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 did indeed go into details on the job and requesting a cover letter.
After spending a couple days of 2-3 hours each on reviewing resumes that were "only ok", 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. After that the rate has dropped to bearable, but we still maybe get one out of 10 applications with a cover.
So, if you are applying to a job right now, I'd say that rather than optimizing your process for getting a lot of jobs applied for, spend some more time and apply for jobs that you're well suited for, and then make a cover letter that explains why.
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.
But, yeah, we're having a hard time finding full-stack people that can hit the ground running with Java and Vue.
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”.
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)
The problem is that many job descriptions are too vague for me to be able to decide if I will be a good fit. The story I’d like to be able to tell is I did X at company X, I can do X+delta at company Y but your job description doesn’t give me any information about the thing you want me to accomplish. Simply put, it’s not a description of the job, it’s a description of your HR filters.
I’m not going to write a cover letter about how good of a fit I am for your job if you don’t give me enough information to understand what your job is. Most job descriptions are 90% useless. What I need to know is, what is the problem you need me to solve, and what resources will I have to solve it. If you as a recruiter do not know that, you’re not the right person to write a job description.
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.
> 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.
No, and that is exactly the wrong sort of cover letter. A cover letter is a letter from the human applicant to the human hiring manager explaining why he feels that he is a good fit for the position. ‘But that’s the resumé!’ you might say. No, a resume is a list of relevant training, skills and previous employment. Although not traditionally machine-readable, a resumé is basically input into a process machine (we want someone who has been programming in Java for twenty years; this candidate has done it for 24; awesome). The cover letter is input to humans.
Humans whom you will potentially be working with, potentially for years. It seems reasonable for them to get an idea of your communication skills and empathy. Exercise that empathy: put your self in their shoes, and imagine what it is like to receive hundreds of resumés. What would you want to receive from a candidate? What would make your hiring decision easier or harder? Having figured that out, communicate it.
> 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.
It’s a free world. You don’t owe hiring companies anything. Of course, they don’t owe you anything, either. In a booming hiring market, you may find that you can easily find positions without investing in leads; in a softer market, you may find less success.
My cover letter has always been a 3 row 2 column chart. Column 1 is a job requirement/ideal candidate trait from the job post. Column 2 is an example of how I meet that requirement. I limit it to what seem to be the top 3 asks from the company.
The result is a quickly scannable, pretty direct and memorable cover letter.
In our case the job ad says: "Stand out from the crowd and help us get to know you better by including a cover letter. Share your tech interests, explain what drew you to our company, or tell us about any relevant experiences. We're keen to see signs that you've chosen us thoughtfully."
So we aren't looking for a love letter, ideally it'll at least demonstrate that you've read our job listing.
Because at this point I'm pretty sure that 90%+ of the applications we are getting haven't even looked at the job ad, they are just spamming their resume to everything.
They must be posting for a position that doesn’t get much traction. If you got 300 applicants like in more general roles, you can’t say someone will read 50 cover letters, no one has the time, and so sending cover letters for those is a waste of time.
> If you received a notice that your resume had been read, they liked it, and they wanted a cover letter before an interview, would you submit one?
No, because that would mean they didn’t specify that the cover letter would be required ahead of time, and I am not trying to waste my time.
How am I so certain that they didn’t specify it ahead of time? Because I wouldn’t apply in the first place if a cover letter was listed as a requirement on the initial application.
If I am feeling particularly petty or upset about that surprise ask for a cover letter later in the process, I will just ask ChatGPT to write the most generic and useless cover letter for me, and then send it over.
Maybe rather than a cover letter which seems too open ended and come with its own special kind of stress for some people, companies can just ask candidates to fill out a questionnaire that asks for approaches to specific situations that an employee will have to face in this situation?
I think that's a fine approach. It's not uncommon to see a bit of guidance on the cover letter request (calling it 'a paragraph telling us why you'd like to work here' and so on.)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Sending less resumes to jobs that fits better the applicant CV with a tailored cover letter is the most effective route for both the applicants and the companies offering the jobs - but before all, the company also needs to put some effort creating a good job post.
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.
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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
>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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
That was pretty close to my thought when I read this. I start out suspicious of the full stack requirement anyway. Basically it is asking for 1 developer to do the work of 3. Then, on top of that, they want a specific language that is not usually associated with full stack?
