Honestly can you blame the candidate? Cover letters are barely read and make no difference in the overall selection process, except as a measure of elimination.

Honestly can you blame the candidate? Cover letters are barely read and make no difference in the overall selection process, except as a measure of elimination. For a job seeker, a discerning reader like you isn't a priority when he has to apply for 30 other jobs each day with a custom cover letter for each one. I remember back in recruitment for banking, we simply used to look at stacks of hundreds, maybe thousands, of resumes. Judging HR folks' calibre, I doubt any of them had the time to read and filter through hundreds of cover letters to send the candidates over to us. The cover letter is a thing of the past and should be eliminated altogether, simply because they have been rendered useless by employers themselves.