Especially for entry level positions, a well-written cover letter is a much stronger positive signal than a bullet point style resume. Far too often the resume is a regurgitation of university class projects and career center templates.

Think of it like a pre-interview, but you get to choose the questions. Since most entry-level resumes look the same, this is your chance to explain why you stand out. (a passion for the industry, strong open-source contributions, etc)

If the position isn't entry level, my advice is the same. Use the opportunity to stand out and score the interview ( which is where the actual decisions will get made). At a small company, someone will read it.

That is interesting. We are seeking the best way to do something, but we are forgetting that people, the interviewers are all different, looking for arbitrarily (but defendable) different things..

Far as new grads. When I got my first job, I did list my class projects, but I focused more on the internships I had had (3 by that point), as well as my freelancing, and the work with open source 3d printers. If a new grad only has projects that would be a red flag.

Regarding cover letter advice, the main thing I would suggest is to try and demonstrate that you're aware of what the company does, and specifically interested in that position. Cover letters where you've just copy/pasted the name of the company and the position, then inserted a few relevant points, are painfully easy to spot. Far more effective is a letter that is really focused around your fit for that specific position. And, at least for me, it's a plus if you also clearly acknowledge anything that would be considered a weakness (lack of specific experience for instance,) and then make the case for why you would be a good choice regardless. Once again, this demonstrates you've thought about the company's specific needs and how you will address them.

Finally, be aware of who you're writing to. If possible, try to get a sense of the company culture before writing the letter, and tailor your style to fit. If you know the company you're applying to is small and/or relatively informal (and possibly even regardless), you can stand out from all the generic letters by allowing a bit of personality to come through.

I also see it as a filter on effort. If the applicant doesn’t care enough to make sure I know why they are a good fit, do they really care about the job?

In my experience, only checking off checkboxes rarely leads to the correct match.

If you're using a cover letter to apply for a job, it means you have no human inside the company that is advocating on your behalf. Your friend wouldn't ask you for a cover letter (in most cases) if he/she was going to refer you internally. So when you are required to use a cover letter, it usually means you're applying to a job 100% 'cold' as an outsider.

Unfortunately that may be the case sometimes. If a cover letter is required, there are a few key elements

1 - prove to the reader that you actually paid a bit of attention to the job requirement. I spent 20 years in recruiting, and generic cover letters that clearly weren't written for me ("Dear Esteemed Employer") never got my attention. I want to know what interested you in this opportunity, or briefly what you know about the company (could be lots of things).

2 - Talk a bit about what you're interested in from a work perspective. What kind of work do you want to be doing (and hopefully that is the work we're offering).

3 - Maybe check off a few boxes from the job spec. If they require a degree and n years with Python, a few sentences to check off those boxes will make it easy for the reader (often a recruiter or admin with little experience and limited knowledge of the domain) to say yes to you as a candidate.

Semi-formal tone. You can link to GitHub, but usually I link GitHub and LinkedIn on a resume.

That seems kind of absolute. If I were applying to, say, an auto manufacturer, the cover letter might be the obvious place to state why I'm interested in working there. And why I'm a good choice. Like, "I've always been a car nut. I even wrote an open source library to access CAN bus data here: http://whatever "

Basically to say that a personalized, per-company, cover letter might have significant value. A generic one, perhaps not.

... I even wrote an open source library to access CAN bus data [1]...

Thank you, Name

[1] http://whatever

I really wish that weren't such a problem.

It's difficult for many of us to get a foot in the door, and that is exasperated by the one-size-fits-all solutions that everyone seems to point to, that really aren't the best fit for many of us.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Speaking as someone that has interviewed a lot of senior level engineers in the last 2 years. The fastest way to get a black mark is to hand me an 6 page resume. Frankly as a lead, with 10 resumes on my desk.. most of whom don't have the right skill set. The last thing you want to do is make me hunt to see if you can do the job. Cover letters in the rare case I got them, I didn't read at all. If your resume interests me I'll look at your linkedin.

That said, I am a senior / lead android dev. So I don't exactly hurt on the job front.. I have noticed the smaller the company the more they want you to know about them. Especially start ups (the more obscure and small the higher the expectation)

That's an interesting hack. And I suppose if I discovered an applicant was trying to game the system in this way, my distaste would be outweighed by my admiration.

  minutes = 20; // 2 + 15+
  n = resumes.size(); // 6
  Time t = contemplateResume(minutes, n);

  // If you manage time sufficiently,
  // you'll not be spending that much time looking at only the first indication of a candidate's fit for a role

Example: Job ad says "we look for a proactive and self-reliant person" then my cover letter says "to successfully finish my PhD, being proactive and self-reliant was important". This technique works even better for the technical parts.

