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A couple weeks ago we put a advert out on Indeed and also listed it here on HN. Initially we didn't have any further qualifications beyond the job post, which

• UncleOxidant 3y ago
  I'm kind of surprised to hear that cover letters still matter. It seems like most of the places I've applied to recently don't even have an option for including a cover letter. Since most of this is driven by keywords anymore, I guess I figured the cover letter was kind of an anachronism. I suspect you're in a small to medium sized company?
  • JohnFen 3y ago
    My company is a large one, but we aren't keyword-driven or the like. A human screens the applications. Cover letters matter to us.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • whynotmaybe 3y ago
      What criteria are you looking for in a cover letter? I find the concept of cover letter completely disassociated of a candidate competency to do their job. I can spend 1h to write a cover letter with perfect structure, good intention and really speaking my vision of me in the company, this won't show that I can do a leetcode medium or that my clipper code is well structured.
      • JohnFen 3y ago
        Cover letters convey the non-technical aspects of an applicant that can give an indication of how well they'd fit into a team. Why did they apply to us, specifically? What about the position or company do they find interesting? What skills/hobbies/etc. do they have (or want to highlight) that indicates an interest in the nature of the work? That sort of thing. The resume/CV tells you the "what", the cover letter tells you the "why". Basically, the cover letter is the sales pitch. If you don't provide one, that certainly doesn't eliminate you from consideration, but providing one can give an important edge.
        • culopatin 3y ago
          Applied to you specifically because I haven’t heard from the other ones yet and what you posted sounds like something I can do to get money to pay my dues to the rest of the society. I don’t know you very well off of your “about us” and the job posting to tell you any more than that. I don’t know if the manager I’ll be working with is going to make my day great or dreadful.
  • irvingprime 3y ago
    It's rare for anyone to read cover letters. I put one in once in a while. Mostly I have ChatGPT write a draft and then I cut half of it and make some adjustments. Even with the AI helping, it's more work than I usually want to do for something that is probably going to be ignored.
• bilsbie 3y ago
  My boomer grandfather called and wants his cover letter back. Jk but why not ask for a five minute coding challenge instead of a cover letter. Eg decode this string and include it in the subject line.
  • e12e 3y ago
    In many jobs, if you can't tailor your CV to the job, and can't write half a page rationale - you probably can't collect, evaluate and summarize business and technical requirements - ie: you can't do the tricky part of software engineering. Sure, being fluent at the level of fizz-buzz in a relevant programming language is useful too - but honestly, that bar is lower. I realize that people that can't code their way out of a wet paper bag (mysteriously) apply for programming jobs, and there's a low-pass filter needed for that as well - but a coding challenge isn't a substitute to check for (written) communication skills and basic reasoning.
    • lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
      > if you can't tailor your CV to the job, and can't write half a page rationale There's "can't" and there's "won't." Programmers in demand won't spend the time, which leaves you with programmers who are desperate enough for work to jump through your hoops (unless you're FAANG or a unicorn). You're effectively filtering your candidate pool down to people you don't want to hire. Round and round we go.
      • e12e 3y ago
        Sure. But isn't what both sides should be aiming for a no-bullshit dialog where company explain what they need help doing, applicant explains that they can, how they can help get that done? At some point the candidate needs to invest some time on communication with the specific employer - why waste everyone's time synchronously in first first interview, when it's better for both to waste that time asynchronously?
        • janalsncm 3y ago
• andrewstuart 3y ago
  This need for a cover letter is essentially asking candidates to tell you how much they love the company and how much they want the job. Why is this important beyond making the company feel loved? As a job applicant I’m not going to invest a minute in your company until you’ve read my resume and expressed an interest. Theres hundreds of companies out there employing who want your time but give nothing back. I know next thing you'll ask for is a coding test and I’m not doing it. You can blame all the previous companies who wanted a coding test and it turned out to be just burning my time. No cover letters, no coding tests, no 5 stage interview processes, no “you passed 4 interviews and failed the 5th cause everyone has veto”.
  • JTBooth 3y ago
    Cover letters that just say how much you love the company are pretty useless. Cover letters that provide additional information about why you're a good use of the company's interviewer's time are useful. I've submitted letters about, say, how I think one project on my resume is specifically applicable to a problem the company has. This both shows I researched the company, which is proof of investment from me, and provides some evidence that I should work at this particular company (or I could have done bad research and misunderstood the company and what it wants, in which case it will help them reject me and help me find my way to a company I'm more interested in)
    • filoleg 3y ago
      Exactly. Competent recruiters and hiring managers at companies that I actually considered working for even explicitly told me to not waste my time on the cover letter (which was optional for their applications), unless I am a PhD with a long list of publications and specialized experience that would be too much to explain on my resume (or any other non-traditional type of an applicant that cannot easily relay their relevant expertise on the resume, e.g., former air traffic controller who is trying to break into software dev; or maybe if you have tons of experience in their very specific obscure niche). For all other scenarios, cover letters seem pointless and redundant at best, and “i wanna see how much you are willing to suck up to the company” at worst.
