> As a result, they're less likely to land the job.

And you are less likely to hire someone that is a good fit for your role but couldn't put an insane amount of time to apply to your job post and a 100 more.

A rejection letter conveys a single fact because you want it to convey a single fact. You could also write personalized rejection letters that tell the applicant why they weren’t selected to continue with the hiring process. That could help the applicant in their future job applications. But you don’t do that. I wonder why!

And it’s your pickle to put however much stock you want in the cover letter. That’s not what this is about at all. If I were applying to jobs and I know a significant percent of my cover letters will never be read by a single human on earth, I might be tempted to have an AI write it. If you happen to read it and reject me based on whatever likely-subjective metrics you use to determine it was chatgpt that wrote it, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. You could also reject me on a million other factors I don’t control. Either way, I saved however many minutes.

> That could help the applicant in their future job applications. But you don’t do that. I wonder why!

I assume you mean the general "you", not me specifically, because I do, in fact, do that.

Looking on Indeed at Product Management roles recently, those that had been up for 24 hours had typically 300-700 applicants already.

Please tell us with a straight face that you craft a personalized response to each of your 300-700+ applicants.

“ You could also write personalized rejection letters that tell the applicant why they weren’t selected to continue with the hiring process. That could help the applicant in their future job applications. But you don’t do that. I wonder why!”

Dear lovehashbrowns,

We are unfortunately decided to proceed with other applicant this time because even if you have roughly the required work experience for the position, based on your cover letter and resume you seemed to be generally unpleasant people to be around.

Regards, HR, Honest LTD.

When I've been hiring I found cover letters to be useless. I just ignored them and looked at the CV to determine whether the candidate was worth an initial screening interview.

Cover letters can be useful in some instances. I was very grateful to write a cover letter when I was changing careers because I wanted to explain why my prior work experience was seemingly at odds with my intended role.

But I only bother with putting that kind of care into a cover letter like that if I think I have very good odds of getting the job. In this case, I knew my chances were good because one of their top employees was recommending me.

Cover letters used to be a good indication of communication skills. And I don’t mean English skills, I mean the ability to convey a set of facts in an intuitive way. If you can’t write a coherent cover letter then God help us when I DM you on Slack about a problem.