How to End a Cover Letter: 21 Closing Lines You Can Adapt

The closing paragraph of a cover letter has three jobs, and it should do all of them in two or three sentences. Restate your fit in one line tied to the posting. Ask for the next step, usually an interview or a call. Thank the reader. Below that goes a sign-off such as Sincerely or Best regards, a comma, and your typed name.

Here is the whole thing for Maya Torres, a fictional customer success manager applying to a healthcare software company whose posting stresses enterprise renewals:

“Cutting churn from 14% to 6% across a 90-account book is the closest match I've seen between my last two years and a job posting. I'd welcome an interview to talk through how that playbook applies to your enterprise renewals, and I'm free any weekday after 2 p.m. Eastern. Thank you for your time.”

Sincerely,

Maya Torres

Not every hiring manager reads the cover letter, but the ones who do tend to remember how it ends. A closing that names the employer's actual need and makes one clear ask reads like a person wrote it. “I look forward to hearing from you” reads like a template, and template language is exactly what recruiters have learned to discount. Everything below is built on that difference, with 21 closings sorted by situation so you can adapt the one that matches yours.

Meet Sam Ruiz, a fictional logistics coordinator applying for a transportation planner role at a regional grocery chain. The posting mentions route optimization in its first requirement and again under responsibilities, so that is the thing the closing has to touch.

Here is the closing most applicants write.

“I believe my skills and experience make me a strong candidate for this position. I hope you will consider my application. Thank you for your time and consideration.”

Nothing in it is wrong, and nothing in it is Sam. Every other applicant could have written the same three sentences. Now the rebuild, one line at a time.

The fit line. One sentence that ties your strongest relevant result to the requirement the posting stresses most. For Sam that means route work, so the line is concrete and slightly hard to write, which is the point. “Rerouting 60 weekly truckloads around a three-month bridge closure without missing a delivery window is the kind of problem your posting leads with.”

The ask. A confident request for the next step, with availability attached so saying yes takes one email instead of three. “I'd welcome an interview to talk through how I'd approach your network redesign, and I'm free any afternoon this week or next.”

The thanks. Short, and last. “Thank you for your time.”

Three sentences, each earning its place. The fit line answers why you, the ask answers what happens next, and the thanks closes the door politely instead of leaving it swinging.

Every closing below is two or three sentences, written for a fictional applicant in a specific situation. None of them can be pasted into another letter unchanged, and that is deliberate. The specificity is what makes them work, so swap in your own numbers, dates, and names before you borrow one.

The default for most applications. Use it when your fit is already visible on the resume and the closing just needs to convert interest into a meeting. The trick is anchoring the ask to one result, so the interview has an agenda before it is scheduled.

Use this when the posting telegraphs its pain. A system migration mentioned three times, a metric described as flat, a new location opening, a backlog nobody owns. Naming that need in the closing shows you read the posting as a problem to solve, and a closing that connects the employer's stated goal to a concrete achievement of yours is far more credible than a template sign-off.

For shift work, part-time roles, and any application where a notice period could become a silent objection. Scheduling is the first practical question a hiring manager has about these roles, so answer it before they ask. There is a full worked example in our part-time job cover letter guide, including the availability line.

An out-of-state address is a reason to skip you unless the closing removes it. Name the move date, make clear the move is certain, and offer interview logistics that cost the employer nothing. Our relocation cover letter example shows the full letter this closing belongs to.

The referral usually appears in the opening line and then vanishes. Repeating the name at the close, with the specific thing that person can vouch for, bookends the letter and gives the reader an internal source to check before the interview. Only do this with the referrer's blessing.

A career changer's closing restates the transferable proof in the new field's language, because the reader will not do that translation on your behalf. State the old experience, then the equivalence, with enough confidence that the reader hears an argument rather than an apology. The career change cover letter example shows how the whole letter builds to this line.

With little work history, the closing offers the proof you do have and makes it effortless to check. A portfolio, a writing sample, a professor who will take a call. Offering evidence is a stronger move than promising enthusiasm, which every other graduate is already promising.