• Our_Benefactors 3y ago
  Cover letter = I don't want to discover what other archaic rituals and customs this dinosaur company has
• transcriptase 3y ago
  I can sit there and spend significant time per application elegantly explaining how the details I've already put in my resume are relevant to the job description, only to have it never reach a human because a poorly designed parser didn't find a keyword or ML gave it 1 point under a set score threshold. Or a human could just read the resume.
  • linsomniac 3y ago
    I'm slogging through resumes now and thought back to your reply above... Here's the thing: If you're willing to accept that your resume will be passed over in preference for people who wrote a cover letter, that's fine, but a curious position to be in if you are looking for a job...
  • linsomniac 3y ago
    This is a Mexican standoff. You aren't willing to write a cover letter, because a machine might be reading it, and we are getting resumes that, on their own, are just a "maybe" along with 100+ other "maybes". On the other side, we have been inundated with "fire and forget" resumes that make it hard: why should we invest time in your resume when you haven't invested time in your application? In our case, we have 3 out of 10 people at the company reviewing these resumes (CTO, senior sysadmin, full-stack dev). We are committing significant resources to reviewing applications. If you are going to optimize for submitting to a machine that scores your application, don't be surprised that a human isn't reading your application.
    • nprateem 3y ago
      Chuck them through AI and ask how suitable the person is.
• arcatech 3y ago
  > I've been very lucky, I've not had to apply for many jobs. But when I have, I always wrote a specific cover letter AND customized my resume to the job advert. You're self selecting for people who happen to be as privileged as you are. Maybe that's what you want, but I'm not surprised it's been more difficult than you were expecting.
  • soupfordummies 3y ago
    This speaks to OPs mention of "brokenness on both sides" where being able to write a cover letter and tailoring the resume to the job is considered "privileged" Please note, I'm not disputing your comment at all. It's just that what used to be considered the norm (cover letter, etc) is just way too time-intensive by the wayside as applicants now have to mostly optimize for quantity of apps submitted. If you don't NEED a new job ASAP then, yeah, you can do that, but for someone who's been laid off or unemployed for longer stretches, it's really just a numbers game most of the time.
  • toomanyrichers 3y ago
    “Privileged” has become a 4 letter word bandied about only to disparage one’s opponent. It’s absolute bullshit. What precisely do you mean?
    • arcatech 3y ago
      Being lucky enough to always have the time to narrow your job search to a few employers and tailor your resume and cover letter to those few is a privileged position. Many people (like those who have been laid off, just out of college and have student loan debt, or are just in any general position where they need income quickly) have to play the numbers game and literally can’t afford to take this person’s advice.
      • meiraleal 3y ago
        The most effective route to get a job (sending the right application to the right position with a good cover letter) works better for both desperate and comfortable people. Many smart people choose the right path even when they are broke and hopeless, it makes no sense to shift responsibility and call it privilege.
• catlover76 3y ago
  > we started adding additional hoops for getting resumes in, and also tried to put in a gatekeeper to really urge applicants to write cover letters. Doing this is a good way to get people good enough to have options to avoid applying to your job posting.
• replwoacause 3y ago
  I’d never write a cover letter to get a job somewhere. It seems like such an antiquated holdover practice to me. In fact, if it were required I’d actively avoid it, which sounds like the effect you were going for. Especially now that I work for one of the biggest and most sought after companies in my country and they didn’t get two craps about a cover letter.
  • tester756 3y ago
    I disagree as hell. Yea, sure, cover letter for some JoeSoft writing crud apps may be weird but for fancier jobs I don't really see problem with cover letters where candidate can share something more human than CV's "i've did blabla" like passion, motivation, etc, etc. And highly motivated employee may be way more valuable than more skilled employee
    • janalsncm 3y ago
      > highly motivated employee Is there any evidence that writing a cover letter means they will be a motivated employee? What motivates me is the problem that I am solving on the job. I am extremely motivated to solve that specific task. If you ask me to write a cover letter about myself, I have zero motivation to do that because the evaluation criteria are unclear and half the companies don’t read them to begin with. When I’m evaluating candidates, the only useful thing about a cover letter is as a disqualifying factor. If I see they’re bad at writing, I’ll likely reject their resume as well. Being well-spoken isn’t a positive, though.
