As someone who spent yesterday firing off 38 job applications (with personalized cover letters!), this terrifies me.

IMO, the way to get the best jobs at the best company is to find someone who works there or some one who knows someone that works there and express interest.

If you have a good convo, your resume goes in and you will get an interview. A cover letter is a massive waste of time vs sending a 3 sentence cold email to someone that works for the company to line up a coffee.

Cover letters are the worst. Do hiring managers really read them?

When I was recruiting programmers I always read them, though maybe 1 out of every 10 applicants included one.

Most companies (including the one I was hiring for) cannot compete on price[1], so they only way they can hire a particularly desirable candidate is if they find a particular fit between candidate and company/role. A strong cover letter is a strong leading indicator of a potential fit, so it is very desirable.

[1] - I think the money is there and the economics probably work out to "just pay programmers more" but there are social factors that make this strategy unviable. In particular, most firms are very averse to paying programmers more than the non-technical staff to whom they report so the wage ceiling for programmers at a firm end up being capped to the market-clearing price for those business professionals.

> When I was recruiting programmers I always read them, though maybe 1 out of every 10 applicants included one.

So few? Just to make sure, does the body of the email counts as a cover letter? I always put mine there, surely that doesn't make it invisible?

The body of an email with a resume attached is an explanation to the person you are emailing about why you're sending them a resume and what you want them to do with it, no more. If the company is bigger than 80-or-so people and the person you're mailing is a recruitment inbox, then they are not going to be particularly interested in anything the email says other than which job you're applying for. Your heartfelt explanations about why the company is the place where you have always dreamed of working will never make it to anybody who has hiring decision authority.

So basically, the first person who receives my email will lose relevant information. It's like they don't even know how email works. Often at a technology company.

Such blatant stupidity is hard do fathom.

>surely that doesn't make it invisible?

It makes it perfectly visible, to the person who receives your email. After that only your attached resume is printed or passed on to other decision makers.

Putting your "cover letter" in body of an email is anywhere from bad to worse practice, depending on the initial recipient of your email (hiring manager vs low level recruiter).

> Putting your "cover letter" in body of an email is anywhere from bad to worse practice

So, the onus is on me to put this information in a place that is less convenient to reach than the body of the email?

This is ridiculous. The onus should be on them not to lose information. Sure, if I need that job badly, I may have to work around their stupidity. Hopefully I have more leeway than that.

> most firms are very averse to paying programmers more than the non-technical staff to whom they report

Why? Management is just a different kind of skilled labor, not a more important one, and certainly not a less scarce one.

The same applies to technical managers. It also applies to the managers of those managers- in general, if you're higher up the org chart you expect to get paid more than the people that report to you. If you get promoted, and are given more responsibilities, you expect to get more money. If you get promoted, and are given more responsibilities but are not given a higher salary, then you can probably get that higher salary for the same job by going elsewhere.

I don't see this as a management vs. engineering situation (especially since in there are plenty of companies that prefer to promote engineers to management rather than hire MBAs or external hires in general). It's more just a human hierarchy situation. The people higher up the hierarchy are held accountable for everything that happens below them in the org chart, even though they are by definition not doing the work of all of those individuals.

That's a functional hierarchy, of course. In a dysfunctional hierarchy, it's more like a pyramid scheme and the higher up you are, the easier it is for you to escape scrutiny by blaming those below you. All orgs I've worked in have been somewhere on the functional/dysfunctional spectrum, nothing's 100% good or 100% bad. There really are no ideal ways to get groups of people to work together towards a shared goal without introducing things which are injustices when seen in isolation, whether there's a hierarchy or a flat org or what have you. I hope someone figures out a better solution but I'm not holding my breath- like democracy and capitalism, it's the worst system in the world except for every other system that humans have been able to come up with.

Corporations are organized internally as command economies, not markets. There are other social logics at play.

Who makes the decision?

Three people in the thread say they often read them. For an alternative, I'll say that I often skim them, but they're generally not very significant in my decision making process.

