No Cover Letter Field? Three Places to Put the Sentence That Gets You in the Room

When the application form doesn’t have a cover letter field, the pitch moves to three places: the “anything else?” or “additional information” box, the LinkedIn note attached to your InMail or connection request, and the first line of any open-text question on the form itself. Each one is read differently, and writing for the wrong one is why most candidates’ pitches disappear.

Plenty of UK applications have quietly stopped including a dedicated cover letter field. The shift tracks an industry trend: in Jobvite’s 2020 Recruiter Nation Report (806 recruiters), only 27% of recruiters said they considered cover letters when evaluating an application — up from 8% in 2017, but still a minority. Compare that to the 2023 Resume Genius hiring-manager survey, in which 83% said they read most letters when they receive them. The split — recruiters increasingly indifferent, hiring managers still reading — is why the cover letter has migrated rather than disappeared. What recruiters did not stop doing is reading the first sentence of whatever a candidate puts in front of them.

The three places the pitch now lives

You have probably written each of these without thinking of them as a pitch. They are, and recruiters treat them as such — but they are read in very different ways.

• The 'additional info' or 'anything else?' box on the application form. Read for one specific anchor. The recruiter is skimming for a phrase that maps to the must-have bullet on the JD. If they find it, they slow down. If they don't, they move on.
• The LinkedIn note attached to the InMail or connection request. Read like a subject line. The first six words decide whether the rest gets opened at all. There is no scrolling, no second pass — you have one line above the fold.
• The first line of the application form itself — usually the 'Why are you applying?' or 'What interests you about this role?' question. Read as your conscious opening. It is the one piece of writing the recruiter knows you chose to put first.

Each of these is doing a different job. The “additional info” box is doing the work of the cover letter postscript — the thing that makes the recruiter reroute the CV. The LinkedIn note is doing the work of a subject line — getting opened. The first line of the form is doing the work of the cover letter’s opening paragraph — establishing the angle.

The ‘additional info’ box — skimmed for one anchor

The classic mistake is to use this box as a mini-cover-letter. Five hundred characters of “I would bring enthusiasm, dedication and a passion for…” — none of which is read. The recruiter is not looking for a paragraph. They are looking for one phrase that says this candidate has the thing the hiring manager actually asked for.

The “after” works because it does only one thing. It names the must-have bullet in the JD and the specific work the candidate has done that matches it. It does not promise enthusiasm. It does not list three soft skills. It points at one piece of evidence and offers to talk about it. A recruiter scanning the bottom of an application form for thirty seconds will see that anchor and reroute the CV.

The format is mechanical. Read the JD, find the one bullet that looks like the hiring manager wrote it themselves, and write a single sentence that names what you’ve done that matches it. If you don’t have a match, leave the box blank — an empty box is better than a generic one, because the generic one actively makes the case that you didn’t read the JD.

The LinkedIn DM — needs a subject-line opener

The LinkedIn note is the most over-written piece of writing in the modern application process. Two hundred and fifty characters of small talk, an apologetic “I hope this isn’t too forward,” and then, buried in the fifth sentence, the actual reason you are messaging. The recruiter has already moved on. You had six words above the fold and you spent them on a pleasantry.

The reason this works is that LinkedIn notes are read on a phone, between meetings, in the four seconds before the recruiter taps “archive.” If your first line is “Hope this finds you well,” you are competing with eighteen identical messages. If your first line names the role and the specific match, you are the message they open.

A useful exercise: write your message, then delete every word that comes before the most specific noun in it. Whatever is left is your real opener. Treat the test as binary: could the recruiter paste your opening sentence straight into a Slack message to the hiring manager? If yes, it survives. If not, rewrite.

The first line of the application form — your conscious opening

This is the one most candidates underestimate. When an application form has a “Why are you interested in this role?” or “What do you bring to this team?” field, the first sentence of your answer is, in the recruiter’s eyes, the strongest sentence you chose to write in the entire application. They know you had time to think about it. They know you wrote it after reading the JD. They are reading it as a signal of how you open a piece of work.

Which means the first sentence should not be “I am writing to apply for the Senior Product Manager role at Acme.” The recruiter knows what you are writing to apply for. The form told them. Spending your conscious opening on confirming the obvious is the equivalent of starting an interview answer with “thank you for the question, that’s a really good question.” It says nothing and it costs you the strongest position in your application.

The “after” gives the recruiter something to point at when they defend you to the hiring manager. It also tells them, in two sentences, that you read the JD and that you have a specific match. Everything else in the application form is now read in the light of that opening.

One sentence, three placements, same pattern

The deeper point is that across all three placements, the sentence is the same shape: here is the specific thing on your JD I have done, in my own words, with a number or a scope or a change attached. The placement varies. The pattern doesn’t. Generic enthusiasm dies in every box. Specific evidence travels.

The candidates who get first conversations are not the ones writing longer applications. They are the ones who recognise that the cover letter didn’t vanish — it just got broken into smaller, sharper pieces, and dropped into the boxes that are still being read.

Related reading

• The four sentences your cover letter actually needs — the underlying structure that survives any field.
• The 90-word cover letter format — what to put in the “anything else?” box if you have room.
• Read the JD like a recruiter — how to find the bullet your one sentence has to anchor on.