A great resume will get you not-rejected, a great cover letter will get you hired. That’s the conclusion I’m left with after going through the applications for our junior support programmer position.
Most people can make their resume look reasonable which makes it a poor qualifier. We don’t believe in years of irrelevance, so you’re not going to beat out another candidate by having four instead of three years of experience. That means all you’re left with is just check marks: Yes, there’s Rails experience. Yup, there’s the sysadmin stuff.
Poor qualifiers filter out few candidates. When I’m saddled with 70 applications for a job, I have to make some rough cuts very quickly. I literally have to decimate the pool. With the resume only doing 20% of the job, the key is left with the cover letter.
This means that “If you like my resume, give me a call” doesn’t make the cut for a cover letter. I need more romance and originality than that to pick up the phone.
Strike a tone in tune with the company
It also means that you really have to tailor your tone to the company. Pulling out your Business Serious voice and addressing “Dear Hiring Manager” instantly kicks you down a few levels. Just like showing up in a suit would do when everyone else is wearing jeans and t-shirts (except of course if you have extreme pizazz to pull it off).
The gut reaction builds immediately. If the first paragraph is a strike, the second has to work that much harder. If there’s no hook in the first three, it’s highly unlikely that anything is going to come of it.
This advice is probably exactly the opposite of what you’ll if you’re aiming to get into a big shop with a formal HR department. In that scenario, it’s often last man standing in the numbers game and checklist requirements. Personality doesn’t matter to make it through the first cut.
But when you’re looking to get hired by managers who actually have to work with you, personality is almost all that matters to get to the interview. So beef up your cover letter and let your personality shine (Jason Zimdars who we recently hired set the gold standard).
Randy
on 01 Jun 09This post is obviously in response to the cover letter that I submitted ;)
Thanks guys!
Wille
on 01 Jun 09I see the point, but this is of course only applicable for companies/places where your application is direct to a business, and the business is small enough to not have layers of “HR representatives”.
In countries like the UK even having a cover letter is of little use, as most recruitment is done through agencies, and agencies routinely mutilate cover letters (if they leave them in at all) to make personal identification impossible before they have secured an interview for their candidate.
David Browning
on 01 Jun 09I agree completely. I’m in a mid-sized shop and anytime we have interviews for folks I could care less about the resume, it’s all about talking to them for a few hours and really getting a feel for who they are and their passion for what the job will be.
But on the other hand that doesn’t mean I don’t make sure they have the right technical skills.
dude
on 01 Jun 09@Wille:
Perhaps we, as programmers, should think a little more on this. Maybe we should hire HR people who can comprehend our requirements for candidate filtering.
Bjoern
on 01 Jun 09Ah, just hire me. I won’t bother you with a cover letter and resume at all. ;)
Saves a lot of work. :P
Joe Sak
on 01 Jun 09God I wish I felt like I qualified for that position. I write a mean cover letter!
Baz
on 01 Jun 09@dude
Because of this, at Brightbox, we have a specialist email address just for recruitment agents – root@localhost.
Wille
on 01 Jun 09@dude: I tend to think most companies that have dedicated “HR” department are dysfunctional or starting to become so.
Just think of the term: “Human Resources”, pretty dehumanizing, might as well call it “Cattle Management”.
Mark Richman
on 01 Jun 09You follow me on Twitter (@mrichman) so you MUST know how fscking smart I am. Hire me.
Frank
on 01 Jun 09And in the end, they just hire a friend of a friend.
MB
on 01 Jun 09Er… how difficult is it to have an awesome cover letter and resume?
It’s not THAT time consuming to put a little effort into both. While I agree that the cover letter is more important, the resume has it’s place. When you are looking to “cull” your applicant pool, chances are that having a decent resume (with the matching qualifications) will help get you an interview.
carlivar
on 01 Jun 09Deduct for a candidate wearing a suit? That’s outrageous. How does that have anything to do with their ability to do their job well? Do you deduct based on their car (or lack of) as well? What if they wear a red ironic hipster t-shirt rather than a dark blue one?
