Women Using Less Feminine Terms in Cover Letters Are Less Likely to Get Hired

Re:Women Using Less Feminine Terms in Cover Letters Are Less... by ineedasername on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @10:09AM (#24980285)

It tells you if the person can't communicate beyond bullet points in a resume. It's easy to hype up achievements in previous positions. An interview will help there, but if a cover letter demonstrates difficulty communicating, that is a signal you can use to effectively filter those candidates and not waste time on an interview.

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Re:Women Using Less Feminine Terms in Cover Letters Are Less... by slantyyz on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @10:38AM (#24980575)

> It tells you if the person can't communicate beyond bullet points in a resume.

I guess it depends a lot on the industry. Most of the cover letters I've seen when hiring are following a template or pattern gleaned from a website or book telling you how to write a cover letter.

Also, you're never 100% sure that a job seeker didn't get someone to help them write the cover letter or if it's copypasta.

Admittedly, if I was looking for a job, I'd provide a cover letter just to satisfy arbitrary expectations, but I hate writing them. All I do these days is regurgitate the list of the advertised requirements and for each item, indicate if I meet, have comparables or don't meet it. It beats having to come up with a bunch of made up platitudes about why they should hire me.

In the same vein as cover letters though, I don't put much weight on post-interview thank-you letters.

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Re:Women Using Less Feminine Terms in Cover Letters Are Less... by ineedasername on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @11:18AM (#24980963)

That's why I phrased is as "can't communicate". Because a positive signal could be false, but a negative signal can probably be trusted.

And yes, I couldn't care less if the candidate gave a post-interview thank you. That's not going to influence my decision.

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