Just want to mention that, as a hiring manager for over ten years now, I haven't looked at a cover letter once in that entire time.
Why brag about ignoring a valuable indicator that applicants spend considerable time writing?
We do use the hiring letter, because the ability to write is important to us, but I understand why it might not be considered.
Even if you want to test communication skills, cover letter is completely unlike normal on the job communication for most of us. Cover letter shows how great you are at selling yourself. Technical person communication skills are more about clarity, ability to express complicated ideas, ability to simplify complex things for management, negotiation about deadlines etc.
However, I pretty much never read thank you/follow-up emails after an interview and don't care if candidates send them or not.
It also tells me if they really did any research into their prospective employer. Especially useful when they forget to swap employers and accidentally leave in the name of another place they're applying to.
See also: attaching pictures, "hobbies" section and other irrelevant personal details.
The point, which I'm very far from the first person to bring up, is that the actual purpose of vague concepts like "culture fit" is to be a wildcard you can use to exclude anyone without having to critically examine or provide an actual reason. How you personally justify having pink hair not being a "culture fit" to yourself doesn't change anything about that. What it does change however is that you now no longer have to explain that you're not hiring someone for their hair color.
There's no need to invent hypotheticals, by the way. The people I've heard asking how they can stop getting denied for "culture fit" in interviews have one thing in common and it's being >40 years old or a woman.
Same, don’t look at blogs or Github either.
The CV/resume is the “sales brochure” to get a phone interview, I don’t look at that either once the candidate advances to in-person.
I've at least read the cover letters of those I'm about to interview, feels rude not to.
In my view, hiring manager that ignore cover letters usually also have very strong go/no-go criteria like “We won't hire anyone who doesn't have prior Java experience”, etc.
[As a candidate, I like filtering out such employers; so I'm wondering if I should play with including some kind of tracking link in my cover letter that would track if the employer had clicked on it; and filter out employers that didn't.]
Look at experience. Look at skills. Do they fit the position.
If yes, interview. If no, do not interview.
The fluff around everything else is just fluff.
I guess it depends a lot on the industry. Most of the cover letters I've seen when hiring are following a template or pattern gleaned from a website or book telling you how to write a cover letter.
Also, you're never 100% sure that a job seeker didn't get someone to help them write the cover letter or if it's copypasta.
Admittedly, if I was looking for a job, I'd provide a cover letter just to satisfy arbitrary expectations, but I hate writing them. All I do these days is regurgitate the list of the advertised requirements and for each item, indicate if I meet, have comparables or don't meet it. It beats having to come up with a bunch of made up platitudes about why they should hire me.
In the same vein as cover letters though, I don't put much weight on post-interview thank-you letters.
And yes, I couldn't care less if the candidate gave a post-interview thank you. That's not going to influence my decision.