My experience is that small to medium size companies, where the person managing you is also screening resumes, pay much more attention to cover letters. I've had my cover letters explicitly mentioned by these companies when hiring. I've also hired based on cover letters at these companies.

Big companies don't look at all. HR or recruiter finds you by keyword OR you get referred by a friend for the job. Then 5 people who don't care take 20 minutes of their day to interview you. There's no chance for the cover letter to come up in this scenario. When I worked at BigCo I interviewed a decent amount of people and HR never handed me a cover letter to look at.

My rule of thumb is I don't write a cover letter unless I have a good reason to write one. For example, I found a mid size company through an interesting blog post and felt like that was something worth mentioning and that I thought the company seemed interesting too. It was probably as short as a tweet but I got an email and subsequently an offer very soon after. Generic cover letters are a waste of everyone's time.

> Generic cover letters are a waste of everyone's time.

"Generic cover letter" is an oxymoron. Cover letters are supposed to be individualized.

The sample cover letter in the article is quite generic & doesn't seem much tailored to a particular job description.

> The sample cover letter in the article is quite generic

Yes, the first paragraph in the cover letter is almost identical to the opening paragraphs of numerous spam emails. "You're building a great feedback organization product I think has great potential". Really? Well, ta very much; now tell us something we don't know.

While I generally think a cover letter, even if mostly generic, is a good idea as a way of at least somewhat personalizing your application, there's a lot about that one that sort of turns me off. It would be a net negative for me.

Yup, exactly. I'm in central Europe, I've never written one and no-one missed it. If a cover letter was mandatory I didn't apply. Same when I was at the other end of the hiring process, I never required a cover letter, good people are in high demand, so why make them jump through unnecessary hoops.

> good people...unnecessary hoops.

This is an excellent point. A point that plenty of hiring outfits still don't get. They're so focused on their needs and their (self) importance that they forget who "the customer" is.

I do web dev. When I see this is marketing agencies I laugh (and don't apply). If you're a marketing agency and you don't understand who "the customer" is then you've got serious problems.

The rule applies elsewhere as well. It's a relationship. If you're process says "welcome all plebes" then that's exactly what you'll get.

I think this is correct. Be mindful of how HR is likely to work at the place that hires you.

Big Co: there is some HR screener looking for keywords who hands a stack of resumes -- maybe a hundred -- to a hiring manager who has to quickly go through them and pick maybe 5-10 who will get a screen. If the screen goes well, it may go to a second screen or a full panel.

The thing to keep in mind is that interviewing bears substantial costs for the firm. You are yanking 5-6 senior people out of usually an overloaded sprint to spend an hour and then more time writing up a form, so basically 1 day of work. But you may have 300 people applying. That means if everyone got a full panel, it would take 1 year of labor to fill 1 position.

Obviously that's not possible, so the end result is going to be capricious for the person going through the process -- there's no way around that, as you can only have resources to do an indepth look at 5 out of those 300. So yes, interviewing sucks and you will often get unfairly ruled out for stupid stuff. We get it, but that's how it has to be and will continue to be as long as applying for a job is costless and open to everyone who can upload a pdf. It's just a bad equilibrium -- the more people apply per position, the more arbitrary the process becomes, which encourages more people to apply to many different positions to hedge their bets, which creates more resumes per position, etc.

For really famous firms like Microsoft or Google, they may get 1000-3000 applications per positions. Even if most of these applicants are unsuitable, they still gum up the works and add more randomness to the process.

OTOH, if it's a smaller company you don't get so many applying and they can afford to give a better look per resume, but then again it's going to depend on the job market situation. Still your odds are better.

Strangely, it's rare for the candidate to actually think about what it's like on the other side of this and take steps that make it easier to process their resume.

Stuff like: keep it to a single page, read the requirements in the job posting and include relevant experience/skills rather than a full dump of everything you did, etc. And never, ever, lie about a skill or experience. Try to make the resume easy to read for someone who has to read 100 of them per hour.

As someone on the other side of the table now I’m almost at the point where I’ll bring anyone who provides a single page CV in for interview, just because they’ve clearly put some thought into it. I’m so sick of trawling through five page CVs which contain absolutely everything apart from a reason to hire you.

The worst resume I ever got was someone who had spent a lot of time cross-referencing their work history with the technologies used there.

So under ConsultingCo, there was: 12, 13, 15, 21, 28, 34.

You were expected to flip a couple of pages to learn that 12 was JavaScript, 13 was HTML, 15 was .. and I stopped caring at that point & binned it.

Maybe there are some cases where a bibliography of publications or something like that would push up the length but I think it's a pretty good rule of thumb that two sides of a sheet of paper--which is still relevant given that people print out resumes and make notes on them--is pretty much a hard upper limit. I'd probably find one page a bit tight though if you have any amount of work history.

I'm fine with 2 pages on a sheet, and have never thrown out a resume because of its length, but for long resumes I just skim. But I disagree that you need 2 pages.

