I am taking a short break to learn my mistakes. And your post is very interesting.

1) I have never spent over an hour writing a cover letter. I think the longest is 30 minutes, and in average I would say 10 minutes (Not including the time I spent looking their website)

2) I do include my phone number in both resume and cover letter. I have double checked it as well.

3) Yes, I need to work on this. I am quite inconsistent, some weeks I send only 5 where as others I send over 20.

4) I will definitely work on this

6) I have recently working on my LinkedIn profile to make it more professional.

Thank you for your advices.