The Closing Paragraph and What to Ask For
Almost every cover letter ends the same way: gratitude for the reader’s consideration, a hope of hearing from them, and no actual request. It is the most reliably wasted paragraph in the document.
A closing paragraph has one job — make replying easy — and it does that by giving the reader something specific to respond to rather than a sentiment to acknowledge.
What the standard close does wrong
Weak: Thank you for taking the time to consider my application. I look forward to the possibility of discussing how my skills and experience could contribute to your team. Please do not hesitate to contact me at your earliest convenience.
Read that as the recipient. What are you being asked to do? Nothing, precisely. “Do not hesitate to contact me” hands the entire next move to a person who has forty other applications and no reason to prefer yours. Thanking someone in advance for reading a document they haven’t decided to read yet is also, faintly, a request for credit.
There’s nothing offensive here. That’s the trouble — it’s inert, and it occupies the position readers remember second-best.
What to put there instead
Two things, in either order: a real question about the work, and a plain statement of availability. Two sentences total.
The question is the part that does the work.
One thing I’d want to understand early is whether the reporting sits with your team or with finance, because that changes whether this is mostly a modelling job or mostly a negotiation. Happy to talk any time next week or the one after.
The question demonstrates you thought about the role as a job with real constraints rather than a posting to answer. It also gives a reader a cheap reply — answering a specific question takes one line, whereas responding to “I look forward to hearing from you” requires them to invent the entire next step.
What makes a question good
It should be one you actually want the answer to. A question engineered to look thoughtful reads as engineered. If you can’t think of anything you’d want to know, that’s a signal you haven’t understood the role yet, and the fix is upstream — go back to reading the posting properly.
It should be answerable in a sentence. “What’s your team’s five-year strategy?” isn’t a question, it’s homework. “Is the role covering one product or the whole suite?” is a question.
It should be about the work, not about you. Not would my background be a good fit? — that’s asking them to do your argument for you. Ask about the shape of the job: scope, who owns what, what the first six months look like, whether the thing they described as a rebuild is a rebuild or a rescue.
It shouldn’t be answered in the posting. This is the one that stings. If the posting already says the role reports to the Head of Data, asking who it reports to proves you skimmed. Re-read before you send.
When you genuinely have no question
Some roles are described so completely that there’s nothing sensible left to ask. Then use an observation instead — one sentence about the problem, offered as a view rather than a query.
The part I’d expect to be hardest is the handover from the agency, since that’s usually where the undocumented decisions live. Happy to talk whenever suits.
That’s not a question, but it’s still something a reader can react to, and it still shows judgement. An observation with a mild opinion in it invites disagreement, which is a form of engagement.
Availability, stated once, without contortion
One short clause. Not a paragraph.
- Happy to talk whenever suits.
- Around most afternoons this month.
- I’m in the middle of a notice period, so evenings are easier until mid-August.
That last one is useful precisely because it’s a real constraint. Don’t manufacture false flexibility — saying you’re available any time when you’re not means the first scheduling exchange contradicts your letter. And don’t list a grid of time slots; you’re not booking the meeting yet.
Skip “at your earliest convenience” entirely. Nobody has ever said it out loud.
Sign-offs, briskly
Fine, everywhere: Best regards, Best, Kind regards, Regards, Thanks, Many thanks.
Fine in the right register: Sincerely and Yours sincerely — correct and slightly formal, well suited to public sector, legal, academic, and older institutions, faintly stiff at a twelve-person startup.
Avoid: Yours faithfully unless you’re writing in a market where it’s still the convention for a named-recipient letter — it reads as a template to most readers now. Cheers is a judgement call and depends entirely on the field. Warmly to a stranger is a small overstep. Anything with an exclamation mark is a risk you’re taking for no return.
Then your name. Not your name plus your title plus a quotation, in a letter — that’s an email signature, and an application letter isn’t the place for one.
Two things not to put in the close
Salary. Unless the posting asks for it, the last paragraph of a cover letter is the wrong place. It reframes the whole document as a negotiation before anyone has decided they want you.
A promise about your own qualities. I am confident I would excel in this role adds nothing that the preceding paragraphs haven’t earned or failed to earn. If the letter has done its job, the reader has already formed a view; if it hasn’t, an assertion won’t rescue it.
The whole thing, as two sentences
Test your close by reading only it, out loud, as though it were the entire message. If it still contains a specific question and a plain offer to talk, it’s working. If it contains gratitude, hope, and a request not to hesitate, it’s the paragraph you were always going to delete — and you can see how it fits the shape in the four-paragraph letter, where the close is deliberately the shortest part.