Here is a perfectly fine resume that can be half a page for a lead role or higher. Let's say this is a role for a webapp developer and the candidate has 10 years experience. With this resume, which is only half a page, you are probably way ahead of the competition. This is all the info a hiring manager needs.

   position
   Name/email address
   
   Languages: Java, Python, C++, JS

   Experience: 
   
   Foo Corp: 2017-2020. Lead Engineer to Principal Engineer. Web App developer for Foo Authentication System and other microservices. Used standard LAMP stack and then Spring Boot.

   Bar Corp: 2012-2016. Sr. Engineer to Lead Engineer. Worked on backend order fulfillment logic, developed new test infrastructure for WebApps, client side test harnesses, security test suites, and related work. 

   Baz Consulting: 2010-2012. Engineer. Worked as consultant for primarily B2B clients, primarily in Java. Delivered over 30 successful projects to spec.

   Bat Heavy Industries: 2007-2010. Associate Engineer to Engineer. Started as QA hire and migrated to development, responsible for metrics gathering app, qa infrastructure code, worked in python, java, and other languages.

   Education: B.S. Chemistry, Foo State University.

I find it so interesting that you select for that, because that example tells you virtually nothing about the person that isn't generically applicable to a large number of candidates.

Especially those with 13 years experience. Delivering 30 projects is the only item that stood out for me, but everyone with a few years can make that claim depending on what they choose to call a project.

The number of languages listed is laughably small for a 13 year candidate, but I guess they have picked out the ones they think you want to see.

From that resume, I cannot tell even one thing that the person is particularly good at, or any qualities they could bring to the company that would set them apart - other than their decision to write a short resume and avoid telling you much about themselves.

> I find it so interesting that you select for that, because that example tells you virtually nothing about the person that isn't generically applicable to a large number of candidates.

Correct, this is how all resumes work. Remember, nothing on the resume is verifiable apart from the dates and companies the candidate worked for, unless you do a phone screen or panel interview. So the resume selects the candidates suitable for the skills based interview. I know some people think the candidate needs to write "I am passionate about quality" or "I love collecting butterflies and have all of Nabokov's first editions" but those are primarily creative writing exercises that don't end up telling much that is reliable or reproducible across candidates.

> The number of languages listed is laughably small for a 13 year candidate, but I guess they have picked out the ones they think you want to see.

Correct, and one would understand that for someone with 10 years of experience it's not hard to pick up a new language, nor is language particularly important in this role. Neither is framework.

> I cannot tell even one thing that the person is particularly good at

No, you can't tell that from a resume, but you can tell what a person worked on (perhaps poorly). In this case, there is plenty of QA, webapp, and some security experience. This gives you avenues to drill down during the in person interview.

Remember, the only thing you know is true on a resume is the list of prior work experiences. Then you look for a collection of claimed skills. So when reviewing the resume you check whether the claimed skills match your needs and then drill down to verify the claims during the in person interview. That's pretty much all the info you can ever get.

I wish everyone viewed the process like this. I was job hunting a few years ago and increased my hits by roughly 50% by doing one thing: adding more color to the stupid resume.

Like, physical RGB color? (As opposed to metaphorical "color" of fleshing out your statements) That's... pretty funny, actually.

> The number of languages listed is laughably small for a 13 year candidate

Why would you expect a dev have more languages listed? Many jobs involve only 1-2 languages, so why should they have more? (Assuming you don't list languages you've used for a project once years ago, which you're unlikely to have much relevant benefit in vs learning them fresh)

When I get the 8 page resume, it usually tells me this person cannot express what is important. Quality vs quantity is missed by so many people.

I wonder if you tell prospective candidates this? If you don't, it's just another random element in the application process. How do I know you're the guy who wants a one page CV, or if you're the guy who will reject me because my CV isn't detailed enough?

Unless you can speak to the person in advance, or find out via a third party, you can't know.

There is variation, so it's a numbers game - you have to send out without knowing if you're doing the right thing in each case.

I've spoken with recruiters about this, and like hiring managers, some of them favour a short resume that says very little ("less is more"), others favour a detailed one ("your experience will impress").

However there is a consistent aspect. They pretty much all need:

- Something that fits what HR is looking for in a few seconds skimming early in the first page. Bear in mind HR rarely understands any of things they are looking for, and are easily led astray if they think you are in category X when they are looking for Y, even if you can do X and Y equally.

- Something that fits what the hiring manager is looking for in a few seconds skimming early in the first page, and doesn't look onerous to read through.

- Something that passes keyword matches.

- Depending on the company, or how you get in, something that passes an ATS's assessment of experience (not just keywords but duration working, level of things like did you do management), and doesn't get tripped up by things like column formatting.

One of the things to remember is that almost nobody will read the entire resume or CV, unless it matches what low-effort pattern matching they are doing in a quick initial skim.

There's also quite a lot of variation in whether they are looking for "exact matches" to named skills ("although you have listed CSS, Webpack, ES6, Typescript, HTML5... we're can't proceed because we're looking for someone who knows JavaScript"), or quite fuzzy ("we know any good developer can learn a new language fairly quickly, what we're looking for is evidence that you know software").

Again, you just have to guess and play a numbers game, because they rarely say what they are looking for, and they are looking for different things.

