The Cover Letter Is Dead

I've been helping people a bit with their job search lately, especially since I just completed my own. I think one area where people waste a lot of time is in writing cover letters for job postings.

Job post websites are really a trick. Monster.com will rain job postings on you. You'll find five or six job postings you find interesting and pour yourself into your cover letter - an hour for each. You submit online and wait. And wait. And wait.

In my own job search, I found a direct relationship between writing a cover letter and never hearing back from a company again. I wrote exactly five cover letters during my search, and from those five, I was given exactly zero interviews. I mean, if I'm writing a cover letter, then it's because I haven't made enough human connections at the company to pass along my resume.

The cover letter, in my opinion, is an anachronism. At one point, people needed to write cover letters to companies by snail mail because otherwise, the company receiving a resume alone would have no idea for which position an applicant was applying. Now, with online postings, companies can match a resume to a position without ever reading your cover letter. Companies are asking for your cover letter, not because they're reading it, but because it's just what they've always done.

Think about a company posting a job on Monster. They're going to get over 100 responses (1000 responses?), and how do they sort through 100 responses? They can either scan through 100 resumes or read 100 pages worth of cover letters. They pick the resumes every time.

And to be honest, if my resume is stacked up against 100 other applicants, I'm going to lose just about every time too. Assuming my resume gets read and doesn't just sit on someone's desk, I'm going to be up against people who are overqualified for the job. Sure the company posted for one year of experience, but when resumes start pouring in with 2-4 year's experience, they are never going to call me back with my one measly year.

So I have to stand out. I've found that if I can talk to an employee at the company, I can always get my resume passed along and at least read by the right person. Getting read puts me miles ahead of everyone who just applied on Monster. When I see a job posting, I don't apply immediately on the site; instead, I look on the company website for the email of the recruiter. Then I email the recruiter directly with an innocuous request to talk to someone at the company:

Dear Consulting Firm,

I saw your job listing for an analyst position on Monster, and I was hoping I might be able to talk to someone at the company to find out more before I apply. Would you be able to set that up?

Just to give you a little background on me: I worked for the management consulting firm, XYZ Consulting Firm, for the past year after graduating from Great Uni undergrad. My biggest project at XYZ consulting was a private equity due diligence case, where I helped create a profitability model for one of their $5B business units. XYZ Consulting Firm recently went bankrupt, and I would like to stay in management consulting, which is why your firm is of particular interest. Attached is my resume for your reference.

Thanks so much, and I look forward to hearing from you!

I have sent that email to two consulting firms and both set up for me to talk to a person at the company. Here's the thing though: they may not reply to your email every time. They may see your resume and not be interested. But at least with this method, they read your pitch and considered it. Submitting through Monster, you won't be so lucky.

The cover letter isn't dead - it's just adapted. The email is a short and sweet version of the cover letter. It tells about an accomplishment that might be interesting to the company [NOTE: one accomplishment that stands out - not all accomplishments], and it requires an immediate response from the recruiter. It's a cover letter for email rather than snail mail.

Of course, if everyone sent in their resume this way, it would no longer stand out, and you'd have to find another way to get a human to respond to you. The recruitment process is a human process. Talk to a human. Get a human to refer you to another human. Impress that human. If they still want a formal cover letter after that, write it, but it's just a formality. Sending in a cover letter to a computer system is the equivalent of sending it into a digital abyss. So stop wasting your time.