who actually decide) skip them.
• Cover letters still influence interview decisions. 94% of hiring managers say cover letters influence whether they invite someone to interview, with 1 in 4 calling them “very important” (Resume Genius, 2023).
• Even when optional, including one helps. About 75% of recruiters expect to receive a cover letter even when the posting says optional. Including one when not required is a positive signal at most employers.

But it depends on the employer

The averages above hide real variation. Where cover letters matter most:

• Rijksoverheid and Dutch government roles. Almost always required. The motivatiebrief is the central artefact. Skipping it is rejection by default.
• Regional SMEs and family businesses. Required or strongly expected. The cover letter is treated as evidence you’ve thought specifically about working there, not just blanketing the market.
• Traineeships at large employers. Required for most. ABN AMRO, Rabobank, ING, Heineken, and Unilever programmes all expect a motivatiebrief or motivation letter as part of the application.
• Big Four and consulting graduate programmes. Required, often with specific prompts.
• Amsterdam scaleups and tech roles. Often optional. Some skip cover letters entirely (Picnic, parts of Adyen) and rely on CV plus interviews. If the application form has a cover letter field, fill it; if it doesn’t, skip.

By 2025, around 29% of job seekers used AI to write or customise their applications, up from 17% the year before (TopResume / AiApply data, 2025). Roughly 70% used some kind of generative AI in their job search overall. The trend is up.

Recruiters have noticed. Their reactions matter:

• About 1 in 5 (19.6%) hiring managers would reject an application they believed was fully AI-generated (TopResume survey of 600 US hiring managers, May 2025).
• 33.5% say they can spot AI in under 20 seconds. Self-reported and probably overconfident, but the perception drives behaviour.
• But 52% accept AI for proofreading or drafting support. The line is between “helped polish” (acceptable) and “wrote the whole thing” (problematic).
• Detection isn’t the real problem. A 2023 ResumeBuilder blind test of 1,000 recruiters found 82% couldn’t correctly identify all AI-written letters when they didn’t know which were which. What recruiters actually flag is the lack of personalisation, not the algorithmic fingerprint.

Why most AI-generated cover letters fail

They share a recognisable pattern, even when the AI is trying its best:

• Vague claims of passion (“I am passionate about your innovative approach”) without specifics.
• Buzzwords without substance (“leveraging my skills,” “driven results,” “dynamic environment”).
• Sentence rhythms that feel uniform: similar lengths, predictable structures.
• Generic compliments about the company that could apply to any competitor.
• Mismatched tone with the rest of the application: a flowery letter attached to a concise technical CV.
• Sometimes hallucinated details: a job title you didn’t hold, a metric you didn’t hit, a project you didn’t work on.

The result: even when undetectable as AI, these letters fail to give the recruiter a reason to invite you. They’re polished and forgettable.

The Dutch motivatiebrief (motivation letter) follows a recognisable format. Most Dutch career sites and employers converge on the same conventions.

Length: one A4 page, 250 to 400 words

Dutch sources (Randstad, YoungCapital, CVster, Carrièretijger) all say the same thing: 1 A4 page maximum, 250 to 400 words, 3 to 5 short paragraphs.

Shorter often beats longer. Most recruiters spend 30 to 60 seconds on a cover letter. A 200-word letter that lands one specific point beats a 400-word letter that says four general things.

Structure: AIDA or the standard four-paragraph format

Dutch career advice traditionally uses the AIDA format (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action), but the simpler four-paragraph version works just as well:

• Paragraph 1: hook. Why this role at this employer caught your attention. Specific, not generic.
• Paragraph 2: why this employer. What you know about them, what draws you to them specifically. A recent project, a strategic move, a value, a product.
• Paragraph 3: what you bring. 1 to 3 specific things from your background that match what the role needs. Quantified where possible.
• Paragraph 4: close and call to action. Brief, polite, signal you’d like to discuss further.

When to write in Dutch vs English

• In Dutch: Rijksoverheid, regional SMEs, family businesses, traditional sectors (legal, healthcare, education), most roles outside the Randstad. If the job posting is in Dutch, the motivatiebrief should also be in Dutch.
• In English: Most Randstad corporates with international workforces (banks, FMCG, consulting), Amsterdam scaleups, tech roles, traineeships at multinationals. If the job posting is in English, English is fine.
• Mixed signals: If the posting is in Dutch but you’re an international and your Dutch isn’t strong, write in English and acknowledge it briefly. Most employers accept this. Don’t submit broken Dutch; that signals worse than English.