Yes, this is also my conclusion. To a great extent, it's a lottery. As a contractor (in the UK), I look for new roles every year or two on average, so I end up applying for quite a few. Most of these roles involve agencies, so the CV has to meet the arbitrary requirements of both the agency, and the end client - and these are often quite different.

It's even worse: the people initially sorting applications are usually HR contractors. They give what they thought is a good selection of resumes to the recruiters, who do further selection, maybe some contacts, and give their picks to the hiring manager.

This is an important distinction because unlike recruiters, who are usually somewhat familiar with the company business and can recognize if not technical details then experience (e.g "Oh, this guy worked for 10 years at the shop known for its high standards!"), contractors are generic clerks who have no idea what anything in the resume means. They are given some words to look for at best.

In my opinion, submitting through web portals/jobs@ emails is already a losing proposition. I can recall many cases when I've done this, got no response, then a couple years later the same company's recruiters would hound me. I'd been quite successful when I went through an internal referral or directly through a recruiter. But, if you really have no choice and go through the web then the best strategy is to stand out with anything that can catch attention of a completely non-technical person reviewing your application. A cover letter is a strong move in this case. And keyword stuffing is also important for passing the first stage.

I work for a small dev agency. Our tech lead did 10 interviews last week. In total, that's a lost day, at least.

The problem is I can't tell which companies will have an HR/recruiter vs a manager as the first filter. Almost all calls I've gotten from startups (most of which would be considered "small" companies) were via a recruiter.

I guess if I apply to an established, small/medium company that is not a startup, it's more likely to be read by a manager.

I think a rule of thumb is "by the time a company is large enough to have someone in tech doing full-time management, your application is going to pass through someone else before getting to them for a second pass of filtering."

Small, scrappy startups will have the decision-maker doing the first-pass filtering. None of those people will be called "manager".

In 25 years, I’ve never randomly spammed applicant tracking systems. My first job was based on an internship and after that I used my network of former coworkers, managers, and local external recruiters.

When you say recruiter, do you mean HR from the company or an external recruiter?

If they already know which company it is, they probably mean an internal recruiter.

When going via external recruiters, you tend to know you're talking to a recruiter before you find out which company the job is with.

I work in a fully remote organization. I _always_ read cover letters. I have wasted too many years of my life trying to decipher some ungodly pile of crap somebody thought was a question (much less a spec!) and a cover letter can be an indication of a candidate's writing ability.

Poor writing leads to wasted hours, wasted sprints, and frustration. Good writing shines a light on incomplete reasoning and logical inconsistencies. A person who takes the time to write a decent spec is the person who has considered "what, exactly, do I want?" in detail. Too often people try to paper over their complete inability to write a paragraph by saying "let's get on Zoom" and spewing out nonsense verbally, because this is somehow better than putting nonsense in writing.

Unfortunately, if the person reviewing your application is a terrible writer - and most are - it's unlikely your cover letter will be read.

It seems like it would be so much more productive to give the candidate a writing prompt where they can show their skills, instead of such a poor and generic exercise of “tell me who you are and why you want this job even though you’ve spoken to no one at the company yet”.

If you value good spec writing then give them a spec-writing exercise.

What's a nice way of saying, "I want to be paid to work." ?

Can you share advice or recommend any resources on how to improve one's writing? Especially with regards to technical writing and communication in remote organizations.

You mostly get better at writing by doing it. There are a fair number of online publications that have editors and are always looking for writers. (Not paid but this is a case where it really is good exposure and a way to build skills.) Opensource.com is one I write for fairly frequently.

"Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcut."

I've been a hiring manager for 5 years and otherwise doing candidate screening for 10+ years. Looking back I don't think a cover letter has played a positive role in getting a candidate through, but probably has played a negative role a few times due to typos etc.

> Every time I got a call, I asked them if my cover letter played a role in their choosing to call me. The response was always "Oh you wrote a cover letter? Let me check it out."

> Not one person had read it.

This is probably true. But one advantage I see of cover letter is to include more keywords in your application and keep the resume clean and focused. It could potentially get you through keyword filters or boost your ranking in keyword searches.

That's an insightful and interesting idea.

The need to stuff keywords while also providing a clean and small resume that actually says something interesting other than the keywords, is a difficult tension.

Do you have any evidence that the keywords present in a cover letter are taken into account though?

Cover letters reduce in value as the size of the organisation increases. When applying for large companies with HR departments I’ve found they don’t really get read because piles of CVs are what gets passed around, but I know for a fact my cover letter is what got me into the interview for both the early stage startups I’ve worked for - when you’re starting as developer number 1 or 2 founders really care about who they’re hiring, and a good cover letter is what allows you to frame the CV in light of the company. For example my current job is with a company that does IoT based home security - a skim of my CV at the time would have been completely unimpressive in that context, but the cover letter allowed me to go into some detail about the fact I’ve been done home automation and electronics as a hobby since before I even had a job.

Why would I want to work for a company that has 1 year of runway and pays below market rate?

If the chance of making millions was 1/100, maybe I would try it. But it seems the real chance is 1/1000? Possibly even 1/5000?

