The Art of the Cover Letter | Hacker News Reader

The Art of the Cover Letter

theparisreview.org

75 pointsbookofjoe49 comments

> “No one will read this,” my advisees lament, often as I am reading their cover letter right in front of them. I know they mean that no one important will read it.

I think what they mean is "no one who is in a position to give me the job I want is going to read this", they clearly went to the author because they think his help will increase their chances of getting that job.

When writing a cover letter, which is quite common when doing direct applications in Switzerland, I never know who I'm addressing, and knowing your audience is a key factor when designing poignant communication.

Will it be a HR person? A tech lead? A team lead? Will they appreciate the ugly-but-hard-to configure LaTeX template I used, the hand-coded postscript to generate the symbols for the telephone and the letterbox? Will they know that if I write "C" in the list of programming languages, that does not mean I am proficient in C++? That a seemingly tangentially related job I am mentioning is actually solving the same problem, but in a different industry?

The result of this is that most cover letters I have written contain generic platitudes, to the point where I now have a makefile and just make minor adjustments like company names and addresses, plus some tweaking, before sending it out, with a reasonable success rate.

Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe it is true that nobody is reading these.

This. In fact, I am currently in the process and I finally chose to have a generic one with a LaTeX to adapt to company names and recruiters and I wrote specialized when I can see who is going to read my cover letter. The third option I use is when I contact the recruiter by mail, I provide the generic one as attachment and in the mail provided more specific motivation and experience related to the job offer.

And most of the time now, companies don't want you to upload your cover letter but use a form with a textarea box the size of a stamp to write your cover letter without any formatting option.

The cover letter is essential for me as a hiring manager. When I have a pool of ~100 applicants for a graduate role, I need something to differentiate between the candidates beyond the list of courses they've undertaken and summer jobs they've had. I'll filter first on only those applications that have cover letters attached.

Any cover letter shows that they're willing to put the effort into applying rather than just spraying the same CV to lots of employers, but a good one shows that they've researched my company and are motivated to work there. Doesn't need to be in great depth, but a line talking about one of our products and how its use in a specific industry is interesting to the applicant speaks volumes.

There are bad cover letters too, including those written for a different company but carelessly sent to mine...

I've never had HR send me anything but the resume when I've been involved in hiring. For that matter, I don't know that I've ever sent anything other than a resume in forty years of working in IT.

Yes, 25 years in IT and reading resumes, I was never passed anything other than a resume by HR.

Same, but the value/need for a cover letter partly depends on size of organization, sector, etc. I know very large firms that use something like LinkedIn for job applications and automate the initial screen through that/resume-only. I tend to work in management with sub-100-employee companies and prefer having a cover letter as part of the hiring process, which is also more manual.

>Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe it is true that nobody is reading these.

Considering that a lot of hiring managers complain of too many resumes, not enough qualified candidates, and lengthy interview processes, it's not unreasonable to assume they've stopped reading cover letters because they don't have the time.

Cover letters are shorter. Maybe instead of trying to read all those resumes they should just skip that and only read the cover letters.

I have actually had a lot of positive feedback on cover letters I've written. I think cover letters are probably more applicable to small and medium size companies, to the point where the largest companies like Netflix and Facebook don't even seem to have a place to submit one.

In any case, my basic strategy is to try and and identify 3-4 things from the job description which I have a good background in and write a short paragraph on each, and identify at least one thing about the company which sets it apart and write about how that appeals to me. Some companies have really compelling missions, some companies have interesting challenges, but there should be something appealing!

I have collected about 10-20 paragraphs over time which I can tap into when writing new cover letters which is helpful to quickly generate a framework.

The cover letter is probably a second level filter at many companies however, so it is still important to have a relevant resume and if at all possible a contact inside the company.

I think cover letters make the most sense when they are really a letter. It feels strange to me to have a complicated hiring profile account, including basically rewriting my resume in little text boxes (though I've stopped doing that, but I still at least fill out companies and education), selecting tags, applying for multiple jobs in one go, and then including a letter as well.

When asked to submit a resume by email, then the body of the email is a natural place for a "cover letter".

Yes, an email body works great too. Typically if I send an email cover letter I try to pare it down to one or two short paragraphs instead of the half page or full page full cover letter.

When applying for my first post-university job I started with writing cover letters on a per application basis. Very quickly I found that this seemed to be a waste of time and switched to a more shotgun approach where I'd format my CV to be more general for the kind of work I was looking for, leaving out the cover letter entirely, and applied to as many places as possible, eventually leading to a job.

I'm curious if anyone actually found cover letters to be useful in applying for jobs/reviewing applicants or is it just another pointless jumping through hoops that's unlikely to improve one's outcome of getting hired?