Jason G
on 01 Jun 09And now every two-bit hack that fancies himself a designer is going to copy Jason Z’s format down to the smallest div… ;)
Charlie Morss
on 01 Jun 09Having hired a bunch of people as the hiring manager as well as being “just another one of the interviewers” for both large corporate shops as well as 30-50 person shops I’d have to say I don’t agree with much of what Dave has to say.
A good cover letter does tell me if the individual is can at least communicate in writing. That matters. What they say not so much because I find industry related experience usually non-existent in most developers so I’m not willing to rule out those that don’t have it.
I look at the resume to determine if the individual gets a phone screen. The phone screen is what gets you in the door.
When working at larger shops or when I’m not the actual hiring manager but doing some of the interviewing, I rarely even see a cover letter. However, after reading this post I’ll be sure to ask for one in the future!
Remember, I’m speaking only from my experience and clearly David’s differs, and I have no idea how may hiring managers do it the way I’ve seen or the way David does.
Having said all that, it never can hurt to have a kick ass cover letter!
Andy Kant
on 01 Jun 09Definitely agree with the importance of the cover letter, a resume can rarely describe the person (or more specifically, the person combined with the company).
@carlivar It doesn’t, but it is an indication of how they will fit into the company. I’ve dressed casually for all of the interviews I’ve gone to in the past year, mainly because that is the environment of a company that I want to work in.
Bruce McTigue
on 01 Jun 09Wow, no wonder I can’t find a f@#$%^ job. Expectations for programmers are unbelievable. Sure it’s a job at 37signals, but every want ad I see is looking for “rockstars” and “ninjas”. What happened to needing experienced people who are dependable and can get the job done. I have to agree with carlivar and Jason G. I could pay some someone to produce an incredible cover letter and resume. So what. I have years of rails work AND tech support that Jason Z cant’ possibly have, he’s too young. But no one will know, that resume was shredded.
JF
on 01 Jun 09Bruce: We look for all kinds of people. Sell yourself in the cover letter. If you are hard working, dependable, and loyal, then make that your case. It’s up to you to sell yourself, not for an employer to read your mind.
Arik Jones
on 01 Jun 09Very interesting post. Cover letters ARE in fact the sales pitch. However, putting more stock in rhetoric isn’t going to find you better candidates. Any drop-out or under-achieving graduate who ever took a creative writing class in college could wow you just as effectively with a less than qualified resume.
Resumes are the proof behind the pudding. They are just as valid if not more valid than a cover letter. Sure, cover letters are important and give you a birds-eye view of the candidate. But great rhetoric doesn’t automatically equate to great candidates who get the job done. It just means they’re effective at communicating which is really only telling half the story.
Cody
on 01 Jun 09To get a decent job, you have to be a proficient self-promoter. A resume or cover letter will not do it alone. From my experience, a solid portfolio, good industry knowledge, and decent communication skills will get you much farther than 10 years experience doing “xyz”.
SW Manager
on 01 Jun 09I am a hiring manager at a Fortune 500 company that hires embedded software development engineers. If someone includes a cover letter, I read it first. If I got a cover letter that had 1/10th this amount of passion, excellence, and understanding of our team I would phone screen the person EVEN if the experience was only tangentially related.
(For other’s comments, I will phone screen ANYONE that is personally referred by my team.)
So if you know someone that is great, but if you want a job where you don’t know anyone, put the additional effort into it.
Or if you would rather just complain that other people get all of the good jobs…....
Dan Hulton
on 02 Jun 09Hm – I’m never really worried about applying so I don’t mind coming off as a bit of a pedant here. Decimate literally means to reduce by one-tenth, and I imagine your goals regarding that stack of resumes aren’t to reduce it from 70 to 67.
That unpleasantness aside, I have always abided by the “generic resume, killer cover letter” standard, and it has served me WELL over the years.
Andy Atkinson
on 02 Jun 09My gut reaction to this was “Yeah maybe at 37S real people actually read what I write,” but my experience has been that the phone screen/interview is generally where I can show off my personality/passion etc. I’d be happy to do one w/ 37S (yes I applied). :).