Maybe because they think the company is doing something really interesting? It's not just about making the most money.

That's a reason, for sure. But I would say that I have become very cynical about this type of reasoning for the following reasons:

1) If you are interested in working on interesting technology, and the idea is that a traditional corporation provides only soul crushing but possibly more stable/well paying work, then I would simply say its better to have a side project instead of working at a startup, because they are unstable.

2) If you are interested in doing work that will change the world, be aware that if you aren't the boss of the startup, then you can be gone in a second because of profit reasons. Better to start your own non profit like Watsi

I hire people and I read cover letters... if they are short. They are supposed to be cover letters, not essays.

Edit: Another tip. If you are sending your CV in an email directly to the company, no need for cover letter. Your email is the cover letter.

Being an academic in a design school, my experience with interviews is different. When reviewing applicants for a job, the cover letter is the only means I have to know if they have researched the particular requirements of the university I work for. We are a western university located in an non-western nation. I need to know that they have considered what this means, especially if they are Weston. It much harder that you might assume to move to a new continent.

The academy is different. We tend to grow into s job, but a field of study does require more digging into motive beyond „i need money“, where „i need money“ is the main reason most of us look for jobs.

After my toxic 3 years at a job to whom i did send a cover letter they liked (i liked the company before finding out one guy in the department im in had seniority and was doing dodgy stuff to maintain power)

... i quit and eventually I got my job via connecting with people, and i think thats the best way one could get hired.

Luckily not everyone is living in a place where you apply to a ton of jobs at the same time. Seems very American. I would only apply to a single job that I found exciting. Can't see how sending out many applications could possibly mean applying to good jobs. More like a lottery. Guess it is the difference between there being a good social security net to catch people and not.

Think it's normal to give yourself multiple options — if you're broadly happy in your current job but come across a job ad that's more exciting you may just apply for it on its own, as your options are to stay put or accept the new role. Staying put would be your 2nd choice.

But if you're unhappy in your current place, you're more likely to apply to multiple places at the same time — if you find 2-3 jobs ads that are all better prospects, staying put may now be 4th choice. Plus you may want a contingency if you don't get an offer from choice #1/#2.

If you're really looking for a job you won't be fussy. Anywhere in the world.

"Allowed me to upload one" is the red flag there. If you're dealing with a company that is asking you to use a system to upload a resume rather than communicating directly with a recruiter and hiring manager then yeah it's going to get ignored.

If you’re applying by yourself, directly to the company, isn’t that your only way to push your resume ?

Or do you go out of your way to find recruiting team’s email/phone number to hit them out of the system ?

Kids These Days just need to learn to pound the e-pavement, have a firm e-handshake, and really show that they are the best ${entity} for the job.

Joking aside, yea 90% of my job hunt tends to be recruiters on LinkedIn, resume in an email, straight to calls. For Software in the bay.

I'm sure this varies a ton by industry and role.

The latter is the only way that works for me.

In one case, I found a job posting with an online form that had the name of the recruiter on the website. I dug up the recruiter's email and sent an email intro + my resume. From there she said "thanks, let me put you into the system". So double win for me because my application was acknowledged and I didn't have to fill out their custom form! (Made it to the last round).

Hitting out of the system makes you stand out and they're forced to consider you

I know in the good old days it was the way to go, and HR people are also more open to get external solicitation at any time, so I believe you when you say it works.

I’d put on the table that I twice received direct contact from candidates and it felt super weird (I don’t work in HR to be clear). I guess some would value the scrappiness, I had more of a “have I been stalked ? am I getting spammed ?” sensation.

We also had automated pipelines to handle candidates applying through our recruiting page, so entering them manually into the system would have been more of a PITA (I actually politely told them to apply through the site)

In general I’d say for small/middle size companies, direct candidature through the company’s own site is not going through a blackhole, and pretty much appreciated (no recruiting fee, went through the front door etc.)

>I’d put on the table that I twice received direct contact from candidates and it felt super weird

It certainly isn't very scalable. If it's someone totally out of the blue I'd probably politely point them to our jobs board. If there's some connection, even if it's just "Hi, I'm one of the 50,000 people who are also alumni from your undergrad," depending on my mood and how they approached me, I might spend 15 minutes on the phone with them.

Every job I've had since the one directly out of grad school (which came through on-campus recruiting) has been working through someone I knew at the company.

When I'm contacted by a recruiter, I still have to go through that system; I've never run into an exception to that, at least not in the last decade.

Also, I did get a job once by applying directly to $BIGCORP and entering data in an applicant tracking system, without being first found by a recruiter. It did not turn out to be the most wonderful place to work though.

I dunno. I did this cold at a faang and got the gig

I always write a cover letter. Sometimes they read it.

But I time box them to an hour. For me, the cover letter is an exercise in reflection on how much I want to work there. If I feel really enthusiastic then my cover letter just flows. At other times they are more formal.

It teaches me a lot about myself.