It seems like that they are having trouble finding people because what they want is less than optimal.
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.
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.
Sought after candidates is not how software hiring works. Maybe start ups flush with cash are an exception, but for everyone else hiring almost always is dominated by perceived compatibility more than anything else, even more than utility need.
That is because there are smart people in the world that can self educate and jump into new technology with minimal friction, but those people are rare. Most employers want employees as early as the position opens and they don’t want to invest in training. Java is super desirable to employers because many developers are taught Java in school, it’s single paradigm, and it’s terse OOP conventions force the vague shape of a uniform architectural style. Most developers only know enough to be hired and not enough to write original software, of any style, so employers have to account for these things as though everyone is a junior developer, least common denominator.
That line of thinking suggests lower expenses, ease of candidate selection, and a wider candidate pool. In reality it tends to result in a less qualified larger labor pool with greater insecurity. This is why everything on the JavaScript side is about giant frameworks and the software is super bloated, because putting text to screen is all that matters but nobody knows how the technology works without a framework.
I agree with this observation. I often assumed it would be an USP if I highlight that I want to understand how things work instead of blindly following paradigms and frameworks, but it seems that (a sense of) uniformity just comes with too many perceived advantages, like you said.
In our case, we're a small company that is likely to stay a small company: we have 10 people on the technology side, 4-5 are developers. It's hard to have someone siloed as just backend, but maybe we should consider that.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
You've missed the point completely. What you're talking about only applies to programmers who apply for the job you have listed. The programmers a company wants to hire have options that don't require a cover letter. Why should they spend the time to write you a detailed cover letter when their other options don't have that requirement? They won't apply at all.
So, who applies to your open position? Programmers who don't have any other options and are desperate for a job. They probably won't pass your interview. You now have a sales funnel that is filtering out the candidates you want and only giving you the ones you don't want. Then you get to be yet another company that complains about how hard it is to find competent programmers.
The exception to all of the above is if you're one of the companies everybody wants to work at. Then you can require whatever you want and people will still apply.
> Why should they spend the time to write you a detailed cover letter
I'm not sure if I understand - there are candidates that want the position, but won't write a couple of (relevant) paragraphs? Surely then they don't have time to interview, negotiate compensation either?
> I'm not sure if I understand - there are candidates that want the position, but won't write a couple of (relevant) paragraphs?
If it's just an open-ended "cover letter"? Then yes.
> Surely then they don't have time to interview, negotiate compensation either?
They have time for substantive stuff, not nonsense.
It sounds like you want to filter only for candidates who may or may not be particularly competent, but who are somewhat obsequious, at least during the hiring process. Maybe that works for your business.
I think we're at least partially talking past each other (quite probably we also disagree). Let's revisit:
> The programmers a company wants to hire have options that don't require a cover letter.
Ok. That sounds like they expect to be recuited - not needing to apply for a job?
Is there a small group of candidates that will read a job ad, be qualified, want the job enough to apply - but only willing to customize the email address they send their resume to?
Or are we talking about completely separate candidate pools here? Ones that read and respond to ads, and those that expect to be recruited?
> If it's just an open-ended "cover letter"? Then yes.
> They have time for substantive stuff, not nonsense
But it's not nonsense? It's a job application?
Or does "cover letter" strongly imply "fawning, vapid, nonsense" to you?
What is the alternative? Having the first interview as first contact certainly seems like a waste of time?
(Not to mention writing skills being essential for remote work - which I hope is an option for most software positions these days)
> Is there a small group of candidates that will read a job ad, be qualified, want the job enough to apply - but only willing to customize the email address they send their resume to?
I think basically yes.
You raise a good point, though, about people who are really good just always getting recruited. Based on my small sample size, such people do still apply to jobs at startups they find interesting. So their pipeline is thus a mix of cold apps and recruiter activity and referrals.
> But it's not nonsense? It's a job application?
No, it's nonsense. A "cover letter" is a terrible prompt to elicit any meaningful information about a candidate, and implies negative things about the company asking for one. Among them: that the company is perfectly willing to have the candidate waste their own time writing one, so this symmetry of investment and time-saving rationale doesn't seem too convincing, IMO.
