Comment by BugsJustFindMe
2 days ago
Now you too can send your fully automated AI resume and cover letter to the fully automated AI rejection system the company needed to set up because everyone is flooding them with thousands of automated AI resumes and cover letters that have no friction to generate.
For real I basically don't even read cover letters any more and I don't blame the applicants for generating them with LLMs. Unless you are applying for a higher level position a cover letter used to just be a mild heuristic for this person took an extra 10 minutes to alter their standard cover letter and include a different related paragraph. Now its just wasted text.
Almost everywhere I applied, and these are dozens of positions over many years, I wrote a concise, sometimes funny, sometimes provocative, sometimes insightful cover letter. If I knew something about the company that HR would find interesting, I would write it. If I knew something about the industry or the founders, I'd mention that as well.
My personal experience is that cover letters do not help at all. At best, it's a test for myself. If I don't want to write a cover letter, I should not apply.
Welcome to the age of ATS. Nobody reads cover letters or resumes anymore. They read the summaries that the AI inside the ATS generates.
This was already an article, so in recognition of your genius, go donate to some journalists.