Salutation conventions

Two common openings:

• “Geachte heer / mevrouw [surname]” — the formal traditional opening, still standard for Rijksoverheid, regional SMEs, and traditional sectors.
• “Beste [first name]” — the modern friendly opening, increasingly common at scaleups and Randstad corporates with informal cultures.

Match the formality of the employer. If the job posting uses “je” and “jij,” “Beste” is fine. If it uses “u” throughout, stay with “Geachte heer/mevrouw.”

Sign-off

Standard Dutch sign-offs:

• “Met vriendelijke groet” (formal, default for most situations)
• “Hartelijke groet” (warmer, fine for less formal employers)
• “Kind regards” or “Best regards” for English letters

Paragraph 1: the hook (40 to 60 words)

Open with something specific. A reason this role caught your eye. A connection between what they’re doing and what you’ve done. The opening sets the entire tone of the letter.

Bad: “I am writing to express my interest in the [position] at [company].”

Better: “I saw your team’s announcement last week about expanding the data platform to support real-time fraud detection. I spent six months on a similar problem at my last internship at NN, and the technical tradeoffs you’re writing about are the ones that interest me most.”

Paragraph 2: why this employer (60 to 100 words)

Show you’ve done the work to understand them. Not their mission statement: their actual recent activity. What did they ship recently? What strategic direction are they moving in? What do they say about themselves on quieter channels (a podcast, a senior leader’s posts, an annual report)?

This is the paragraph where AI-generated letters fail most often, because AI doesn’t naturally know what the company shipped last month. This is also where you can use AI as a research tool: ask it to summarise the company’s last six months, then verify the most interesting pieces yourself.

Paragraph 3: what you bring (80 to 150 words)

Pick 1 to 3 specific things from your background that match what the role needs. Quantified where you can. “I led a 4-person team building a customer churn model that reduced support escalations by 18%” beats “I have strong analytical and leadership skills.”

If you’re a recent graduate without much work experience, the same logic applies to projects, internships, thesis work, or extracurricular leadership. “I led a 12-person student association budget of €45,000 through a sponsorship transition” is real evidence.

Don’t repeat your CV. The reader has it. Pull out the 2 to 3 things most relevant to this role and explain them better than your CV did.

Paragraph 4: the close (30 to 50 words)

Brief. Polite. Forward-looking. “I’d welcome the chance to discuss how my background might match what your team is building. Available for a conversation any afternoon next week.”

Don’t end on “Thank you for your time and consideration.” It’s the most copy-pasted sentence in the world, and it adds nothing.

AI is now part of how most cover letters are written. Treating it as forbidden is unrealistic. Treating it as autopilot is risky. The useful middle: use it as a collaborator across research, scaffolding, drafting, and refinement, while keeping your voice, your specifics, and your judgment in charge.

1. Use AI for research

Ask it to summarise what the company has shipped in the last six months. To explain the role description in plain language. To find recent press coverage, leadership interviews, or strategic announcements you might miss.

Verify what comes back. AI can hallucinate specific facts (dates, metrics, project names). The interesting nuggets it surfaces are leads to confirm yourself, not citations to copy.

2. Use AI for scaffolding

Once you know what you want to say, AI can help structure it. “I want to make these three points: X, Y, Z. What’s a logical order for them in a 300-word motivatiebrief?”

This is where AI is genuinely useful and low-risk. The structure isn’t the part that signals “AI wrote this.” Your specifics are.

3. Use AI for drafting

Yes, you can use AI to draft. The key is what you put in and what you do after.

Put in: your CV, the job posting, 3 to 5 specific bullet points about why you want this role and what you bring. Ask for a 300-word motivatiebrief in a conversational tone. Specify what to avoid (“no passion language, no ‘leveraging,’ no generic compliments”).

Then rewrite. Take the draft, throw out 30 to 50% of it, replace it with your specifics, change sentence rhythms so they don’t all feel the same, and check that the voice matches the rest of your application. The first draft is a starting point, not a deliverable.

4. Use AI for refinement

Once you have your edited version, AI is genuinely useful for feedback. “What’s the weakest paragraph here?” “Does my close land?” “Is there anything that sounds like a cliché?”

This is also where you can ask AI to spot AI-tell patterns. “Read this and tell me which sentences sound like they were written by ChatGPT.” Then revise those.

What to avoid

• Pasting the job posting in and using the unedited output. This is the version that gets filtered out.
• Letting AI invent specifics. If it adds a metric, project, or claim you didn’t feed it, delete it.
• Using AI to write a tone that doesn’t match your CV or your real voice.
• Ignoring explicit “no AI” instructions in the job posting. Some employers (Anthropic, increasingly others) explicitly require unassisted writing. Treat that as a test of judgment, not just a guideline.

