8 ms·

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.

patja 6y ago
I always found it helpful to have a writing sample for evaluation, especially if the position requires effective written communication skills.
thisisnico 6y ago
Cover letter is completely useless and a waste of both parties time IMO. 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.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  It tells you if the person can't communicate beyond bullet points in a resume. It's easy to hype up achievements in previous positions. An interview will help there, but if a cover letter demonstrates difficulty communicating, that is a signal you can use to effectively filter those candidates and not waste time on an interview.
  - slantyyz 6y ago
    > It tells you if the person can't communicate beyond bullet points in a resume. 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.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      That's why I phrased is as "can't communicate". Because a positive signal could be false, but a negative signal can probably be trusted. And yes, I couldn't care less if the candidate gave a post-interview thank you. That's not going to influence my decision.
Sholmesy 6y ago
I find that surprising. I've at least read the cover letters of those I'm about to interview, feels rude not to.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  I barely even skim the resume. I don't believe there is reliable information on anything that can be prepared in advance. I'm sure I've had false negatives, but in 10+ years of hiring I've never recommended someone be hired who wound up being bad.
nomdep 6y ago
So I suppose that is also part of the culture. At companies like Basecamp or Twist, the cover letter matters way more than the CV.
extra__tofu 6y ago
That's...your loss? Why brag about ignoring a valuable indicator that applicants spend considerable time writing?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 1123581321 6y ago
  I didn’t see it as a brag. The idea is that the cover letter influences the hire in undesirable ways more than it provides relevant information. Think systemically removed from the hiring packet rather than gleefully deleted. We do use the hiring letter, because the ability to write is important to us, but I understand why it might not be considered.
  - scaryclam 6y ago
    This is very much counter to my experience as a hiring manager. The only time a cover letter has contributed to a negative response, the candidate stated they didn't care about the company and just wanted the money. That was also pretty much what they said in the phone screen, so yeah, not impressed. Other than that, we made some really good hires because the cover letter gave valuable context to an otherwise bland CV.
    - 1123581321 6y ago
      I understand. As I said, we value the cover letter and use it. In this case, though, the reasoning is that the cover letter provides unwanted signals about the demographics of the candidate, and avoiding influence from those signals is considered worth not knowing the kind of valuable context you mentioned.
- watwut 6y ago
  It does not seem to me valuable indicator for technical position. Maybe if you are looking to fill position in marketing. 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.
scaryclam 6y ago
You should really start reading them. Many contain valuable information about the candidate and would help you do you job more effectively. I also work as a hiring manager and would probably have discounted more than one really good hire if I'd not read the cover letter and gained context that didn't fit into their CV.
- nashashmi 6y ago
  Second this. Flat resumes with bulleted features are so incomplete. They don’t show personality or character. They don’t have emphasis. Just a bland list of tasks done.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  can you expand on this a bit? I usually try to go for the joel hiring criteria, "smart, gets stuff done". from this perspective, it's kind of hard for me to see what valuable information could be in a cover letter that shouldn't already be in the resume itself. I just want to see if they've done anything similar already and how it turned out.
- jjav 6y ago
  Not the OP but I've also never read a cover letter. It's not that I wouldn't read one if offered, but I've never received a cover letter in 20+ years of interviewing people. Either nobody writes one or HR filters them out.
ineedasername 6y ago
To me a cover letter tells me if the candidate can write & organize their thoughts effectively. 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.
mdorazio 6y ago
I fill probably 10 positions a year. I never ask for a cover letter, but if someone sends one I'll pretty much always look at it. I will say that I don't place much weight on the cover letter content unless it specifically highlights something relevant to the position not sufficiently covered by the resume. Usually I just look at the cover letter as a secondary confirmation that the person can write reasonably well and knows what the position is about. However, I pretty much never read thank you/follow-up emails after an interview and don't care if candidates send them or not.
ATsch 6y ago
I think this is very good and should be done more. Unless you're hiring someone to write cover letters, they're a distraction that measures an irrelevant skill and is mostly useful as a way to introduce an incredible amount of biases into the hiring process early. See also: attaching pictures, "hobbies" section and other irrelevant personal details.
- salamanderman 6y ago
  So "culture" and team cooperation and coordination are not things you place any stock in?
  - ATsch 6y ago
    Team cooperation is not something a cover letter can tell you. "Culture fit" is nothing but an incredibly transparent and convienient post-hoc justification for when you know you're only excluding someone for not looking or behaving enough like you but have to find some way to word it that doesn't make you sound bad.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Doesn't everyone expect their coworkers to behave somewhat like them? I suspect you'd be pretty unhappy if your company hired someone who went around making crass jokes all the time - I certainly would be.
      - ATsch 6y ago
        In that case the problem is that you've hired someone that lacks the emotional awareness or worse doesn't care that they're making people uncomfortable with the jokes, not "bad culture fit". Whether someone cares about how their behaviour affects others definitely sounds like something that should affect a hiring decision.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
newsclues 6y ago
Why as a hiring manager would you overlook the datapoints in the cover letter?
quadrifoliate 6y ago
I am curious – do you also usually look more for technology-focused experience rather than a more general view of what the candidate's skills look like? 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.]
salamanderman 6y ago
That sounds like you're depriving yourself of information that could indicate emotional intelligence, communication skills, intent in applying, etc. I think you're only hurting yourself and your team (admittedly by an amount that is difficult to quantify). Why don't you read cover letters?
goatinaboat 6y ago
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. 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.
syndacks 6y ago
Like a teacher who assigns homework but doesn't grade it, a lover who receives a letter and doesn't return one, or a politician who runs on an issue she don't enact -- you're a hypocrite, an unprofessional one, and if karma hasn't already paid you a visit, you are due for one soon.

patja 6y ago

I always found it helpful to have a writing sample for evaluation, especially if the position requires effective written communication skills.

thisisnico 6y ago

Cover letter is completely useless and a waste of both parties time IMO. 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.

ineedasername 6y ago
It tells you if the person can't communicate beyond bullet points in a resume. It's easy to hype up achievements in previous positions. An interview will help there, but if a cover letter demonstrates difficulty communicating, that is a signal you can use to effectively filter those candidates and not waste time on an interview.
- slantyyz 6y ago
  > It tells you if the person can't communicate beyond bullet points in a resume. 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.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    That's why I phrased is as "can't communicate". Because a positive signal could be false, but a negative signal can probably be trusted. And yes, I couldn't care less if the candidate gave a post-interview thank you. That's not going to influence my decision.

