This sorta applies to the way I typically do it (maybe). I spray-and-pray on 9+ out of 10, because most are mass-posted bullshit. I’m not redoing a cover letter for every bullshit posting.

But if it is clear an actual person is involved (e.g. there is a person’s e-mail listed as a direct point-of-contact or it’s on a small company’s website among only a handful of positions) and/or it is for a job I think I’d really like, I spend more time tailoring everything.

Best of both worlds (potentially).

Lol as someone from biomedical sciences I thought you were speaking about applications in the broad field of biology/biological sciences. I was so excited to ask you about what companies would accept an “R strategy” application because fuck this, even for a technical assistant job I need a fucking tailored cover letter every single time because otherwise my application doesn’t even land on anyone’s desk.

This interests me as I recently started reading Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, by Piotr Kropotkin, and the beginning of the book is all about how “survival of the fittest” does not necessarily mean constant competition. But that species that evolve to cooperate (either intra- or inter-species) tend to do just as well, if not better. I love hearing that the biology actually backs that up.

When you’re an R-strategy being in a K-selection environment. 😔

One Lemmy gold for you, thank you kind stranger!

Oooh, my partner is working on his resume; I’m going to share this with him. Thanks!

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Why is this good? Not being negative, just want to understand.

Nice.

You’re my hero

I was really hoping they offered a self hosting option.

I mean you say that, but I got my last amazing job because I mentioned pertinent info in my cover letter that resonated with the recruiter. I wouldn’t have got it if I just sent my resume.

I know it’s just anecdotal but hey

I feel like this is very situation dependent.

That may be the case in your company or industry, but not everywhere.

In my experience there’s been a big difference between a general resume I’m uploading to a place like a LinkedIn or Indeed (and letting the recruiters come to me), using that uploaded resume to apply to job postings on that site, and sending resume/application to specific companies on their site.

For the first one, hell no, no cover letter. How would that even work? No cover letter is better than a generic one.

For applying for specific postings on these sites? For me it depends on just how good the opportunity is. If I feel like there’s some sort of special connection that makes me tailor made for the role, the money is great, it’s doing really interesting work, or a company I really want to work for? Absolutely I’ll include a cover letter. I’m just looking to get out of a shit job, or the role doesn’t really move the needle, but I think it might be a good fit? Nah, just hit that quick apply button and move on.

But if I’m reaching out to a company directly?

Cover letter every time (unless they specifically say not to). If they don’t want it, they won’t read it, but I’ve never felt like it hurt my chances, and in a few interviews, they’ve specifically mentioned something about it.

This is 100% true. But you should also include a cover letter, just as a second document. I mean obviously not if you’re applying for McDonald’s but you get the idea

I felt the same way until a friend of mine helped me redo my cover letter before COVID. Gotten 2 jobs since then and have tripped my salary in a handful of years. The latest gig (that was a salary doubling jump) was through a recruiter who said the cover letter helped me get the interview.

My cover letter is just a picture of Rick Astley

Mine is 2 pages, and I think everyone I’ve hired has been 2 pages. Maybe it’s kinda dependent on the field you’re in? Idk, i can’t imagine cramming all my proficiencies, jobs, and responsibilities on one page.

Can we do bullet bullet points for extra creativity?

A cover page is not the same thing as a cover letter

It’s always dependent upon the person looking. The question isn’t “will a cover letter get me the job” it’s “do I care to work for a place where the cover letter is what gets me the job”. For me, no.

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.

It’s worth writing a generic one.

When I get them from new grads I delete them. Experienced people or weird resumes I might read if borderline.

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?

and after more than forty applications in six months

That’s not “spray and pray”

I just started a job search yesterday and I’m already at about 40 applications. My job search before this one I went from search start to offer in ~2 weeks w/ ~200 applications in, all manual. Though my industry is IT, so I do have a bit of flexibility as far as roles go, but still 6 applications/month is a bit on the low side IMO

Yeah, as I’m going to move across my country I’m basically calling on everyone I know to give me references there. I figure it’s time that my extroversion help me instead of hurting me like usual

Same here. I changed my LinkedIn status and a former coworker pinged me and said he set up a Discord for other job seekers. I joined and posted my skills and desired role and he forwarded my resume to his employer because they were in the early stages of finding someone for that role.

After a week of interviews I had a new job. Of the 60 or so applications I sent to similar roles during that week only about half replied, and all of those were rejections.

Double twist:

Just go work for the AI

It’s the thing that gets fed into an LLM to opaquely grade you before your resume gets looked at by a human

The resume shows experience and the cover letter shows personality. If the job has any kind of soft skills a cover letter is a bonus, if the job is super technical it’s probably not necessary. It also depends on the workplace.

If it is a job you actually want though I would recommend writing something. I’m on a smaller team and read all the resumes of applicants. I actually read them because I’m going to be the one contacting, interviewing, and working with them. I absolutely read the cover letters and give a small bonus to people who include them.

