[rifung]

If you get 80 applications and none of them have what you are looking for, this seems like the issue is being able to get the right candidates to apply. Or, perhaps it's just not possible to find enough people who have the skills in which case, I suppose you should train them?

Alternatively it seems like a good case for putting some sort of earlier filtering mechanism, like giving a short quiz or coding exercise to see if they know what you want them to know. I remember reading an article by TripleByte on how their quiz actually was a better filtering mechanism than a coding exercise though.

> After reviewing a lot of applications in the past days, I can only agree with Kristian Glass here and say: “If you get the chance, always send a cover letter”. It’s your opportunity to say something about yourself and make clear why you apply for the job.

I can understand why employers feel this way, but from an applicant's perspective, the reason someone applies to your company most likely is that they need to make a living. Frankly I don't think there's anything wrong with that and it's not something I would think stops people from being good employees. After all, it's difficult to know how much you'd like to work somewhere unless you've actually been there.