In that small/medium sized company space there are those that publicize nothing about themselves and have such a poorly written JD that tells you nothing about why they exist, their goals, or anything more than possibly irrelevant keywords, then have the requirement for a cover letter. In this instance, they haven't provided a shred of evidence for why someone would want to work with them. I normally see this when non-technical people attempt to hire technical people, they just lack understanding for what is important and are sometimes fresh to hiring in general; less so when technical try to hire technical (but still appears).

I'd rather have a conversation with someone who isn't HR, cover letters are mostly wasted effort.

If you don't have an appropriate contact, sending a good cover letter and acceptable resume to someone who isn't HR is the first step in getting that conversation in my experience.

Pro-tip: put something actually interesting about you personally on the resume. Literally the first thing I look at after scanning background and making an immediate decision. I think it’s literally the only thing to jar people out of their auto decision (especially with zoom interviews).

The one exception is take homes exercises - sometimes I’m surprised but still that doesn’t usually flip the bit

When I was responsible for hiring I always checked and often read cover letters.

Cover letters are an opportunity for the applicant to put her CV coherently into perspective. Because a complete application comes with several documents and lists. The CL is supposed to highlight some of the relevant parts.

The mythos around cover letters seems totally wrong to me.

You're telling me that when presented with two candidates, companies routinely pick the less qualified one because... The cover letter was more personalised? They put more custom messages in there? Come on. They're going to turn down a better CV for an interview because the cover letter was copy-pasted? Come on.

Companies like the best candidate they can get for the price, I honestly don't think much else matters.

As someone who screens a bunch of applications, absolutely I'll factor in a cover letter.

For me, the presence of a cover letter with half an attempt at customisation to the company and job ad demonstrates they actually care at least a little about this role at this company. And if it's well written then that demonstrates communication skills which I value highly in my colleagues.

It's really not often clear cut which one of two CVs is the "best qualified". The cover letter is just a bit more signal that will often swing my decision towards "let's take a punt".

People want to work somewhere to earn money. I assume you're one of those people that likes to ask "Why do you want to work here?". I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but unless you're a charity or doing something groundbreaking (e.g. SpaceX), the only reason people want to work for your company is money.

>demonstrates they actually care at least a little about this role at this company

But why does that matter to you other than ego? Barring some exceptionally unique work your company does, we know that the applicant wants to work there because you offer money for their particular skills. Why perpetuate a culture of bullshitting?

So in other words: if they have a good CV, they'll get through to the next stage regardless, but if they're a punt candidate then the cover letter might make a difference, maybe?

I would then ask: if I'm a punt candidate to begin with, the number of interviews I get is primarily a factor of how many applications I fire off into the crapshoot, right? What's the increase in success rate for applications with cover letters? Is it enough to outweigh the reduction in applications I can send from hand-crafting each of them?

I generated the cover letters using some Python. This gave me 60% success rate (got me an interview).

Yes, but what would the success rate be without the cover letter? Without the control group this doesn't mean much.

Yeah, this seems like the best strategy, especially if you have GPT-3 beta access.

For what it’s worth, just because the frontline person doesn’t read your CV, someone else still might. If you’re a solid applicant who interviews almost well enough & the company is fishing for an excuse to give you a shot, a solid cover letter demonstrating interest can mean the difference between getting hired and not.

A cover letter doesn’t have to be epic. It can be short and to the point, which bucks the trend of “I didn’t have time to write you a short cover letter, so I wrote you a long one.” Something like...

“Hi Company X!

I was scooping out your web page and found a blog article on how y’all invest a bunch of time in your security audits. I’ve been reading up a lot in security myself lately, and I’m quite interested in a company that takes that seriously. My personal approach to crafting software tends towards secure by design. I’d love to work in a place that philosophy would be appreciated :)

Cheers, PopeDotNinja”

Try this... list three to five things you are good at and like. Stalk a company a bit to find something mildly related in their social media, website, or blog. Connect thing you found to thing you like. It take a little work, but not that much work.

The only feedback I’d give is:

> My personal approach to crafting software tends towards secure by design

Whatever you put in your cover letter, try imagining another candidate saying the opposite in their cover letter:

> My personal approach to crafting software tends towards insecure by design

Nobody would say this right? So your original statement adds nothing. You need to get more specific and direct. Same goes for “reading up a lot in security.” What is 1 thing you were reading and why should whoever’s reading this email care?

Other than that not a bad start. You’re on the right track to keep it short and (hopefully) leave them wanting to learn more.

Also it’s scoping not scooping.

> Also it’s scoping not scooping.

Don't forget to proofread your cover letter!

Which is actually an argument for keeping your resume and cover letter fairly standardized (and get a second pair of eyes on the standard). The more you change for each application, the more likely errors are to creep in.

I think that if this cover letter changes anything on the hiring process, the hiring process is odd.

The point I'm attempting to communicate is that a little effort can go a long way to show your interest in a position. Many people write long & unpersonalized copy/pasta that says nothing about the job to which they are applying.

As an interviewer for more than 20 years I am never looking for cover letters, but I am trying to read it if they exist. I don't remember to have ever seen a cover letter than made any difference for the process or end result and I had over 1000 interviews (hard to count the exact number, too many years).