Combined with programmer hiring info from elsewhere at top shops, where the tone is “we probably won’t contact you unless we’ve ‘heard of you’,” the ROI for spending time on my first patch to Rails (vs. polishing my cover letter) seems higher.
However this was a fresh perspective on cover letters for me and I will put more effort into the next one I write.
brad
on 02 Jun 09Another crucial time for a great cover letter is when you’re changing careers. Your resume may show little experience in your new field, so you have to make your case in the cover letter. I changed careers from management to journalism about 20 years ago, and when I applied for my first journalism job my resume was pretty much useless; all I had was a few freelance articles under my belt and a lot of experience as an educator and manager. So I wrote a detailed cover letter explaining my vision for the publication I was applying to write for, and that letter sold the publisher—it happened to mesh perfectly with her own vision. I never would have gotten invited in for an interview if it hadn’t been for that letter. They ended up offering the job to someone else who had more experience, but I was second in line; when the person they offered it to refused (because she thought the job would be too demanding), they offered it to me instead and that was my break into the field.
rokahn
on 02 Jun 09Whenever I post on craigslist for a backend lead, the majority of responses are “resume spam” where the applicant sends a generic “coverletter” with their resume. I have very low expectations when I get a generic coverletter. It suggests the applicant hasn’t read my posting before sending me their resume. It would take an amazing candidate to win me over with their resume alone (e.g. “I was the lead committer on Xen and convinced Amazon to build AWS atop it”). I haven’t seen anyone like this yet.
Those who send a well thought-out coverletter that’s tailored to my job opportunity, on the other hand, show some respect for my time so I’m going to read what they have to say and there’s a much better chance I’ll give a phone interview.
Resume spam = lack of respect and lack of caring about the outcome. These are not good qualities in a key hire. Perhaps over the years I’ll miss out on someone who’s so good that they’re lazy about the hiring process…but I doubt it. Geniuses who get stuff done will get snapped up through their peer network before they resort to resume spam.
Mark
on 02 Jun 09Cover letters are a good initial filter, but I don’t put too much consideration towards them, at least as much as I would in a personal interview or phone screen. Especially if you consider probably a god 90% of the cover letters you’ve received went through some type of editing process via a professional writing agency, parents and friends.
“Read this and tell me how it sounds”
artsrc
on 02 Jun 09I think we need a way for IT professionals to demonstrate useful differentiation. I don’t think a cover letter is the best approach.
I would also argue that if you are going to nitpick on the correct usage of ‘decimate’ than you should correctly calculate:
70 - (70 * 1/10) == 63 (not 67)Mathew Patterson
on 02 Jun 09@Mark “Especially if you consider probably a god 90% of the cover letters you’ve received went through some type of editing process via a professional writing agency, parents and friends”
In my experience, very few people put that much effort into their cover letters at all.
Those that actually read like an application to a specific role and not a generic note are already miles ahead.
Rishkadog
on 02 Jun 09@Dan Hulton: dictionary.com says, “decimate = to destroy a great number or proportion of”. I think the usage here is correct. Unlike your arithmetic.
Matt Henderson
on 02 Jun 09I’m curious to whom this article is written. Do you believe there could be someone out there with the personal qualities necessary to work for 37 signals, but for whom it would not occur naturally (from those same personal qualities) to present a thought-out and well crafted cover letter?
I want to find that diamond in the stack as quickly as possible. Half-baked, generic and poorly constructed cover letters are time savers for me, as I can skip right over the candidate without even reading the accompanying resume. Your publishing this article isn’t going to make my job easier. :-)
Slight related, given how much insight can be gained by inspecting one’s communications, three of the most relevant indicators I’ve discovered in hiring are (1) what the candidate writes in their own blog, (2) what the candidate writes on twitter, and (3) (thanks to Google :-) what the candidate says in comment threads on other blogs.
Petey
on 02 Jun 09Hmm… I wondered who copied who on the Iceberg/Icebrrg? ... http://www.geticeberg.com/
Julie Hankins
on 02 Jun 09Agreed! Not only tailoring your cover and your TUNE – but your approach entirely.