Sholmesy 6y ago

I find that surprising. I've at least read the cover letters of those I'm about to interview, feels rude not to.

Consultant32452 6y ago
I barely even skim the resume. I don't believe there is reliable information on anything that can be prepared in advance. I'm sure I've had false negatives, but in 10+ years of hiring I've never recommended someone be hired who wound up being bad.

nomdep 6y ago

So I suppose that is also part of the culture. At companies like Basecamp or Twist, the cover letter matters way more than the CV.

extra__tofu 6y ago

That's...your loss? Why brag about ignoring a valuable indicator that applicants spend considerable time writing?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
1123581321 6y ago
I didn’t see it as a brag. The idea is that the cover letter influences the hire in undesirable ways more than it provides relevant information. Think systemically removed from the hiring packet rather than gleefully deleted. We do use the hiring letter, because the ability to write is important to us, but I understand why it might not be considered.
- scaryclam 6y ago
  This is very much counter to my experience as a hiring manager. The only time a cover letter has contributed to a negative response, the candidate stated they didn't care about the company and just wanted the money. That was also pretty much what they said in the phone screen, so yeah, not impressed. Other than that, we made some really good hires because the cover letter gave valuable context to an otherwise bland CV.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    I understand. As I said, we value the cover letter and use it. In this case, though, the reasoning is that the cover letter provides unwanted signals about the demographics of the candidate, and avoiding influence from those signals is considered worth not knowing the kind of valuable context you mentioned.
watwut 6y ago
It does not seem to me valuable indicator for technical position. Maybe if you are looking to fill position in marketing. 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.

scaryclam 6y ago

You should really start reading them. Many contain valuable information about the candidate and would help you do you job more effectively. I also work as a hiring manager and would probably have discounted more than one really good hire if I'd not read the cover letter and gained context that didn't fit into their CV.

nashashmi 6y ago
Second this. Flat resumes with bulleted features are so incomplete. They don’t show personality or character. They don’t have emphasis. Just a bland list of tasks done.
leetcrew 6y ago
can you expand on this a bit? I usually try to go for the joel hiring criteria, "smart, gets stuff done". from this perspective, it's kind of hard for me to see what valuable information could be in a cover letter that shouldn't already be in the resume itself. I just want to see if they've done anything similar already and how it turned out.
jjav 6y ago
Not the OP but I've also never read a cover letter. It's not that I wouldn't read one if offered, but I've never received a cover letter in 20+ years of interviewing people. Either nobody writes one or HR filters them out.

ineedasername 6y ago

To me a cover letter tells me if the candidate can write & organize their thoughts effectively. 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.

mdorazio 6y ago

I fill probably 10 positions a year. I never ask for a cover letter, but if someone sends one I'll pretty much always look at it. I will say that I don't place much weight on the cover letter content unless it specifically highlights something relevant to the position not sufficiently covered by the resume. Usually I just look at the cover letter as a secondary confirmation that the person can write reasonably well and knows what the position is about. However, I pretty much never read thank you/follow-up emails after an interview and don't care if candidates send them or not.

ATsch 6y ago

I think this is very good and should be done more. Unless you're hiring someone to write cover letters, they're a distraction that measures an irrelevant skill and is mostly useful as a way to introduce an incredible amount of biases into the hiring process early. See also: attaching pictures, "hobbies" section and other irrelevant personal details.

salamanderman 6y ago
So "culture" and team cooperation and coordination are not things you place any stock in?
- ATsch 6y ago
  Team cooperation is not something a cover letter can tell you. "Culture fit" is nothing but an incredibly transparent and convienient post-hoc justification for when you know you're only excluding someone for not looking or behaving enough like you but have to find some way to word it that doesn't make you sound bad.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Doesn't everyone expect their coworkers to behave somewhat like them? I suspect you'd be pretty unhappy if your company hired someone who went around making crass jokes all the time - I certainly would be.
    - ATsch 6y ago
      In that case the problem is that you've hired someone that lacks the emotional awareness or worse doesn't care that they're making people uncomfortable with the jokes, not "bad culture fit". Whether someone cares about how their behaviour affects others definitely sounds like something that should affect a hiring decision.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

newsclues 6y ago

Why as a hiring manager would you overlook the datapoints in the cover letter?

quadrifoliate 6y ago

I am curious – do you also usually look more for technology-focused experience rather than a more general view of what the candidate's skills look like? 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.]

salamanderman 6y ago

That sounds like you're depriving yourself of information that could indicate emotional intelligence, communication skills, intent in applying, etc. I think you're only hurting yourself and your team (admittedly by an amount that is difficult to quantify). Why don't you read cover letters?

goatinaboat 6y ago

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. 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.

syndacks 6y ago

Like a teacher who assigns homework but doesn't grade it, a lover who receives a letter and doesn't return one, or a politician who runs on an issue she don't enact -- you're a hypocrite, an unprofessional one, and if karma hasn't already paid you a visit, you are due for one soon.