[hp6]

When you have a sub 1% chance of getting an interview, asking for a cover letter or some kind of non trivial time comitment is just wrong. IMHO a better approach would be to select lets say 10% of the candidates and ask only them.

[yakshaving_jgt]

If an applicant can’t take the time to write a cover letter — and by “cover letter” I just mean an email that’s says here’s who I am and here’s what I like/do — why should the person hiring take the time to read what the applicant has copied and pasted to countless other employers?

[voidnap]

> and by “cover letter” I just mean an email that’s says here’s who I am and here’s what I like/do

This makes it sound like it would be something that would be "copied and pasted to countless other employers", just like a resume often is.

But your last point made it sound like the applicant should invest more of their time than that.

Conventionally, a good cover letter will be, at least to a degree, bespoke for that job. But that is a non-trivial time investment on the part of the applicant. And it can be a significant waste of time in cases where something on their resume disqualifies them from consideration regardless of their cover letter.

Also, in the last several years, the impact of a good cover letter on getting an employment offer has diminished tremendously to the point that expect it of applicants isn't not respectful of their time.

[fmajid]

There's a half-way between full-bespoke and ready-to-wear ChatGPT boilerplate, you can assemble a cover letter to order from reusable snippets, then add something specific to the company and job opportunity, assuming it's one worth the extra effort.

[yakshaving_jgt]

> Also, in the last several years, the impact of a good cover letter on getting an employment offer has diminished tremendously to the point that expect it of applicants isn't not respectful of their time.

Do you have anything to substantiate this claim?

I'm an employer and I read and respond to dozens of applications when I have an open position.

Usually when I receive an excellent application, the cover letter is roughly a paragraph in length. It isn't some lengthy, typeset file attachment with a mission statement or some other nonsense that would typically appear if you Googled "example cover letter".

My thoughts on ideal job applications closely mirror those described here[0].

[0]: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1748-forget-the-resume-kill-o...

[voidnap]

> Do you have anything to substantiate this claim?

No, it's my personal experience.

It's an observation supported by people I know who have gotten a similar sense at their jobs. One director level friend, with insight into how they do hiring, explained that it has a lot to do with how HR filter things. (As someone else said in this thread.)

Some HR departments will sanitize information to reduce bias, like a photo of the candidate, but this can include a cover letter.

It's going to be different with different employers. So you could be an exception. But the likelihood that anybody reads my cover letters these days is so low that writing them is almost never worth the time. I've also found it to be more difficult these days because the quality of job postings themselves have diminished. A lot of the complaints that OPs article makes can be said about the job postings. There's just nothing to latch on to.

But yeah many/most places don't read cover letters. Some don't even read resumes. It's very clear from the start of the call you can see them start to skim through it or just ask you to just about read it for them. I even had a call where one of the interviewers had someone eles' resume up and referred to it by mistake and apologized and then did it again five minutes later.

So, no, I have nothing to substantiate the claim.

Edit: Okay here's something you might consider "substantial".

Apparently it's a thing now to not even send applicants rejection notices -- and just to ghost them instead -- on the basis that they might be a wacko and react poorly to rejection. So, as a policy, companies will inflict on all candidates, including nice people, the ill of ghosting them, to spare themselves the risk of receiving a shitty email from a shitty person. They are so thin-skinned/careless that they can't tolerate bad behavior in the form of an email that they don't even let you know they're not interested in hiring you. Even if you started the "hiring pipeline". Even if you apply with a cover letter.

People on this website who apparently work for companies that do this admit that's what their company does. So if companies do do this and admit it then maybe that's substance for you.

In my opinion, the kind of psycho who can't send a rejection email is totally consistent with everything I've experienced above the edit.

[yakshaving_jgt]

I can't really argue against that, and I certainly agree that it's going to be different with different employers.

Genuinely, I'm sorry you've had shitty experiences in the past. I've had a whole bunch too. I will say however that in the times in my career when I did apply for jobs, most of my successful applications [I believe] came as a result of a short, to-the-point, personalised cover letter.

[voidnap]

I 100% agree. In the past, I've written good cover letters and they've been crucial to getting job offers. Hiring/tech culture has changed where cover letters are largely meaningless. And wish that weren't the case.

And I don't think writing a cover letter is going to harm your chances at a job. Or if it does, you might not want to work for a company that penalizes them anyway. But the attitude of "well I don't want to work for a company that doesn't read my cover letter" isn't really viable as an applicant as it rules out a lot of opportunities for work.

The whole situation is so silly too because a nice cover letter can make rejection emails nicer, like "we enjoyed your cover letter and your joke about the thing, but ...". I'd like to think that makes it easier for employers to send rejection emails because they can say something that sounds genuinely positive and personal instead of cookie cutter fake encouragement; "I'm sure you'll land on your feet!" So it makes their job better and probably would help avoid getting hate mail from people acting poorly. It's a win all around. But it's just a race to the bottom at this point.

Anyway sorry for the rant. Thanks for the replies. I agree with you 100% and wish cover letters were more meaningful but for every one of you that reads them there are nine who don't. So I'd just ask, don't be surprised if people don't write cover letters anymore.

I mean half these companies, especially the "always hiring" ones aren't even trying to fill positions, they're just signaling growth to investors. Sending anything to them is a waste of time.

[fakedang]

As an anecdote (since we're in that territory here), we (major financial firm) were sent only resumes by the HR team to filter through and select candidates for interview. Going through my circle, it's the same for guys working in any company that's bigger than 50 employees.

[dangus]

Do you really want an employee who is dumb enough to do a repetitive, menial, low-value task manually for dozens or hundreds of iterations?

Do you want to disqualify great programmers who are bad at writing prose?

[yakshaving_jgt]

None of my colleagues are dumb, and I don't think the implication is appropriate.

[dangus]

I didn’t say or imply they were.