The candidate is generally forced to take the job description and riff from that about how their skills/experience are applicable. The problem is two-fold, first they lack deep context on the situation so land-up writing either off-base or just 'marketing' stuff about how they're the solution to the problem. It's not the candidates fault (or the job description) that the implications of assumptions will be wrong - it's just too early on.

Second, if I can't work out how their skills/expertise might be applicable to the actual problems I have (since I know the context), then I probably shouldn't be the hiring manager!

I read them because I recognise the effort that candidates are putting into creating them, and on occasion you get a clearer picture of the career arc behind the titles.

Where it may help more is for entry level roles where by the nature of the stage of career/life there's not much in a CV. In those circumstances providing some insight and background helps to clear the first hurdle, basically the "why would I spend an hour with you?" question.

When I was doing recruiting I absolutely read the cover letters. If you can't describe why I should consider your background, why should I consider hiring you? I think it is an important indicator on how a developer communicates.

Do I really have to spell out the answer to your question?

You should consider hiring people because good candidates are hard to find. And if you want to know whether or not they're a good fit for the position, engage them in a conversation and ask. Don't expect applicants to do your job for you, the good candidates have better things to do than write you a letter before you even bother to talk to them.

One characteristic of a good applicant is a sincere interest in working for the company. A resume with no cover letter is a sign of a candidate who is blindly spraying out resumes.

You can increase your chances of getting hired at a specific company by tenfold of you focus your efforts. Usually this means getting to know people at the company, understanding which departments and projects you may fit.

Can you clarify "focus your efforts?"

For example, I am a graduate software engineer. There are a lot of companies that I have a more than sincere interest in working for - I have a near obsession for working for, say, Google, Amazon, Dropbox, or Facebook. I also have a desire to pay my bills. All 4 of the above have rejected me for "lack of years of experience," and so now what? Find more companies I sincerely want to work for? At this point, a company with a software engineering team I can learn from fits the bill, of which there's probably 3,000 in the Bay Area alone. So, I don't understand how my options at this point are anything other than literally sending out 3,000 resumes (I'm at 80 now). Other than, of course, extensive networking, which I also do.

Are you honestly telling me you can't tell the difference between a candidate spraying out resumes and a candidate worth talking to without a cover letter?

Are you honestly sure that writing a cover letter is a good signal?

The standard advice is to submit a cover letter, so many standard candidates spraying applications do. There's someone just a few comments over who wrote 53 cover letters when applying to jobs.

You still think cover letters are about focus?

I absolutely agree with your last sentence though. Bypassing the initial resume screen by talking to an actual engineer makes far more sense, but frankly you don't want to be too aggressive about it because then random people will start pestering your engineers all the time just to be considered.

>There's someone a few comments over

That's me, we're in the comment chain for it right now. I don't understand what else I can do to get a job as someone a.) new to the city and b.) a graduate software engineer with no prior experience other than personal and group projects. None of my "passion about" companies will take me - dropbox rejected me in 30 minutes flat, probably automatically. What can I do but spray out absurd amount of resumes? What can I do but have an auto-generated cover letter that swaps out COMPANY_NAME and JOB_TITLE so I can crank out enough resumes a day to ensure I get a job before my bills swamp me?

A good applicant is someone who has the skills to do the job well. Full stop.

You can increase your chances of an interview marginally through a significant investment of time, but you'll get more interviews by spraying resumes. Especially good candidates with valuable skills.

Of course, but you can't tell a good candidate by just asking them. You have to pick up signs they are a good candidate. One of them is a good cover letter.

What positions do you have that a good cover letter is a strong positive signals indicating that the person will be good at the job? If it's a writing or communications position, I fully understand. If it's for software engineering, cover letters serve more to stroke corporate egos than they do to provide critical job skill information.

Good candidates are especially hard to find if they're not willing to identify themselves.

