Some do. I have a colleague who gets really annoyed with bad cover letters when we're interviewing and considers not taking the effort to make it good enough o

Some do. I have a colleague who gets really annoyed with bad cover letters when we're interviewing and considers not taking the effort to make it good enough of a reason to reject someone (or at least count is severely against them). Personally I don't care much about your ability to write something that sounds good. So write them and make them good, because you don't know who of us you're interviewing with I guess (metaphorically).