I always thought of a cover letter for clarifying something on your resume. Ex: you’re changing careers or industries and out want to clarify why your experience is relevant. So, I don’t do them for every application but in certain situations.
Originally it was to introduce yourself and why you’re sending them a resume in the mail. A really good cover letter will get you past HR send your letter and resume to the hiring team. Thst function has largely been replaced by resume scanning tools.
I spoke to some hiring managers who said that they don’t read cover letters unless they find an interesting resume. Regardless of the tools that are used, it’s just too time consuming to read each letter.
I just got an AI to write a cover letter for me highlighting specific skjlls, and then just edited those skills to fit the job I was applying to. Wasn’t really that much effort, and I did land a job in about 2 weeks of searching.
This may be Australia specific, but do job postings not spell out what they want in other countries?
Like, job postings in Australia (these days) are: this is the job, here are the key selection criteria, please provide us a resume and cover letter (or just a resume, or cover letter optional, etc). Even down to maximum number of pages sometimes.
They just tell you, and part of the way they weed people out is if they fail to follow what’s written (simple way to weed out anyone paying no attention).
Do other countries just have to GUESS what the recruitment managers want at each company?
Never have done a cover letter. Just seems like pandering pretentious tripe
Same. They already have my resume and application for the job, I’m not writing a whole page groveling and begging them to hire me.
I always thought of a cover letter for clarifying something on your resume. Ex: you’re changing careers or industries and out want to clarify why your experience is relevant. So, I don’t do them for every application but in certain situations.
Originally it was to introduce yourself and why you’re sending them a resume in the mail. A really good cover letter will get you past HR send your letter and resume to the hiring team. Thst function has largely been replaced by resume scanning tools.
I spoke to some hiring managers who said that they don’t read cover letters unless they find an interesting resume. Regardless of the tools that are used, it’s just too time consuming to read each letter.
When I get them from new grads I delete them. Experienced people or weird resumes I might read if borderline.
Sometimes it is interesting reading the bad ones. They can’t spell or use proper grammar apparently
It’s worth writing a generic one.
Depends on the job, for engineering…nah
I’ve had multiple recruiters tell me they like mine. It doesn’t hurt. More space for buzzwords for the AI to read.
I just got an AI to write a cover letter for me highlighting specific skjlls, and then just edited those skills to fit the job I was applying to. Wasn’t really that much effort, and I did land a job in about 2 weeks of searching.
Never worked with a recruiter
Had enough bad experience from one half to know I don’t want to be on the other half
Often times recruiters are hired by companies to go find suitable candidates.
Right, that’s what I’m saying.
This may be Australia specific, but do job postings not spell out what they want in other countries?
Like, job postings in Australia (these days) are: this is the job, here are the key selection criteria, please provide us a resume and cover letter (or just a resume, or cover letter optional, etc). Even down to maximum number of pages sometimes.
They just tell you, and part of the way they weed people out is if they fail to follow what’s written (simple way to weed out anyone paying no attention).
Do other countries just have to GUESS what the recruitment managers want at each company?
Only about 3 out of 10 jobs I have applied for stipulated a cover letter and those 3 were trying to appear bigger than they were in other ways
I don’t think I’ve crafted a cover letter since we stopped sending resumes via snail mail.