I interpreted it as the resume shows your experience while the cover letter shows you know how to write coherently (plus gives you an opportunity to clarify anything on your resume)

Generating BS cover letters is one of the few good uses I’ve found for chat gpt

Seems nobody sent the memo to all those career advisers, coaches, job seeking assistance places etc. because I still see it as “recommended practice” LMAO

I do it like that, but it has backfired before. I posted a resume that mentions I can code to a teaching position (Highschool maths). Not relevant to the job at all. Got the job. Some random admin person remembered I can write code and that meant that every other teacher should address their IT questions to me. No extra pay and I had to explain Microsoft software a lot of the time, which I don’t even use.

Just do what I do and have an AI generate the cover letter. Saves me a ton of time, and gives me a personalized letter for every job while only writing two sentences.

(But then again Lemmy absolutely hates AI with a blind passion—just as much as you hate cars—so I don’t know why I’m actually suggesting this. It works, though.)

As someone who hires a lot of MBA types

I could give a shit about your cover letter

I could give a shit about your nice follow up email after the interview

I realize I’m a sample size of one, but I also don’t do cover letters or follow up notes for mydelf and I guess I am doing well enough that I have a bunch of energetic MBA types working for me.

This is what AI is for. If they’re going to use it for screening applications, I’m going to use it to write my cover letter.

Their robots can talk to my robots.

I guess this depends where you live and what professions your are applying for. In my region and field, a cover letter goes with saying. It always has been like that, ever since I was looking for summer jobs, and continues to be the standard.

Cover letter requirement makes no sense in this day and age. We have access to thousands of job openings on the palm of our hands, why the fuck would I pause on one random job just to lie about why I want to work at that specific company.

Jesus that sounds so demeaning. I haven’t had to apply for a job in about 15 years now. All networking, and I was poached and offered my current job. Union now, so I’m set. I don’t remember having to jump through so many hoops when I was younger and applying for a job, but recently I passed by a Wendy’s and there must have been 50 people lined up outside with resumes because there was a job posting. That many people for one burger job, that’s hard times.

if indeed doesn’t allow me to quick apply, it’s gotta be a dream job to even want to go to their site and do even more work.

Lol holy shit I forgot about those “personality tests.” They are (well, were at least, I imagine its still like this) basically just a way to filter out people too stupid to not know what answers they want to hear. Questions like, “You see a coworker stealing money from the register, do you: a) pretend you didn’t see anything, b) join them and start a gang, or c) tell the manager on duty”

Shit is so laughably stupid.

Yeah, about that cover sheet. Did you not get the memo? We’re putting new cover sheets on all the applications now, mmmkay? If you could just do that from now, that’d be great.

I’ve worked for several big corps have never seen anything like that.

And then when you get past all that, they suddenly want a group interview… like, sit in a room with many other candidates and have an interview.

Yeah all of the lower end jobs are like this unfortunately, anything that gets pasted more than 3 times a year on indeed or any job site. Middle/management side it’s like that but with 3-6 interviews instead and no guarantee of a job. Trade jobs seem to be the outlier, but harder to actually find who all is looking and for them to “legitimately” (insurance/taxes) employ you. High end is 80% networking so a lot of the ground work is already done (but still a total time/energy sink that I can’t be bothered for).

Right. When I was interviewing people, I honestly couldn’t care less about the CV. I’m an engineer, words are hard. I want a list of your skills, your software proficiencies, and a run-down of your previous jobs along with your responsibilities. When you get here, I’m going to care about finding out how much you know about designing and cad. Then we’ll take a tour of the shop to see if the machinery we build is in your comfort zone. We’ll have some small talk to get a feel for if you’d fit in with the group, and off you’ll go. All said and done, it should be under 45 minutes.

Also semen

Interesting. I’m a hiring manager, and I’ve seen many cover letters that actually hurt the candidate because they have typographical errors, poor grammar, or are addressed to a different organization entirely. Probably 85% of cover letters I see do no harm; most of the rest hurt the candidate. The way you’re describing a cover letter sounds like it would be beneficial, but I don’t see ones like that very often. I definitely would appreciate that you took the time to tailor it to us.

My advice for everyone is, if you’re going to write a cover letter, proofread it just like the resume. If you’re short on time, focus on the resume and skip the cover letter (if you can - they might be required for some applications). I definitely notice a sloppy cover letter, so not having a cover letter will hurt far, far less than a sloppy one.

I wouldn’t toss someone’s application just because their cover letter had a typographical error in it, especially if the candidate is otherwise well qualified. But, if I’m borderline on whether I want to interview someone, and the cover letter is sloppy, I’m probably going to pass. We’re pretty detail-oriented, and a sloppy cover letter makes me worry about the details.

Nobody in my industry bothers to read them. You’d be lucky if they spend more than a minute on the resume so they’re a waste of time.

I couldn’t count the number of people I’ve interviewed, but I can tell you that I’ve read exactly zero cover letters.

I think cover letters are still absolutely relevant to the job process.

Nope.