      • Clubber 3y ago
        >Is there any evidence that writing a cover letter means they will be a motivated employee? They're at least motivated enough to spend time writing a cover letter. FWIW, I haven't written a cover letter since 1997, but if it was a company I was interested in, I would write one if I thought they would read it. Also, consider some smart people haven't acquired the ability of talking on their feet yet, but might be able to show some desirability when given the chance to write. Thomas Jefferson was that way; he wrote beautifully but speeches, not so much.
• altdataseller 3y ago
  Did you put a very narrow salary range (ie 150-180k) or wide one (ie 100k-250k) in the job posting?
  • linsomniac 3y ago
    Yes. We are in Colorado and have to put in the salary range for the position by law.
    • altdataseller 3y ago
      What’s the typical range difference? Is it strict like 100-130k or more wider like 100-190k?
      • linsomniac 3y ago
        It is listed as $90K-$125K.
• austin-cheney 3y ago
  > But, yeah, we're having a hard time finding full-stack people that can hit the ground running with Java and Vue. Why would anybody want to do that? This is actually a serious question. Why would you expect Java developers to want to write frontend JavaScript code? I have seen a lot of positions come up like this and the employer is always left cluelessly scratching their heads as to why hiring is so hard. Is this a problem of expectation management or poor empathy?
  • Gud 3y ago
    Why not? Many people thrive when working with the full stack. Why does everything need to be so compartmentalized?
    • austin-cheney 3y ago
      In my experience working in large Java shops for over a decade this is almost never true. Many Java developers are mortified by JavaScript and typically prefer Angular framework because it imposes a bloated OOP MVVM model that Java developers find more familiar. CSS is like fatal kryptonite (Superman poison) to most Java developers. This could be why that employer is not happy with the quality of candidates. They are forcefully imposing Java with an iron fist and wondering why people aren’t thrilled to work fullstack like that, when most people are not thrilled to work fullstack like that.
      • linsomniac 3y ago
        Considering we have only gotten a handful of cover letters, we are having to go by the resume. So if your resume has no Vue and/or no Java, we're forced to read between the lines and guess that there's a reason. Not so much an iron fist, but 95+% of resumes don't convey any passion, so it's hard to say this guy has a passion that will translate to Vue+Java.
        • nprateem 3y ago
          Anyone with half a brain can pick up vue in a weekend. Your problem appears to be a complete disinterest in investing in new hires.
• taurath 3y ago
  > But, yeah, we're having a hard time finding full-stack people that can hit the ground running with Java and Vue Why not get people who’ve worked with Java and other frontend frameworks, or Vue and other object oriented languages? In my first coding role I knew absolutely no C#, just some JS but I was contributing to the codebase within a week. Most of the particulars of your codebase will be particular to your codebase. Find people who’ve shown they can learn and give them a few weeks rather than take months to hire a person who has last worked with your particular stack.
  • linsomniac 3y ago
    We are open to that, but without getting many cover letters it's very hard to pick out the people who have the passion to learn new things, from the people happy with what they are doing. It's hard to tell the people who are doing Angular but interested in trying Vue from the people who find Angular a better fit for their Java sensibilities and don't want to do Vue.
    • juvvel 3y ago
      That's interesting to hear, because my impression was that software/web development is a field full of people who are self-taught or at least very enthusiastic about learning new tech. I am personally pretty undogmatic when it comes to languages or tools and I assumed most developers who care about solving problems are the same way.
    • taurath 3y ago
      I think most people who are interested enough in applying will do the job. If you tell someone you use Vue, they will be using Vue, and they come in and refuse to learn Vue, just remove that person. Frankly, there’s not very much difference between them, and Vue has less of a learning curve than angular. I don’t really understand how highly hiring managers are fearful of a “bad hire”, especially when people are experienced and have good references.
• linsomniac 3y ago
  My friend Jacob Kaplan-Moss says "Hiring is probably the highest leverage activity a manager will engage in. If you hire well, that person could be on your team for 10 years and do an amazing amount of work. On the other hand if you screw it up, you can absolutely destroy a team." Is a cover letter or a resume going to allow a manager the best chance at making a good hiring decision, WRT to finding a good fit for the project and team? Clearly, you'll need more than just one or both of those, but as a first step, I'll take a cover letter that shows you give a damn over a fire and forget resume . If your only interaction with hiring is: "I'm willing to put in nothing more than the bare minimum", that's telling me something.
• matthewfelgate 3y ago
  Any company insisting on a cover letter is a big red flag.