No offense, but this is difficult to assign any meaning without more details. Zero is one data point, but what's the denominator? Zero out of 3 vs 30 vs 300 are qualitatively different pieces of information.

Also, another common denominator is you. Just because you haven't had success with cover letters doesn't mean others can't or won't. Perhaps, to be blunt, your cover letters weren't very good.

Finally, just because the person who called you back didn't read it doesn't mean others didn't. These things end up in systems with lots of eyes on them.

That said, I don't disagree with your statement, just the certainty with which it's stated. I agree on balance people should generally play the numbers game, not the custom cover letter game. But, if there's a particular job you really want, it might help.

>I agree on balance people should generally play the numbers game, not the custom cover letter game. But, if there's a particular job you really want, it might help.

If there's some job or some company that you're really interested in and especially if you have some network there that might give you an "unfair" advantage, by all means go above and beyond to maximize your chances at that one company. But I agree in general that, for most people--especially more junior people--it's really a numbers game. That's not to say you shouldn't do little things that might make you stand out a bit for a given employer, but you should mostly be casting a wide net.

For the same reason, I stopped writing a cover letter. I used to write a custom one for each job that I'm applying to. And, of course, it takes time. My take is - if my resume can't convince you to hire me then nothing else will, including a cover letter.

I write cover letters to highlight specific experience which is in line with the work that company is into. This is just to help the decision maker. I don't care if he or she doesn't read. I would want to take every chance of getting through screening

In the past when applying for many gigs (and writing cover letters) I used the opportunity to gauge how much I wanted to work at the company. If they didn’t read it or respond to it iiwii.

- Sincerely the guy who spells the company name wrong in his cover letters

100% this. When I was interviewing I almost never got the cover letters from HR. When I did glance over them every time it was obviously a form cover letter that they spent 15-30 minutes customizing for our company.

If you have something incredibly unique to tell the company like "I want to work for this pharmaceutical company because your newest chemotherapy drug saved my wife's life" I'd sneak it into the resume.

Proving to the interviewer that you can write three sentences of generic fluff based on a cursory glance of my company's website doesn't tell me anything about your abilities, just how much you value your time.

I inevitably read CVs with a cover letter before those without (unless the cover letter looks like a wall of text). All I ask of a cover letter is that it reminds me to think of you as a human, nothing more; reading lists of projects, employers or education achievements is very dry and mechanical otherwise.

A bad cover letter is going to be worse than none, but it really takes very little effort to have something decent and reusable. Many modern CV forms include a small space for it, that's less than ideal but still ok.

Another issue I have is that any pre-written material is a very poor indicator, in particular when candidates are handled to us by a recruiting agent.

Their resume is sometimes doctored up to a point it half of it doesn’t make sense, or at least is inflating a lot their role and what they actually did.

Reading a cover letter in that light is only indicative of someone who can write cover letters. I never got to hire someone for that skill, so the value is through the floor to me.

This is also my experience, however, during my most recent interview, my cover letter was actually in front of the interviewer. That was a new experience for me.

That explains some interactions where they sort of vaguely wonder why I think I’m right for the job given my resume.

Well, I told you why in the cover letter.

Years ago I started keeping a full version of my resume with everywhere I ever worked (sometimes it helps, like for the background check I had to do once), maybe I should be keeping long form discussions of what I worked on, and Then cherry pick the bits that are specific to each position I apply to...

I'm not a HR person but would get applications as local team lead for an actuarial consultancy. I would expect "insurance" and "consultancy" to be related to in the cover letter and invite precisely the people who either do both or have something really interesting somewhere else. A well-written cover letter would also start the conversation in the interview.

But I'm based in Germany, not the US.

I don't think your evidence has much bearing on the point you're trying to make. In my experience from the other side of the table, it's quite common to not talk to the person who picked your resume. I make these introductory phone calls often, and while I have a copy of your application I don't see it until after someone else has decided we should talk to you.

I usually dump the cover letter in the same file as the resume to make sure that it gets read.

Worst case, there are a bundle more keywords for the ATS.

Cover Letter -> body of the email you're sending with your attached CV

But that exaggerated importance that some say is recruiter FUD

Any chance someone different might've done filtering with cover letters than the person who would call you?

I've never read a cover letter. Never planning on it. I have spoken to a few hundred people.

Just summarise the best bits of your CV at the top of the CV. That will be read every time.

They might not have read it but providing it - when others do not - is a signal. Then there's excessive noise such things might help. The CL + resume isn't to get a job. It's to get an interview.

They might not read the CL but it can still help.

I believe Denmark takes coverletters seriously. They also want photo of yourself on the CV which is uncommon and often frowned upon in other countries. They want to know a bit more besides your skills and abilities.

Not according to my experience. I auto generated cover letters using some Python and this gave me 60% success rate. No one reads the cover letters.

Photo opens the door to early discrimination. What next, marital status?!

Maybe I'm not thinking about it properly, but if they would discriminate based on my photo, they'll probably do so once they see me in the flesh and give me some excuse to not hire me. I'd rather not go through the wasted effort of making it to a interview and they instead ghost me so I can focus on an employer that does want me.

