A cover letter explains who you are, lists major accomplishments, and tells the hiring manager what you hope to bring to the company if hired.

There are three types of cover letters: the application cover letter, the prospecting cover letter, and the networking cover letter. To get the full rundown of each of the three types, check out this article on cover letter formats. To receive instant feedback on your cover letter, check out Jobscan’s cover letter tool.

Think of a cover letter like a quick preview instead of the entire feature film. The goal is to plant the seeds of intrigue in the hiring manager’s mind about your most relevant skills and experience that you can discuss more in-depth during the interview. This means that the best cover letters tend to be around one page in length to keep your message clear and easy to digest.

It can be intimidating to try to parse down all your best qualities into a few quick paragraphs. To make sure you’re headed in the right direction it’s best to start writing a cover letter without actually even writing. Before you start typing away, you should do your research on the company, job title, and description.

Researching the company you are applying to can help you understand the general tone and personality of the brand as a whole. This can then determine the tone of voice you might write your cover letter in. For example, an artsy start-up busines is likely to have a much more casual and creative energy compared with a more traditionally structured corporation. Pro tip? Look to the company website for hints of the tone to match.

Similarly to how you might adjust your resume to match the job description, it can also inform where your focus should be directed in the cover letter. It’s likely that the hiring manager has a priority list of key skills they’re looking for. Consider emphasizing those experiences and unique specialties to help capture their interest.

One of the incorrect ways of using a cover letter template is to simply rephrase exactly what your resume says. Why? A cover letter is not a resume. The purpose of a resume is to pull out the most important parts of your work and educational history, sharing only brief, measurable information about each part. The purpose of a cover letter is to pick out a few of the most relevant pieces of information from your resume, and use them to back up your explanation of why you are the best candidate for each particular job. Your cover letter builds on your resume, it does not mirror it.

Another incorrect way to use a cover letter template is to choose the very first template you come across. Sure, that template could, in theory, be the best one. However, your goal when searching for the correct template is to find one that fits both your work experience and the job you are applying for seamlessly.

Even when you find the best cover letter template for you, it is important that you don’t mindlessly enter the information that the template suggests. Be picky about what you decide to include in your cover letter. If the template suggests adding a particular piece of information that you find irrelevant to the job, don’t include it.

Furthermore, never copy and paste into the template. Open a blank document beside the cover letter template and start writing your cover letter from scratch, using the template as a reference. Copy and pasting won’t only keep you from being critical, it may also create formatting errors and eliminate and important stage of the editing process. Recruiters can spot copy and pasting from a mile away, and they will stop reading as soon as they recognize it. If a cover letter doesn’t show effort, you won’t seem serious about the job.