I'm not sure if it was worth the effort. In the german job market, employers are quite desperate these days. A friend sent out simple template letters and got interviews just as easily.

I always sent a PDF. If sent by email, I duplicated the cover letter in the email. My experience is that many had a print out at the interview and PDF works best to ensure a good print.

Many job ads will have a bulleted list of what they are looking for and responsibilities. Just copy-paste that list and then re-write the bullet points in a way that shows how you have that skill. EXP:

- Candidate must have 5 years experience with FooBar

- Candidate must have good knowledge of ZooCar

Turns into:

- Via my 5 years at class/volunteering/job at McEnroeCorp I used FooBar and made FooBarApp with it.

- I have used ZooCar for class/job/side-project and got-a-B/made-$$$-for-company/went-to-FGH-conference

Just go down the list and put in whatever you can.

ProTip for 'shyer' people: Don't worry if you only have 3 years and they need 5, apply anyway. Also, if you only have ~40% of the listed requirements, apply anyway. Hell, if you think the logo is kinda cool and you have an inkling that you can code and fog a mirro, apply anyway.

If my letter didn't succeed in addressing at least 3/4 of the bullet-points in the text file, I would scrap the application.

If you are applying online to a big tech company, it almost always goes into an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The ATS scans your resume and cover letter for keywords, and matches it with the keywords in the job description or specific keywords as asked my the hiring manager. (You can get through ATS just by copy-pasting the job description in your cover letter. Don't do it). Once you pass through the ATS filter, the recruiter don't seem to care much about the content of your cover letter, but it makes a huge difference when it goes to the hiring manager.

Apart from convincing why you are a perfect fit for the role, share interesting stuff about you like a link to your website (highly recommend this for new grads in tech roles), github profile, previous internship experiences and what excites you about this role.

PS - The most effective way to get a call is to network.(and avoid the whole ATS blackhole).

+1 on the ATS. They are a waste of your time, generally. If you see an interesting position, try to find an "in" to the company via your network, 1st or 2nd order. See if you can reach the hiring manager directly. HR/ATS get in the way of that. They are supposed to be a service, but as often as not, they are a bottleneck of dubious value. Think of this as engineering your way around the bottlenecks.

+1 on writing a personalized cover letter for each application (e.g. resume submission). I spent quite a bit of time reading/listening to what people thought were good cover letters. What it comes down to is, be real, be yourself. Explain what excites you and how this position does this.

After I did all of this, I found myself a) applying to fewer positions (this was early this year), and b) getting a far higher response rate (60+%). This culminated in multiple interesting offers.

YMMV, but good cover letters help you stand out. Show you are a human being that they want on their team.

That said I've found cover letters to be pretty much a waste of my time so far.

You have zero control over the distribution of two separate documents. ATS systems are geared toward something they can run keyword matches on and the extra fluff of a cover letter gets cast aside if they are even supported at all. Just work the meat of the cover letter into your resume and let that stand on its own.

Of course, outside of tech, where soft skills may need to be displayed a cover letter has more merit.

That said, just like boiler plate recruiter emails that try to interest me in a job that I'm clearly not going to be interested in based on where I am in my career, a cover letter that is clearly just boiler plate can be a slight negative.

Bottom line, bad cover letter (-1), no cover letter (0), good cover letter (+1) in terms of impact. Regret minimization says you are always safe not sending one, but min/maxers would have you tailor it to the job to give you that extra edge :-).

The tone doesn't matter that much, but I would avoid the extremes of very informal or very formal. It should be the first thing that I read, so if you're applying by email it should be the body of the email.

A cover letter is an opportunity for you to tell me why you're interested in this job/company specifically and to highlight things that might not be readily apparent by reading your resume. Some of the best cover letters call out specific achievements that are relevant to the job you're applying for, or preemptively address concerns that someone reading only your resume might have. Even just including enough information to show that you did some research on the job/company before applying already puts you above most cover letters. A generic cover letter makes me wonder if you're just applying to every job ad.

Cover letters have helped me get jobs in the past, and have led me to get interviews (and to interview people).

It doesn’t have to be long, in fact, it really shouldn’t be. But if you’re up for writing a well phrased comment on HN, you should be up for writing a well phrased explanation of why you’re a good fit for the role.