I landed my last job in part thanks to my cover letter. It wasn't anything special, it just was good enough to be better than every other applicant that just shot-gunned it.

I've always found this to be the case. I only apply to jobs I want and spend time applying. It usually gets me through the door.

In a sea of fish, it's good to be a mer.. Man?

I suspect it's easier to write a good cover letter if you are shotgunning. I'm very out of practice, whereas an edited template (incorporating words from the company vision) belonging to the shotgunner would be well-polished.

So, they've been useful for me and some of my friends, but it is worth sharing the specifics to know if it'd apply to your own situation. I did create a site focused on creating cover letters (crowded marketplace, but I had fun doing it), www.coverletteremails.com, here's what I learned in the process:

First, the format has changed. It was written about in this thread, but if you are sending an email, then the body of the email is basically your introduction / cover letter. I've never opened an attachment to an email (especially if it was .docx file, which does still happen) when evaluating candidates.

Second, emails haven't been as useful in sharing cover letters and resumes (kinda ironic that I built a site focused around emails, I know - lessons learned :) ). What has worked really well is a simple html page. This has worked far better - here is an example of one that I used, edited. https://www.coverletteremails.com/letters/honeycomb.io/ (full disclosure - I didn't get that job, but working at honeycomb would've been incredible).

Having a URL like the one above has been helpful. Usually, if you are applying through something like greenhouse.io, there will be a section for you to enter your cover letter, in that section, I would write something like "I put together a quick intro of myself at https://wwww....".

I don't have any statistics on things like 'how many times was this opened' because I thought it'd be cheesy to include something like google analytics on a page like that. I guess I could evaluate logs and such, but never got around to it. So the only evidence I have is interviewers saying something like "I liked your intro / or I liked your cover letter ... how'd you build that?"

hope that's helpful

FYI, "It uses Tuft CSS, inspired..." should be Tufte.

It depends where it's going. Bigger companies or companies with more powerful HR will strip them because they are more likely to be more add more subjectivity that can be seen as bias.

If your application material is getting lightly screened and sent to the hiring manager, it's an opportunity to catch somebody's attention. I interviewed a guy once because he related some aspect of the job to his experience working the grounds crew at Fenway Park in college. It got my attention and gave me an opportunity to troll the other interviewer, who hated the Red Sox.

So basically its random. Just send the same resume/letter to as many companies as possible to increase your chances.

Agreed, as long as you don't agonize over crafting the perfect letter.

Can't say for other industries, but in tech in the US at least (and not just at actual tech companies, but other, more conservative/traditional non-tech companies too), it seems cover letters are not required or expected at all.

I'm kind of surprised when people actually read my resume. Feels like most people just look at the companies and titles and move on.

I've found many tech companies (including at least some FAANG) don't. At least not until much later in the process. And even then it seems like it's only as a formality.

I've interviewed at one FAANG and the recruiter didn't ask for my resume until after I got rejected lol.

I had the impression that companies in EU seldom require cover letter.

While it is very often the case for companies in the US.

And honestly it is a big turn off for me as applicant, and honestly I didn't see their value for me as selector.

Does anybody get anything out of cover letters?

I live in an EU country and have not seen a job posting that didn't require a cover letter. Even low skill jobs demand one. There are workshops that teach you to write the perfect cover letter. Just another hoop to jump through now that the selection is so big.

I pick the very first company in my head, the very first open position they have, and they don't require a cover letter.

https://careers.protonmail.com/o/head-of-content/c/new

You can submit one, but it is not required.

Sometimes when they offer the option of the cover letter there is an implicit acknowledgment that you will submit one. I know hiring managers who appreciate cover letters, so those who don't submit one are in a worse position.

I was never asked for cover letter.

I haven't had formal qualifications for any of the few jobs I have been hired to do in the past 6–7 years, and my cover letters were almost always the reason I got an interview. I would like to think that my cover letters are not the standard, boring ones -- and I purposefully honest with a bit of humour.

In contrast, the accompanying resumes have been single-page, no-frills resumes -- I don't even bother saying anything about what I have done/achieved in previous roles because it seems pretty pointless when I don't have any certificates or practical experience to show.

I'm sure it's different from industry to industry, from company to company, and depends on the seniority of the role. It's just what worked for me to get interviewed at small-medium businesses and probably doesn't work for everyone.

As a final note, in some way I also treat the way I prepare my cover letters and resumes as an additional indicator for whether or not I really want to work at a company (particularly smaller ones with no HR departments): if they don't get back to me it's most likely that they are only looking for "the piece of paper" and/or they don't like my personality/the way I communicate.

Edit: typos.

I know I'm asking a question that is likely difficult to answer, but how do you make humor out of something so mundane as a cover letter for a job? Without knowing anything about the audience I can't imagine how to be funny on paper without coming off as inauthentic.