The sign-off is the lowest-stakes decision in the letter, which is exactly why an odd one stands out. Pick from the safe column and spend your energy on the paragraph above it.

The mechanics are the same whichever you pick. A comma after the sign-off, your typed name on the next line, nothing between them in a digital document. On a printed letter, leave three or four blank lines between the sign-off and the typed name and sign by hand in that space. In a PDF you upload to an application portal, the typed name alone is correct. A scanned signature image adds nothing a recruiter or an applicant tracking system (ATS) needs, and image-heavy PDFs occasionally parse worse.

It depends on where the letter lives. In a PDF attached to an application, your typed name is the last line, because your contact details already sit in the letter's header. In an email where the letter is the body, there is no header, so the block under your name carries your phone number and email address, plus a LinkedIn or portfolio link if it strengthens your case. Keep that block to three or four short lines. A ten-line signature with logos and inspirational quotes buries the letter above it.

A P.S. is one extra proof point placed after your name, and it works because the eye lands on it even when the letter gets skimmed. It earns its place when the point is specific and genuinely did not fit the letter's argument. Something like “P.S. The onboarding guide your team published in January uses the same three-tier structure I built at Harwick. Happy to compare notes.” tells the reader you did homework the other applicants did not.

It fails when it restates enthusiasm, which is where it turns into a sales-letter gimmick. “P.S. I'm so excited about this role!” subtracts from everything above it. My rule is simple. Use a P.S. in an email body, where it reads naturally, and skip it in a formal PDF. And if the point is strong enough to be a P.S., first ask yourself why it is not in the letter.

1. Hedging. The weak version reads “I hope you will consider me for this role.” Hope hands the decision away and invites the reader to adopt your doubt. The rewrite makes the same request with a spine. “I'd welcome an interview to talk through how I'd cut your average onboarding time.”

2. The pushy follow-up promise. “I will call you on Monday to schedule an interview” claims control of a calendar that is not yours, and it creates a small dread in the reader instead of interest. State availability and let them pick. “I'm available for an interview any afternoon next week, at whatever time works for your team.”

3. Repeating the resume. A closing that re-lists your titles and skills wastes the last thing the reader sees on information they already have. Replace it with one forward-looking line about their problem, which the resume by design does not contain. “Your posting says the audit backlog is six months deep, and clearing backlogs like that was most of my last job.”

4. A closing longer than the opening. A five-sentence close reads like a second letter and signals you could not decide what mattered. Cut to the fit line, the ask, the thanks. Any sentence doing none of those jobs goes.

5. No ask at all. “Thank you for your time and consideration” as the entire close is polite, and it requests nothing, so it tends to get nothing. Put the ask directly before the thanks. “I'd welcome an interview to walk through the numbers above. Thank you for your time.”

If you want one good ending sentence rather than a whole framework, these three lines from the closings above do the most work per word.

What they share is a specific, checkable claim aimed at the employer's situation rather than the applicant's feelings. Any line built that way will outperform any line built from enthusiasm.

Seen from the closing's side, three rules cover everything. Prove fit with one specific line aimed at the requirement the posting stresses most. Make one confident ask and attach the availability that makes yes easy. Claim nothing you cannot defend out loud, because the closing is the line an interviewer is most likely to quote back to you. That last rule matters more now that screening software sits in front of human readers, since the same specific, posting-relevant language that persuades a person is what keyword-based filters respond to, and stuffed or borrowed language fails with both.

The closing's job ends when the letter goes out. Chasing the employer is a separate skill with its own timing and its own wording, and doing it well matters more than doing it fast. When you reach that stage, the guide on how to follow up on a job application covers when to write and what to say, with email templates.

The fit line only works if it points at a result that is actually on your resume, because an interviewer will put the two documents side by side. The practical fix is to write the closing with the resume open next to it. In Roleframe, a tailored resume version carries a fit report for the specific posting, including the keywords it screens for and the ones you are missing, and the cover letter is drafted against that same job for you to edit. The closing's fit line and the resume's strongest bullet end up as the same claim in two registers, which is exactly what you want a hiring manager to notice. If you would rather test a tool before creating an account, our guide to finding a free cover letter generator with no sign-up covers what to check.