A fun secondary analysis would be cost estimate. So a truly personal message might cost an hour of labor, but a form letter costs only a few seconds to make su

A fun secondary analysis would be cost estimate. So a truly personal message might cost an hour of labor, but a form letter costs only a few seconds to make sure you're sending the correct letter. On the scale of $ expended per decent candidate, form letters would appear to be much better than personal messages, even if they are less effective. WRT "Instead I wrote a little script that hashed messages with an edit distance" an alternative, possibly faster strategy, might be vocabulary. Look at the form letters full of meaningless idioms and cliches, total corporate-speak, all "believe" and "passionate" (that word is only used in cheap pr0n and corporate speak) and "casual" (See commentary on "passionate") and "challenge" "fit" "strong" (what is this ESPN Sportscenter or a recruitment email?) and "Agile" (which has been poisoned in the market to mean absolutely nothing now) How the corporate-speak form letters avoided classics like the phrase "work life balance" is a mystery. Words like "opportunity" and "experience" are kind of on the bubble and generally indicate corporate-speak. Relative lack of corporate-speak vocabulary in the personalized written by and for humans messages is also apparent. (edited to add, an interesting difficult startup idea would be addons for word processors or web browsers which highlight corporate-speak words and phrases to dramatically improve writing styles. Any time "key takeaways" or "metric" appears in the text box its underlined in yellow or something.)