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Comment by zippergz | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. I've interviewed hundreds of people, and hired dozens of software engineers and similar positions, and I can't remember a single time a cover letter has made a difference. I rarely even read them.

That's not to say I endorse this spray and pray approach - just that the cover letter isn't really the issue for me.

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I am the opposite. I have interviewed and subsequently hired very good people primarily on the first contact, which is often a cover letter.

The CV also mattered, but in the end, both are just a vehicle to get an interview.

To be clear, a cold-application cover letter? First contact, yeah, but I've mostly seen it with handshakes, networking, or the type of letter that also namedrops an internal referral.

Not sure if we are talking about the same thing. I primarily tried to say that I think the cover letter matters to me. One was so compelling I jumped at the opportunity to talk to the person. Now a very appreciated colleague of mine.

Out of curiosity, what do you focus on instead? I've found resumes in general to be a poor way to judge developers quickly. I tend to read the cover letter, jump to their Github or Stack Overflow (if listed on it or the resume), then go to the resume last if I still need more context.

I find the resume to be enough to decide whether to phone screen or not. When I do bother reading the cover letter, the vast majority sound basically the same anyway; there's not a lot of extra information there.

I think it's largely going to depend on on the job, as a cover letter tends to not be a great place to give context as to technical aptitude or skills as much as it will to demeanor and presentability. The former is much more important for engineering positions, the latter for front-end folk that deal more directly with users. That is not to say that there is never any cross-over of the skill sets between the two, but you really don't want to have the "Nick Burns, your company's computer guy" dealing with social stuff if you can avoid it.

Same here. I pay little to no attention to the cover letter, nor do I ever write them myself.

His spray and pray method is no worse than the dozens of mismatched, unqualified resumes that get submitted to any job I post anyway.

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