It's a numbers game. As you point out, without knowing anything about the audience, you have nothing to aim at.

When shooting blind, aim at the biggest target. It's a man's world. Write for men. Men are mostly puerile.

Try a fart joke. All men love these from the time they are kids, and most of them don't ever grow out of it.

To really distinguish yourself, go straight into a poo joke. tailor it to the position you are seeking.

Did you hear about the constipated accountant?

He couldn’t budget.

To demonstrate insightful virtuosity, combine farts and poos into the same joke.

What did the poo say to the fart?

You blow me away.

What’s the true definition of bravery?

Chancing a fart when you know you have diarrhea.

https://thoughtcatalog.com/january-nelson/2018/06/poop-jokes...

I've been looking for work recently, and I've found I've been getting a very good callback rate compared to some of my peers. I assume it's because I write a good, customized cover letter for each application, sometimes going over the posting point-by-point. But I never know when people read them, I only get feedback about 1-2% of the time. I think that is why many may start with "I know no one will read this"...

I was reading up on cover letters yesterday and saw someone on reddit use the following argument: You wouldn't send an email to someone with just your resumé and contact details. Usually, you would write something small to introduce yourself. This is what a cover letter is for. Typically, cover letters shouldn't be much longer than half a page and should be included with applications to provide context about who you are.

When I’m hiring and I expect to receive a lot of applications I’ll ask for a cover letter as a way to help filter out the first round. It’s basically a few hundred words to highlight which parts of their CV going to be relevant to the role, plus anything else they’d like me to know about their suitability.

It also helps give a really basic indication of someone’s written communication skills and can be a good indicator of whether they’ve actually read the JD or whether they’re just blindly applying for anything they find.

Well n = 1 and the UK rather than the EU, but yesterday I saw a job description on the gov.uk website that required a 'personal statement' in addition to a CV and said that it would be crucial to the hiring decision.

Thinking generically, a cover letter makes sense for posts where written communication is an essential skill. It's an actual test of free form text writing by the candidate.

Hugely important for me, hiring for marketing. I need to know you can write. I need to know you can tell a story. I need to know you can be creative and seek opportunity where others don't. It amazes how many applicants either don't include one (to be fair, not all job posting sites require it) or just slap empty words on the paper and move on.

> Hugely important for me, hiring for marketing.

Exactly. Where I used to work we wrote tech reports aimed at non-tech readers so good written explanation skills were essential.

As an American o had the exact opposite impression -- every European company I've applied to has requested one. Interesting to see that it was just an outlier experience (and I suspect your experience was the same)

Exact opposite experience in the US. I don’t think I’ve even applied at a place where I could submit one. The only point of uploading my resume is to get past the automated screens.

All the cover letters I have written have flown over the head of the application reviewers, they didn't even glance at it on all the interviews where a cover letter was required in the application form, the interviewer always asks the same questions that I already answered in the cover letter. funnily enough, all the companies that I had applied also didn't bother looking at my github account even to 'github account link' field in the application form is supposed to be there for some reason

I've done my fair share of hiring (Tech company in London), and I don't think I've ever seen a cover letter included with any CV. Recruiters either don't ask for them or don't bother to pass them on. When we get referrals from our colleagues, it's typical just to ask for a CV and get a phone interview set up as quickly as possible. Maybe it's different if you do a lot of direct hiring.

Is the CV document attached to an empty email?

The email body is the cover letter. Some are better than others.

Typically emails you get will look like "Hey ucosty, we've got some great candidates for you. I've attached their CVs here.". For emails from referrals they're more likely to be "Hey ucosty, your colleague foobar referred me. I've attached my CV"

This is the exact template. All the real selling happens over the phone

I believe most recruiters would prefer they write the "cover letter". All it's meant to do is highlight what parts of your resume make you a great fit for the job.

> Will it be a HR person? A tech lead? A team lead?

That's been a pet peeve of mine with respect to resumes as well.

Some people want a categorical list of every technology I've worked with, others want something more akin to a CV, a few people want a brief highlight reel, and one of the stranger requests I received recently was for a detailed description of a former employer's business model (is that actually something any of you put into your resumes? they seemed shocked I hadn't considered it).

I am no expert in cover letters, but I have to wonder if the author is since the question "what happens when you get the job?" seems not to come up. Many people say a cover letter should be the written version of your best 30-60 second professional introduction to another. So sure you could hire this person, but you could also write it yourself and avoid the risk of assuming a professional voice that isn't actually yours.

This is true of all types of editing if it is done badly. An editors job is to improve a piece of writing without taking away the author's 'voice'.

https://archive.is/grLQ4

If an org has ever rejected me for not submitting a cover letter, I consider that a bullet dodged.

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