You are susceptible to bias at every stage. Maybe your application is filtered by a biased AI, maybe it’s a person, but you are giving more reasons to reject you before reaching the actual recruiters.

It’s far easier for a recruiter to discard a resume because of unconscious bias than the allow it to interfere at the interview level

It's very common to put marital status and even the number of kids in some countries.

I’m sure it is. That gives plenty of opportunity for discrimination.

Interestingly, it should be 'What before, marital status?!'.

Check out the early Bill Gates resume from the 90s, he listed his weight and marital status and apparently that was like totally normal.

90s seems late for that sort of thing in the US. But it definitely used to be pretty common.

That it's Bill Gates should probably indicate that "90s" is wrong: what job is Bill Gates applying for in the 90s?

It's actually from the mid-70s, apparently.

You're right of course. Duh. Yes, and mid-70s makes a lot more sense for that kind of thing.

A cover letter is a way to keep you out for not following the instruction of send your cv and a cover letter, nobody is going to read it.

I have a cover letter template I rewrite for each company.

> A cover letter is a way to keep you out for not following the instruction of send your cv and a cover letter, nobody is going to read it.

The fact that you say CV makes me thing that either:

1. You're in academia or some kind of research discipline.

2. You are not in the US (we distinguish between resumes and CVs, and CVs are almost unheard of in the engineering sphere here).

My comment about cover letters is US specific. Academic/research jobs should have a cover letter - I agree.

Most engineering positions I apply for do not require a cover letter - it is optional. If it is required, I do write one - but that is extremely rare. And I often do get calls from companies that allowed me to upload one (optionally) - even though I never upload one.

My guess is that the majority of companies that optionally allow you to upload one will never notice if you do.

My guess is that most likely the reason you can upload a cover letter (optionally) is that whoever designed the site is using a generic template - not because they actually want one.

Here in the UK (at least in my experience) we use CV and resume interchangeably

Not American, what is the difference between CV and resume? I always assumed they were synonyms.

In American business, snarkily, CVs are resumes from people who haven't learned how to edit.

US resumes are ideally 1 page with 2 pages (IMHO) being acceptable if one has enough experience.

American CVs spell out everything with a length that scales linearly with experience. Every publication. Every role. Major projects. Awards. Etc. For long-time academics these can run over 10 pages. A recent PhD recipient might use 3-4 pages for a CV.

>> US resumes are ideally 1 page with 2 pages (IMHO) being acceptable if one has enough experience

What if someone has 25 years of experience and held 10 different positions during that time, has a lot of ceritifications and other credentials? How do you fit all that on just two pages?

I tend to go back to 2009 and write previous experience available on request. I put writing in a sidebar, probably would do the same as certifications so I doubt you would have anything overflowing the first page. Anyway I am thinking to chop off writing at about 4-5 lines and then write previous writing available on request.

What is pertinent to the role for which you are applying? Focus on that.

Not American either but CVs (Curriculum Vitae, course of life) are much more comprehensive than resumes. If you're a researcher then you'd include a list of all of your published work, presentations, lectures, grants, scholarships, professional associations, etc.

In the US, the CV term tends to be used more in academia and research while resume tends to be used more elsewhere. And, in academia, you're more likely to list the sort of things you mentioned. Though the terms certainly can be used interchangeably. I have a ton of (non-academic) publications as well but, other than a couple books, I'd just include a hyperlink to a pubs page on my website that has a sampling.

In the rest of the world: CV and resume are interchangeable.

To a lot of people, CV and resume are synonyms.

Not in U.S

The assumption here is that companies will forego interviewing the best candidates because they copy-pasted their cover letters. I just don't buy that.

"This guy seems really good, but he didn't rewrite his introduction for us. What do you think? Remove his interview?"

Like hell any company is going to do that.

I guess the question is, how does this person "seem really good"? To determine this, they have to have a well written resume that highlights relevant experience. Most resumes seem to be "company xyz - frobulated the frobulation system" Unless of course your company is interested in frobulation also.

The contrary: "this person has a bunch of experience on their resume that is possibly beneficial, but their cover letter doesn't give any indication they have thought about the role they are applying for. This other applicant shows insight into the requirements of the role via their cover letter, and has highlighted key areas of their experience, giving greater detail about how it will be useful in this role."

Who are you going to pick to interview?

Perhaps this is more important for niche industries, and smaller teams. In a large team you can get good coverage of skills through sheer number of people. In a small team its the alignment of skills is more important.

When hiring (small, niche org) I carefully read all the cover letters.

I understand this hypothetical, my point is: I don't think it's actually relevant. It's not going to be the tipping point.

I should make my contention clearer: I think that companies are extremely unlikely to forego interviewing a candidate that otherwise looks good because they had no cover letter. This doesn't just apply to the best candidates - if any candidate looks hireable in relation to the rest of the applicant pool, they will put them through to the next stage of the process. Once you've actually sat down and spoken to someone, your written introduction is irrelevant.

I do think it probably matters more for small companies, but they're also going to get way less applications to begin with so it's like... You're really going to just not interview good candidates? Really?

It seems you might have missed my point.