The most common reason people send generic cover letters: they think writing a tailored one takes an hour, and they don’t have the time when applying to 10 roles a week. With a good base letter and a 20-minute method, that changes.

Step 1: write a strong base letter once (60 to 90 minutes, one time)

Write your strongest cover letter for an imaginary ideal role in your target sector. 300 words. The structure from Section 4. Your best opening, your best evidence of what you bring, your best close.

This is your base. You’ll never send it as-is, but it’s the foundation for everything else.

Step 2: for each application, do this 20-minute pass

• 5 minutes: read the job posting closely. Underline the 3 to 5 things they emphasise most. The role is rarely about everything in the description; some things matter more than others.
• 5 minutes: research the employer. What did they ship recently? What’s their strategic direction? Who would I report to if I got this role? AI can help here, verify the interesting bits.
• 5 minutes: rewrite paragraphs 1 and 2 from scratch. These are the personalisation paragraphs. Reuse nothing from your base letter for the hook and the “why this employer” section.
• 3 minutes: edit paragraph 3 to match the role. Pull from your base letter’s evidence, but reorder or swap to match what the posting emphasises.
• 2 minutes: read aloud, fix anything awkward, check word count. If it’s over 350 words, cut. Probably from paragraph 3.

Classic mistakes that still kill applications

• Generic openings that could apply to any role at any company. “With my strong skills and proven experience...” is a near-instant filter-out.
• Repeating your CV in prose. The reader has the CV. The cover letter has to do something different.
• Typos and formatting errors. 1 in 5 hiring managers say a typo is a near-automatic disqualifier.
• Wrong company name (the cardinal sin of mass applications). Always proofread the salutation and the company references twice.
• Closing on “Thank you for your time and consideration.” It’s a non-statement.

Post-AI mistakes that didn’t exist three years ago

• Tone mismatch with your CV. AI tends to write flowery; if your CV is concise and technical, the mismatch shows.
• Hallucinated specifics. AI may add a metric, a project, or a job title you didn’t feed it. Always cross-check.
• Identical structure across cover letters. If you used AI for ten applications and didn’t edit, the same recruiter platform may flag the pattern.
• AI-tell phrases: “leveraging,” “driven results,” “dynamic environment,” “proven track record,” “moreover,” “furthermore,” “it’s important to note that.” Each one is fine alone; cumulatively they signal AI.
• Ignoring explicit “no AI” instructions. Some employers test whether you read the rules.

Dutch-specific mistakes

• Writing in broken Dutch when your Dutch isn’t strong. Better to write in English and acknowledge it briefly.
• Over-formal when the employer is informal (or vice versa). Match the salutation style of the job posting.
• Letters longer than 1 A4. Dutch readers expect a maximum of 1 page, ideally less.
• Ignoring the AIDA structure entirely when applying to traditional Dutch employers (Rijksoverheid, regional SMEs). They’re looking for the recognisable structure.

Three example letters, written for fictional candidates and roles. Each one is short (under 300 words), specific, and shows what good looks like in different contexts.

Example 1: Junior Consultant at a Big Four firm

Context: WO master’s graduate, applying to a junior consultant role at KPMG Strategy. English.

Subject: Application: Junior Consultant, Strategy & Operations

Dear Hiring Manager,

Your team’s recent client work on supply chain reshoring caught my attention because it’s the same problem I spent six months on for my master’s thesis. The trade-offs between cost and resilience that your senior partner Anne van Veen described in the FD interview last month are the ones I’ve been thinking about academically and want to work on commercially.

KPMG Strategy stood out to me among the Big Four for two reasons: the strong Dutch industrial client base (where my thesis research applies most directly), and the structured first-year programme that gives junior consultants real client exposure rather than just back-office support work.

What I bring: a master’s in supply chain management from Erasmus (cum laude), six months of full-time research with TNO on Dutch industrial reshoring (final report cited in two industry publications), and three months as an intern at a mid-size logistics consultancy where I led a client savings analysis that identified €1.2M in annual cost reductions. I work well in teams and have moved between Dutch and English work environments comfortably.

I’d welcome the chance to discuss how my background might fit your team’s current projects. Available for a call any afternoon next week.

Met vriendelijke groet,

[Name]

What it’s doing right:

• Specific hook: a recent KPMG client area, named senior person, named outlet.
• “Why this employer” paragraph names two concrete reasons rather than generic ones.
• Quantified evidence: cum laude, 6 months at TNO, €1.2M savings.
• Close is brief and forward-looking, not closed-off.
• Tone is professional but not flowery. Matches what a Big Four CV would look like.