> Dear Sir/Madam,

> My name is scabarott and I am a Something Engineer with N years of experience. As shown in my CV I my strenghs are [something impressive, don't be boring]. I think this will make me a good fit with your team and am looking forward to your reply.

> Yours Faithfully, > scabarott

Once I saw a tech company trying to be hip by saying don't send a cover letter, but then later asking for a short description of what makes you great. I thought it was silly, because that description just was the cover letter. But it was also wise because it set expectations well, and prevented people bloating out their letters.

P.S: The informal e-mail you my attach a CV to and the dead-tree cover letter are really the same thing, just tweaked sighlty for different technologies and traditions.

  Hi Team,

  I'm a software engineer in [LOCATION] looking for new opportunities. I have experience with your stack and would love to hear more about the company and openings.

  You can see more from me here:
  [WEBSITE/GITHUB LINK]

  Please have a glance at my resume and see if my skills and experience could be useful.

  Thanks,
  [FIRST LAST NAME]

It’s also important to reference something from the company website / job offer in my opinion. I recently had to wade through a bunch of applications we got through Indeed and 100% of them had irrelevant generic cover letters / intro text that could apply to a startup or an enterprise at the same time. Spending your time on that instead of formatting your CV goes a long way.

My advice is the opposite of another comment: Write one only if you have a "direct pass" that avoids the HR/recruiter filter. Recruiters don't seem to look at them, and HR folks usually don't know enough about the job to value them.

At the very least, a cover letter can't hurt, so write one for a position you're really interested in!

Honestly, it feels like a bit of a power imbalance.

1. Who am I, short description of career so far.

2. Why I think hiring me would be good for your company. This is essentially a sales pitch, based on prior research on the company I'm applying for.

It is also what I like to see when being on the other side. It helps filtering out people that have an actual interest vs the ones that send mass mails, and also it already gives a first personal impression about a candidate.

The purpose of a cover letter is to just bring up things that aren't in your resume. If you have nothing to say, make it as brief as possible, maybe even one paragraph. Most employers will open the resume anyway.

Don't try to fake passion, that just makes you sound like a teenager desperate to get laid.

My format:

First paragraph, say what you are applying for if it's not in the title header.

Second paragraph, tell them how you meet the requirements. This is where you make it clear you have read the job ad and aren't resume blasting.

Third, explain other unique skillsets you bring. I like to emphasize my entrepreneurship and product development experience or that I can do full stack, if applicable.

Fourth, why you want to work for this company specifically.

Each paragraph would ideally be 1-2 sentences. The shorter the better. If not applicable, don't write it.

I don't particularly care about tone, though. I'm looking to see if the applicants can string thoughts together, and if they understand what sort of position they're applying for.

For professional jobs, the pattern is as follows:

1. Locate professionals at the company you would like to work at.

2. Email them through a friend if that is possible, and if not, cold email them and say you are interested in learning more about XYZ company. Ask if they can grab a coffee or do a quick call.

3. During the coffee, ask them good questions to learn more and if you think you would still be interested, ask them if they have any advice on how to apply.

4. Do their advice, which typically means giving them just your resume and having them insert you in to the HR recruiting process.

Any other strategy is a gigantic waste of time.

Sounds like you value networking but I wouldn't call other strategies a waste of time. I got a lot of jobs in my career by simply writing a cover letter and directly applying.

OTOH, in smaller and more close-knit communities of employers (for a completely random example, "architecture firms based in Des Moines", or "health-focused startups in SF"), where there's a relatively small group of smallish companies with a lot of cross-pollination between employees, this might be an effective strategy.

It probably feels better than dropping a resume in some online drop box, because you are personally taking action rather than sitting around and waiting for callbacks that are probably not going to call back, but just because something feels better doesn't mean it's more effective.

FWIW, I myself and plenty of other people I know have gotten really good jobs at big tech companies simply by making sure that any company of interest has a copy of one's resume in their vast database of resumes. It doesn't take any time at all to do that, so no time wasted, and it's one more way in which a potential employer can find it. Even it's just an additional 5% chance to get hired, that's a 5% chance that didn't exist before and doesn't cost time or money.

Ultimately the only advice I can give anyone is to consider all avenues. Nothing's a gigantic waste of time if you're unemployed or unhappy at your current job. If you know people at the company, great. If there's someplace you can send in a resume or even apply for a specific position, great. If you have a non-stalkery means of making contact with people at the company (maybe going to meet ups or relevant conferences or whatever), also great. None of these approaches are mutually exclusive and most complement one another.

