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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.




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