Do ATS Platforms Even Read Cover Letters?
Less thoroughly than they read resumes, and it’s worth understanding why. Applicant tracking systems were built first to parse resumes into structured fields — job titles, dates, skills — and cover letters were added on top of that as unstructured narrative text. Most modern platforms will scan a cover letter for keyword matches against the job description and store it for a recruiter to read later, but they don’t extract it into the same structured data a resume gets broken into. That’s an argument for keeping the format simple, not for skipping the letter — recruiters still open and read what the system stores.
Why This Still Matters
Per Jobscan’s 2026 analysis of Fortune 500 career pages, 487 of the Fortune 500 — 97.4% — run a detectable applicant tracking system. Even with cover letters parsed less precisely than resumes, that’s the software your application passes through first at almost every large employer. A letter built with parsing problems in mind (rather than against them) doesn’t get lost at that first step.
Formatting Rules for an ATS-Safe Cover Letter
- Single column — no side-by-side text blocks; ATS reads left-to-right in one pass
- Skip decorative headers — a plain contact block at the top, not a designed banner
- Work 2-3 keywords from the job description into your body paragraphs — naturally, in context, not as a stuffed list
- No tables, text boxes, or icons — content inside them is often skipped or scrambled entirely
- Export as a real PDF from a document, not a scanned image or a screenshot
- Keep your name and contact info as plain, selectable text — not embedded in a graphic
Every Wensa template is shaped around what hiring managers and recruiters actually look for when scanning a cover letter in seconds.
Working Job-Description Keywords In Without Sounding Like a List
Rule #3 above is the one people get wrong most often. The instinct is to list every skill from the posting somewhere near the top, the way you might on a resume’s skills section. On a cover letter, that reads as padding to both the ATS relevance scan and the human who opens the file after it. The keywords that count are the ones attached to a real sentence about something you actually did — a project, a number, a result — not the ones floating in a standalone list.
I led the migration of our billing platform to a microservices architecture on AWS, cutting deployment time by 40% — the kind of cloud infrastructure and CI/CD experience your posting calls for.
I have strong skills in cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, microservices, Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, and DevOps, and I am a team player with excellent cloud infrastructure experience.
The “Do” version uses two keywords from a hypothetical posting — cloud infrastructure, CI/CD — but each one is doing real work inside a sentence about an actual result. The “Don’t” version repeats “cloud infrastructure” twice and reads like a skills list wearing a sentence’s clothing. An ATS keyword scan treats both as a match; a recruiter doesn’t.
An ATS-Safe Opening Paragraph You Can Copy
Structure matters as much as wording here — a plain paragraph, no header graphic, keywords worked into an actual claim rather than listed. Adapt the brackets to your own background.
I’m writing to apply for the [Job Title] role at [Company Name], which I found through [where you saw the posting]. In my current role as [Your Current Title] at [Current Company], I [one concrete, quantified achievement that mirrors a requirement from the job description] — the kind of [skill or keyword from the posting] experience your team is looking for.
A Closing Line That Still Reads Naturally
The close is where a lot of ATS-safe letters get stiff, trading personality for what feels like “safe” formatting. You don’t need to — plain text closes fine either way.
I’d welcome the chance to talk through how my background in [skill or keyword from the job description] could support [Team or Company Name]’s [specific goal mentioned in the posting]. Thank you for your time and consideration — I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Round Out Your Application
Pair this with a matching ATS resume template.
See our ATS resume tips guide for the same rules applied to the resume side of your application.
For guidance that goes beyond formatting — tone, structure, how to open and close a letter — our step-by-step cover letter guide covers the writing side.
Or see real cover letter examples if you want to see finished letters built this way before writing your own.
Pairing this with a resume? Give that document the same scrutiny — our free ATS resume checker tells you exactly where it stands.
FAQ — ATS Cover Letter Templates
Does the specific ATS platform (Workday, Greenhouse, Taleo) change what I should do?
Not meaningfully for a cover letter — the core rules (single column, standard text, no graphics) work across every major platform. Platform-specific quirks matter far more for resume keyword parsing than for a short narrative document like a cover letter.
Will a longer or shorter cover letter parse better in an ATS?
Length doesn’t affect parsing either way — a scanner reads what’s there regardless of word count. Keep it to the standard 250–350 words for the human reader who opens it after the system does its pass.
Can I still include my LinkedIn URL and portfolio link in an ATS-safe cover letter?
Yes — plain hyperlinked text (not a styled button or icon) parses fine. Keep it in your contact block at the top, the same place your resume has it.
Does it matter if the portal marks the cover letter upload as “optional”?
Functionally to the ATS, no — an optional field is skipped the same way whether you fill it or leave it blank. What matters is the recruiter who opens it afterward: many hiring managers say they still read a cover letter when one is attached, optional or not, so an ATS-safe letter you already have on hand costs little to attach and doesn’t hurt your parsing odds either way.
Once it’s written, export as a real PDF — see our PDF cover letter templates for the safest file format.
