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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

I almost never need to write my own cover letter. The closest I get to a cover letter is if I have an opportunity to send an email to a company I like, and I know the email will go to someone not in HR. If I have no choice but to interact with HR, either I'll see it as a red flag and won't bother applying or I'll apply with no cover letter. Yes, this does mean I won't get interviews at most companies.

Writing cover letters that go to HR is like writing a custom message for every attractive person on a dating site. Everyone says that's what they want, but your extra effort will go unappreciated 95% of the time while the goofball who just sent "sup?" actually got some dates. When it comes to searching for a job, best to not waste cumulative hours of your life writing material that won't be appreciated.

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> When it comes to searching for a job, best to not waste cumulative hours of your life writing material that won't be appreciated.

Cover letters aside, this includes take home assignments in particular.

Having had to go through public interview processes (i.e. not being approached by the company or referred) recently for the first time in a while I can't agree more. Take home assignments are fine _after_ an interview. Companies that send you a take home assignment before they want to talk to you are a waste of time and quite frankly, it's rude and shows a lack of respect. The ultimate insult being not getting back to you even though you scored the maximum on their silly CS undergrad tests.

I find it more insulting when the rejection letter is poorly written and fill of grammar and spelling errors.

> The ultimate insult being not getting back to you even though you scored the maximum on their silly CS undergrad tests.

The score is always too low and there are always some tests failing. Just submit the tasks blank or with dummy code. This way they waste time and money for the license - that's the only thing one can do in defence.

We recently tried a take home assignment between the phone interview and in person interview for our latest round of interns.

We judged the take home to be less than 1 hour and removed the “white boarding code” portion of the in person. The goal was to remove the nervous factor when whiteboarding code and allowing candidates to write code in a format, language, ide that they are comfortable in. We then discussed their code during the interview.

We think this lead to shorter in person interview durations and a less stressful experience for the candidates.

We’re going to try this for a few cycles of internships and see what happens.

I agree though about take home work before the first interviews.

I can somewhat agree with that sentiment. When we've interviewed for developer positions at my work, a take-home assignment is optional and requires no specific language or tools besides the web. The alternative is to demo some work you've already done personally or professionally. I think that's fair because not everyone should be expected to produce code from a previous job or have side-projects. I used to have the opposite opinion until I learned the hard way that having side projects, even for their own sake, is a drain on one's life-force.

Don't send a blank cover letter if there is one requested. Just write a single line of text to say that you are a X with N years of experience and you can help them.

Too many companies will reject applications with a blank cover letter.

I agree. If your options are to apply to 20 jobs with blank cover letters, or apply to 4 jobs with custom letters, it’s obvious which one has a better chance of working out.

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