| There are a lot of comments against your advice here so I'm going to speak up in agreement. (1) Cover letters are very rare. Out of the last ten interviews, I've received two. (2) It's the one place you can reveal some of your personality. Focus your message to answer this question: "What is it about this role/company/job that you find exciting?" I have a PDF file with a cover letter on the front and a page or two of resume. Five minutes before the meeting, I'm opening up that PDF, again ... the first thing I see is that cover letter and a candidate that's excited about the job. It puts them on the right footing before the video camera fires up. I also know that "your resume was produced, once, and probably fired off to several companies in that exact form". While (assuming it was done correctly) "your cover letter was written to me, about this job." If you've provided it, I'm going to pay more attention to the words on that page than probably any others. So while a cover letter is not required and a resume (often) is, if you include it, it's not controversial to say "it's more important than your resume" as far as its impact on my opinion of you prior to an interview. |