"I think that companies are extremely unlikely to forego interviewing a candidate that otherwise looks good because they had no cover letter."

My point is that the cover letter is one of the tools the applicant can use to highlight themselves as a good candidate. It could easily be the tipping point for getting an interview. It can give you some feeling for their communication skills, their understanding of the role / company / product. Though I concede most cover letters are not very well written, mostly generic. In the absence of a good cover letter, their resume alone must stand out.

Of course it could be a tricky situation: choosing between a candidate with a great cover letter and less obviously great resume vs a generic cover letter and more relevant experience listed on their resume.

Personally I would lean towards the better cover letter. They have given a clearer indication enthusiasm and interest in the job. A well written cover letter will explain how their experience is relevant, despite not superficially appearing so. This allows them to show insight into the role.

One point of data: My large organization’s HR department lists a cover letter as a requirement and will forbid us from moving ahead with even a first round interview if the application is incomplete. So yes, really, we can’t interview candidates who demonstrate right at the front door that they can’t/won’t/haven’t read the application requirements.

I misspoke - I meant to say a generic cover letter. No cover letter full stop is stupid.

ok but in the post of mine your replied to I specified I used a cover letter template - i.e a generic cover letter.

Right, but you rewrote it. I'm saying totally copy-pasted content is still unlikely to move you from "good candidate" to "no interview".

Most people aren’t the best candidate. And most jobs don’t require the best candidate.

I’ve got a lot of resumes and cover letters to look through and at the end of the day, a lot of people are going to be a pretty good fit. I’m going to save myself a lot of time by discarding anyone who didn’t bother to read the job post and follow directions.

Ok, but I have a lot of jobs to apply for, and I'm going to save a lot of time by not hand-crafting each application. So the relevant question is: does the reduction in hit rate outweigh the increase in application rate? I argue: probably not. Depends if you're exhausting all postings.

The whole thing seems screwy to me. You only hire people who put a lot of effort into contacting you? So you don't recruit? A good candidate is a good candidate whether or not they spent half an hour on a cold pitch.

The problem is, you're putting up job ads (that might well be fake, candidates don't know) and expecting candidates to put in a lot of effort. You're not respecting the nature of the situation - both sides have a very low hit rate, so it's irrational for either side to put much effort into individual transactions (if they're in demand). Filters that filter out low-effort applications filter for one thing: people who have an incentive to put in effort. That doesn't just cut out people that are spamming.

> Ok, but I have a lot of jobs to apply for, and I'm going to save a lot of time by not hand-crafting each application

OK, so do that.

You’re applying to a lot of jobs and you don’t care too much about any one of them in particular, so why should I care about your application in particular? I’ll save a lot of time by not closely reviewing your application.

Again, my point is that most people aren’t in demand and most jobs aren’t that demanding.

Someone is going to read the job post in full and put in a modicum of effort and will be a decent fit. I’ll look for that person vs. the person who put in zero effort and will be a decent fit.

This doesn't make sense. If "minimum bar" is your selection criteria and you're inundated with so many "good enough" candidates that you can't interview them all & it doesn't matter who you pick, you're overpaying. Why not drop your offers until you're selecting from a smaller pool?

I don't mean this hypothetically, I mean: isn't this what most companies actually do?

But in any case, what you're saying here is: "if the job has a large applicant ratio and you are unlikely to get hired, then I will use time spent as a filtering mechanism." The rational thing to do is to not apply to those positions (or spray & pray).

>This doesn't make sense. If "minimum bar" is your selection criteria

I think "minimum bar" refers to technical skills, not all selection criteria. It's perfectly sensible* to look at a larger pool with the minimum skills and select from the few with the right attitude and attention to detail.

That's not the same strategy as reducing the pool to the cheapest candidates regardless of their attitude, and isn't going to produce the same hiring decisions.

* even if it's not a universal strategy

You must be that rare unicorn that actually realizes their company isn't a future FAANG. A lot of consternation over hiring could be avoided if most companies realized they can get by just fine with average developers. But most people psychologically want to hire the "best" developer available and so would not be satisfied with "can do the job".

Like hell I’d like to work for a company that would do that.

I would prefer to see a cover letter in applications. It shows effort and that's important. Also, you only have to write one.

Or at least you can have 3 generic bullets and one that's more specific to a position/company.

To be honest, I probably haven't really written one for a long time. But that's because my jobs for the past 20 years or so have come through sending emails to people I knew well.

Referrals are the best form of cover letter!

I just recruited in Swiss academia, and I read every word of the cover letters, and they played a significant role in selecting the final 3 for interviews.

In French it in is called a "letter of motivation" and it should explain why you are more motivated to take and do the job well than all the other candidates. A serious and motivated candidate shows in their letter.

If European academia is similar to American, the application process is quite distinct from the industry job application process.

Similarly, as many have said, for an industry job, it depends on whether the company is small, medium or large.

A thoughtful cover letter is very helpful for getting an interview at my company.

Hiring for a few devs right now. Read cover letters.

That said if you have never worked a programmer job in your life, a cover letter won’t land you a senior web-dev role.

Where are you based?