4 ms·
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 wa
by 0x737368 6y ago
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?
- obedm 6y agoI 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?
- gifnamething 6y agoI 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.
- apprewired 6y agoSo, 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/ 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 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
- quercusa 6y agoFYI, "It uses Tuft CSS, inspired..." should be Tufte.
- Spooky23 6y agoIt 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.