I think if you want to assess writing skills, you should ask more focused questions, such as "What is the biggest thing you have built in x language", "What is your experience with y"
You will still filter out good candidates who do not want or do not have time to answer any such questions, but I think those questions are far more fair and probative of the kinds of qualitative skills you are looking for than "write me a thing to tell me how much you want this job"
> A "cover letter" is a terrible prompt to elicit any meaningful information about a candidate, and implies negative things about the company asking for one.
On the contrary, a cover letter is a powerful tool to elicit meaningful information about a candidate’s soft skills, in particular empathy (for the hiring manager) and communication, and refusal to provide one implies negative things about a candidate.
> I think if you want to assess writing skills, you should ask more focused questions, such as "What is the biggest thing you have built in x language", "What is your experience with y"
A good candidate does not need those prompts. Having read the job description, he has an idea of what the hiring manager wants, and he writes about it.
> "write me a thing to tell me how much you want this job"
That’s not a cover letter. I don’t care how much a candidate wants a job. To be honest, neediness is a turn off. I care how effective the candidate will be at the job, both technically and socially.
I feel that perhaps you and others think all a cover letter is, is ‘Company X is such a great place! I want to work at Company X so much! Please pick me!’ If so, then yeah, I 100% agree with you. That’s useless input to the hiring process. But that’s not what a cover letter is IMHO.
As mentioned elsewhere, I assert that a cover letter is the soft skills equivalent to the resumé. The resumé lists relevant skills, education/training and experience. Those are all good things, but they are in the nature of checking boxes. The cover letter is a soft-skills demonstration. It’s also an opportunity for a candidate who is borderline in one area to draw attention to the fact that he more than makes up for it in another.
Ok, in that case you don’t need a lengthy cover letter. The only thing it needs to say is “At my current company I did X. You need X to be done. Hire me and I will do it.” However very few job descriptions give the kind of info which would enable that.
The cover letter is a proxy for soft skills. I am pretty sure that I don’t want to hire a candidate who believes that soft skills are a waste of time. He might be brilliant, but he sounds terrible to supervise, work for or be supervised by.
I don’t think so. I don’t care if a writer uses spell check, grammar check or ChatGPT: good cover letter is a good cover letter, regardless of what tools the writer used to help.
> In any case, you have completely missed my point, right along with e12e.
What was it, then? That the best candidates consider cover letters nonsense? I disagree: I am asserting that a candidate who considers cover letters nonsense is ipso facto not among the best.
Maybe this is related to a misunderstanding about cover letters? They’re not about ‘I love your company!’ or ‘please please hire me!’; they are about ‘here’s why I believe that my skills, education and prior experience suit me for this opportunity.’ The resumé is what; the cover letter is why. The resumé is facts; the cover letter is judgement.
> 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.
It's not about can or cannot, it is about need and need not; you are by and large getting applications only from people who really need to apply to jobs even when there are these kinds of hurdles.
Because if it's not asking for a cover letter, you as an applicant are one of 160 low-effort resumes we've gotten this week. Do we build a ML to try to parse all these and then ask it to score everything? Because I hear a lot of people in this thread saying that's exactly what they hate about hiring.
> My boomer grandfather called and wants his cover letter back.
That’s not an argument, it’s an ageist ad hominem.
> why not ask for a five minute coding challenge instead of a cover letter
Why not both? There are two aspects to any hire: hard skills and soft skills. The hard skills are the things a resumé can relate and a coding challenge can demonstrate. But we do not hire automata (if we did, we might as well just use ChatGPT or Copilot); we hire human beings who will be working in teams with others, who will need to take input from other human beings and interpret it, try to figure out what is being unsaid but which should be said & so forth. Those soft skills are the hardest part of the job to hire for, and in many ways the hardest to develop.
The cover letter is a the equivalent of a five minute coding challenge for soft skills. ‘Put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes. What would he like to read which make you stand out from the other candidates?’
After spending a couple days of 2-3 hours each on reviewing resumes that were "only ok", 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. After that the rate has dropped to bearable, but we still maybe get one out of 10 applications with a cover.
So, if you are applying to a job right now, I'd say that rather than optimizing your process for getting a lot of jobs applied for, spend some more time and apply for jobs that you're well suited for, and then make a cover letter that explains why.
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.
But, yeah, we're having a hard time finding full-stack people that can hit the ground running with Java and Vue.