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Comment by eli | Hacker News Reader

Based on my experience, if your cover letter is free from obvious spelling or grammatical errors and shows you actually read the job description, you're easily in the top 5% of applicants.

Also, and maybe this is just a pet peeve, but the cover letter should be the body of your email. Lots of young applicants write this strangely informal email and attach a completely generic cover letter that doesn't even have my name in it.

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I discovered not long ago this method is actually taught at some MBA schools (in the UK anyway).

As with yourself, nothing annoys me more :P

As a hiring manager, I can vouch for this. Just having a cover letter at all (whether in the email or as a separate document) is surprisingly unusual. Having one tailored to the position? Vanishingly rare. If the candidate describes how their experience is a fit for the position, they're almost always going to get at least a phone screen from me.

The problem is if you save the CV to pass on to someone else, then you lose the cover letter. I think keeping them together is the best way to do it, for this reason. You can print them all out, and review the cover letter and CV at the same time.

Job sites here (Australia) and the software used by larger employers usually has the option of "write here," attach or both. It seems like attachment is recommended.

> Lots of young applicants write this strangely informal email and attach a completely generic cover letter that doesn't even have my name in it.

As a Word document?

Yes.

It's like they think the cover letter is supposed to be a writing sample to prove they speak English, rather than an introduction.

And often they come from a template that sounds nothing like what a real person would write. I see so many that they all start to look like each other. A good, personal one really stands out.

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