Example 2: Rijkstraineeship application

Context: WO master’s graduate, applying to the general Rijkstraineeprogramma. The actual application would be in Dutch (a hard requirement for the Rijkstraineeship); this version is shown in English to fit the rest of the post.

Subject: Application: Rijkstraineeprogramma 2027

Dear Sir/Madam,

While researching my master’s thesis at the UvA, I worked alongside a policy adviser at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (SZW). What struck me most: how much difference it makes whether policymakers have seen the practice in which their policy lands. The Rijkstraineeprogramma, with four workplaces over two years, is exactly the kind of programme that builds that policy-practice bridge.

I’m applying to the Rijkstraineeprogramma because after my degree in public administration I want to contribute to policymaking on labour market and social security topics, with the breadth that the programme offers. Three of the four workplaces could connect to my study background; the fourth, ideally at an implementing agency, is the kind of exposure I currently lack.

What I bring: a master’s in public administration (UvA, GPA 8.1), a six-month graduation internship at SZW where I co-authored a research report on youth unemployment, a year on the board of a student association managing a €60,000 budget, and C2-level Dutch combined with professionally fluent English.

I’d welcome the chance to discuss my motivation in person.

Kind regards,

[Name]

What it’s doing right:

• Hook is a personal observation from a real research experience, not a generic statement.
• “Why this programme” paragraph engages with the actual structure of the Rijkstraineeship (4 workplaces in 2 years) rather than the brand.
• Evidence is quantified: GPA 8.1, 6 months at SZW, €60K budget, C2 Dutch.
• Formal register (“Dear Sir/Madam,” “Kind regards,”), correct for Rijksoverheid. The actual letter would be in Dutch with “Geachte heer/mevrouw” and “Met vriendelijke groet.”
• Brief close, no over-promising.

Example 3: Product Manager at an Amsterdam scaleup

Context: HBO graduate with one year of product internship, applying to a junior PM role at a fintech scaleup. English. Informal employer culture.

Subject: Application: Junior Product Manager

Hi [Name],

I’ve been a Mollie merchant for the last 18 months running my side business, and the migration to your new checkout flow last quarter is honestly the best one I’ve been through across three payment providers. The PM role you’ve posted is on the team responsible for that work, which is why I’m applying.

I’m applying to Mollie specifically because of the focus on European SME merchants rather than enterprise. That’s the segment I know best as a user, and from what I’ve seen in your job posting and on your engineering blog, it’s also where the most interesting product problems sit.

What I bring: a year as a product intern at Bunq (where I shipped two A/B tests on the savings flow that improved activation by 14% and 9%), an HBO degree in business informatics, and the perspective of having actually run a small business on top of a payment provider. I’m comfortable working across product, design, and engineering, and I read SQL well enough to dig into data without waiting on the analytics team.

Happy to chat any time this or next week.

Best,

[Name]

What it’s doing right:

• Hook is a real personal experience as a Mollie customer, immediately credible.
• “Why this employer” paragraph engages with their actual segment focus and shows familiarity with their engineering blog.
• Evidence is specific: Bunq internship, two A/B tests with quantified impact, the side business angle.
• Tone is informal and warm, matching scaleup culture (“Hi [Name],” “Best,” “Happy to chat”).
• Doesn’t apologise for being HBO rather than WO. The work history speaks for itself.

If you’re writing a cover letter this week, the highest-leverage thing you can do is the 90-minute base letter from Section 6. Pick a target sector. Write your strongest possible 300-word motivatiebrief for an imaginary ideal role in that sector. That base letter becomes the foundation for every application after.

From there, the 20-minute tailoring pass gets you to a strong, specific letter for each role without burning hours on every application.

If you’re using AI, use it as a real collaborator across the process: research, scaffolding, drafting, and refinement. Just stay in the driver’s seat. Your specifics, your voice, your judgment on what stays and what goes.

Aurora’s cover letter agent walks through the full process with you. It helps you build your base letter, researches each employer for the personalisation paragraphs, drafts and refines the language while keeping your voice, and flags AI-tell patterns before you send. It’s built for the 2026 reality where AI is in the room and the goal is to use it well.

Internal links

• How to Write a CV That Stands Out (post #5, rewritten)
• Working in the Netherlands as an International Graduate (post #1, rewritten)
• What Is a Traineeship and How Can It Boost Your Career (post #19, rewritten)
• Understanding Dutch Workplace Culture (post #4, rewritten)
• How to Negotiate Your Salary Like a Pro (post #14, rewrite pending)