As a hiring manager, the cover letter was the most important part of the packet that I was given. The resume was pretty meaningless since I've seen plenty of ba

As a hiring manager, the cover letter was the most important part of the packet that I was given. The resume was pretty meaningless since I've seen plenty of bad candidates with good-looking resumes and vice versa. But the cover letter was a much more reliable signal of a quality candidate. For me, there were two important goals that a cover letter was supposed to accomplish. The first was that the cover letter should prove to me that the applicant read the job posting. I took time to write an engaging job posting that wasn't just a list of job functions and qualifications. The cover letter should explain why the applicant is the person I'm looking for by essentially regurgitating everything that I've asked for in the job posting and citing relevant experience, skills or traits of the applicant. The second is to prove to me that you invested some amount of time into applying. If I choose to schedule a phone interview and possibly an in-person interview that may include airfare and hotel, I'm going to be investing a non-trivial amount of resources into you as a potential hire and I'd like to believe that you're willing to kick in the 10 minutes or so it takes to write the cover letter. I'd like to be one of a handful of places you're applying and not one of 50 or so. A customized cover letter is like a proof-of-work system that prevents resume spam. It may seem tedious, but that's the point. It should be hard to automate and if I believe that you're using the same cover letter for multiple companies, I'll pass. As an applicant, the formula I follow when writing them is to start by talking about why the company's product or mission is compelling to me. If I have difficulty writing this, I rethink applying in the first place since it's really hard to enjoy working for a company with goals that don't excite me in some way. After I've talked about why the company is appealing, I pick the two or three most-emphasized things from the job posting that I feel describe me and write why I believe that. I save linking to Github for the top of my resume. But that's me, and by some of the responses here, I gather others feel differently.