I would like to add:
Cover letters etc… are also critical for RECRUITERS to get their candidates seen!
Miles K. Forrest
on 02 Jun 09I suppose it’s all about conveying a message. If you’re applying for a designer/copywriter job, then grabbing the attention in only a few words through a brilliant cover letter makes sense.
I like to work with customers, usually under stressful conditions. The most valuable tool in my belt is a sense of humor while still staying on task. When customers are panicking, they need to know the help they’re getting is from someone at ease.
So I’ve also sent along with my cover letter and resume a tongue-in-cheek endorsement. Hopefully I’ve walked that line correctly.
Martial
on 02 Jun 09I’m hiring two entry level Project Assistants this week for a small consulting/research firm. The cover letter leads me to the resume which leads me to the phone call which leads to the interview.
The job has a lot of reading, proofreading, and editing. If the cover letter has spelling mistakes or grammar errors, I don’t read the resume. If the cover letter says in accepted humble cover letter speak, “I think” or “I believe I would add/contribute/be capable/blah”, I don’t read the resume. Don’t think or believe you can work for me. Tell me what you are going to do for me. Then I’ll read your resume and even if it doesn’t have everything I want, if your cover letter got me, I’ll call you.
We received 52 applications in the two weeks we had the jobs open for application. 27 of them arrived on the last day. 15 of those arrived after 4pm office time. I read them all, but can’t claim to have been terribly objective about the “late” ones. (We also received another 25 and counting after the deadline; unread and unlamented.) Don’t give me evidence that you are going to try and finish my work at the last minute.
And do not, under any circumstances, tell me you like to multitask.
Jesus A. Domingo
on 03 Jun 09This is the first post on SvN that I don’t quite get. I don’t think we can still consider the linked page a cover letter. It’s actually more of a portfolio and a complete demonstration of the applicant’s talents/skills.
To summarize the page, here are three lines:
37SIGNALS is AWESOME I AM COOL HIRE ME
Travis
on 03 Jun 09Lots of companies more or less discard the cover letter and hang on to the resume when reviewing applicants. I think this article is right on the mark, but many times the actual resume needs to reflect the same sentiments that you guys desire in the cover letter.
mat
on 04 Jun 09Is there any ideal timeframe on how long you will be accepting applications?
Erik Wallace
on 04 Jun 09As a web designer I wonder how important a personal site or online folio is in the eyes of someone hiring a designer compared to a cover letter and resume? Designers need to be able to communicate (which that should be apparent from the cover letter and resume), but what weight is given to examples of work?
Ryan Yockey
on 05 Jun 09Very interesting points. I was always so plain and business with my cover letters. I will have to put more of a thought process into my resumes in the future. Thanks for the pointers.
amingoia
on 05 Jun 09I think many people are missing the point:
It’s the act of writing a good cover letter that differentiates you, more than the cover letter itself. Most people don’t take the time to do this and that is why cover letters have the power they do.
If everyone spent the time to write good cover letters, wouldn’t they be largely devalued?
Chris
on 05 Jun 09Kill on the thank you.
Sure, a cover letter is important, but this ignores the fact that many resumes land on hiring manager desks through keyword searches and other filters. Of the many positions I’ve hired over the years, I’ve yet to see a cover letter, and I’ve hired at big and small companies.
I’d recraft this post to say create a great resume, be persistent and creative to land the interview (maybe that means a great cover letter, maybe it means being a detective to find the hiring mgr, who knows—do your homework), and absolutely kill on the thank you followup note. I’ve yet to hire anyone who did not send a thank you.
anschauung
on 07 Jun 09I’m kindof surprised at the article and comments—personally, I barely read cover letters at all when I’m hiring. They’re only worth reading a tiebreakers when I have time for one more interview and there are two equally worthy applicants. By this point, I’ve already called in the people who have excellent resumes.
Cover letters seem like a relic: at some point in the distant past, they were actual, physical covers to actual physical resumes, but nowadays they’re basically just a prose summary of the applicant’s resume. That is, they’re cover for people who can talk but don’t have the qualifications to back up their bragging.
This discussion is closed.