I consider the cover letter important when I'm a hiring manager. It shows that you're interested enough in the job to try for it, to make a bit of effort. I've never been in a position where there were few enough applicants that I could have a conversation with every one of them - the cover letter is a brief of their half of that first 'why should you work here' discussion.

My opinion goes the opposite way when I am being aggressively recruited. So, I think it's on the person asking for something (to be offered a job, or to leave a current job) that should be showing their willingness to make the sale.

> Good candidates are especially hard to find if they're not willing to identify themselves.

Again. That is your problem to solve, not theirs. Good candidates don't need to worry about making sure you see them, they'll either just work for a different company where they happen to have more friends or they'll bypass the first line hiring process entirely by calling up a colleague and telling them to make sure whoever is doing the hiring bothers to call them back.

Your attitude will change when the market does. Trust me it will.

If mine will change to deal with a market we're not in right now, yours should change to deal with the market we are in right now. :)

My resume spells out, in thorough detail, why someone would consider hiring me. A cover letter is, for the most part, redundant and anecdotal. The one time I submitted a cover letter was to indicate that I had some experience with a very particular field that wasn't reflected in my resume.

> My resume spells out, in thorough detail, why someone would consider hiring me.

I always thought that the resume should explain why someone would want to hire me ("look, I'm smart, know some stuff, and did some cool things!"), while the cover letter explains why you in particular want to hire me.

I had very good look writing cover letters where I pulled apart the job description and explained how my experience (described on the attached resume) fit with each of the requirements.

I've included a few lines into my resume that serve as a microscopic cover letter. They did get noticed a lot last time I changed jobs.

And no, I did not write cover letters. A short phone / email exchange usually told the company if I'm an on-site interview material, and equally told me whether the company is worth being interviewed with.

Exactly. Plus it's a way in a few paragraphs to show you understand what the company does, tie in your related experience to that company and how you would benefit them, and generally pitch yourself as a suitable candidate to the company.

Some do.

I have a colleague who gets really annoyed with bad cover letters when we're interviewing and considers not taking the effort to make it good enough of a reason to reject someone (or at least count is severely against them).

Personally I don't care much about your ability to write something that sounds good. So write them and make them good, because you don't know who of us you're interviewing with I guess (metaphorically).

That's interesting, because in Switzerland, and I expect the rest of europe too(?), cover letters are the norm, not the exception.

Here in Poland they were the norm about 10-15 years ago (for programmers), now it is unique if someone attaches it.

I'm a programmer not a writer, give me a system to create, don't make me write books :)

It varies in the US. Some require it, some have it as optional, some don't ask for it at all.

They do when the cover letter and the CV is short and to the point. When either is not, you're really testing the recruiter's patience. (Recruiters spend 5-7 second on average on a resume.) Much like a brochure, your CV/cover letter is there you to land you a meeting:

https://steveblank.com/2011/08/05/bonfire-of-the-vanities/

Is that number really true?

Humans move their eyes every few hundred milliseconds and you can only read a handful of words after each eye movement, so this suggests that they read about a hundred words total, and probably a lot less if you factor in "seeking" time (e.g., to find the section headings).

Eye tracking study on the topic:

http://cdn.theladders.net/static/images/basicSite/pdfs/TheLa...

People typically read ~200-300 words per minute. 100 words is a lot more than what you end up reading on most CVs when you go through a pile. You basically scan a CV for a few seconds and move on to the next unless something caught your interest. When so you actually spend a few minutes reading the whole thing - bringing the average to, indeed, under 10s per CV. If HR did its job before sending CVs your way the average is much higher of course.

Anecdotal point of evidence: I got interviewed and subsequently hired because of a cover letter for my first programming job out of college. It probably works a lot better when the company you're applying to is small and passionate.

They are the most important thing you can send in. In one page, you should summarize why you are a good fit for the role.

Why are they the worst? I absolutely read them, especially when so many resumes look exactly the same.

Also, you see lots of crazy drivers: if you drive with the flow of traffic, you only see a few other cars, but if you drive 30 miles an hour faster than the flow of traffic, you see tons of cars.