I got the job I'm out now (since 2011) and applied in a traditional sense. I was also in a foreign country at the time. It was painless and quick. Hardly a waste of time.

Also, if this is such an established pattern for professional jobs, why even bother having proper channels for applications? Are online applications just a honeypot to blacklist me from actually getting hired?

As an aside, it may seem unfair to the less socially outgoing that others don’t use an existing process that might be in place. Take dating for instance - just because a girl is on a dating site doesn’t mean that the dating site is the only way to ask her out on a date. Finding a job is similar to dating in some ways.

"Hello, I noticed that you have a position open using [tech]. I am very familiar with [tech] and have been using it for [x] years. I saw on your website that your company is building a solution to [business model], [show your interest in business model]."

A longer letter is OK, but I don't really value a generic long-form letter any more than a short note showing you are paying attention and have real interest in a role at the company.

Two key takeaways (in my opinion):

- If you care about the job, do a little bit of research about the company. What does the job posting focus on and how do you align with that? What's their engineering stack and when have you worked with those technologies? This isn't "required" (i.e. you can certainly find jobs by mass-sending the same generic intro) but investing a little time in finding out about the company goes a long way towards telling them that they should take the time to find out about you in return. I also think this helps with the question of tone -- you probably won't go wrong matching the tone of the job posting itself.

- Make it easy for them to see if they want to hire you. Include your resume and make it easy to read (a short, well-formatted PDF is great). Include a direct link to your GitHub/portfolio/etc. If you don't have any public work, just say so and give them a Cliff's notes instead -- "Most of my recent GitHub contributions are private, but for the past six months I've lead a team of four developers in developing a new widget using React, Redux, and ES6, which I see is a close match to your tech stack."

Dear Sir/Madam, in reply for Your job offer placed at <website> I would like to apply for a <position>.

I'm <someone> with <x> years of experience. I <do stuff> and <do other stuff>.

My current tech-stack is: <my tech stack>

I've included my CV as an attachment for this message.

Looking forward for a reply from You.

Best regards,

<me>

Enjoy ;)

For me, there were two important goals that a cover letter was supposed to accomplish. The first was that the cover letter should prove to me that the applicant read the job posting. I took time to write an engaging job posting that wasn't just a list of job functions and qualifications. The cover letter should explain why the applicant is the person I'm looking for by essentially regurgitating everything that I've asked for in the job posting and citing relevant experience, skills or traits of the applicant.

The second is to prove to me that you invested some amount of time into applying. If I choose to schedule a phone interview and possibly an in-person interview that may include airfare and hotel, I'm going to be investing a non-trivial amount of resources into you as a potential hire and I'd like to believe that you're willing to kick in the 10 minutes or so it takes to write the cover letter. I'd like to be one of a handful of places you're applying and not one of 50 or so. A customized cover letter is like a proof-of-work system that prevents resume spam. It may seem tedious, but that's the point. It should be hard to automate and if I believe that you're using the same cover letter for multiple companies, I'll pass.

As an applicant, the formula I follow when writing them is to start by talking about why the company's product or mission is compelling to me. If I have difficulty writing this, I rethink applying in the first place since it's really hard to enjoy working for a company with goals that don't excite me in some way. After I've talked about why the company is appealing, I pick the two or three most-emphasized things from the job posting that I feel describe me and write why I believe that. I save linking to Github for the top of my resume.

But that's me, and by some of the responses here, I gather others feel differently.

I think people who claim this process takes "10 minutes" haven't needed to write many cover letters...

I had three or four standard cover letter templates I rotated through with a couple of places to add research I'd done about the company and why I would be a good fit for them. Often stuff based on what stack they use, who is on their team, etc.

I think applying to jobs directly is worse than networking and worse than working with a recruiter, in that order. If you do decide to go that route and write a cover letter, only include in it what is directly targeted to that company and the person reading it.

Now as someone involved in evaluating tech candidates for my company, I find cover letters helpful. First off, it shows that the candidate took additional time to research the company rather than just looking for any job.

Second, I get a better sense of how the candidate's skills fit into the job we are filling. Bullet points on a resume are helpful but leave a lot unexplained. A cover letter can fill that gap.

Third, communication skills are incredibly important on my team. Even in tech jobs, we need to write documentation, email customers, and explain our thought process. Reading a cover letter helps me understand the candidate's writing style better.

Overall, if you are given the change to write a cover letter, write one.

The basic format for a cover letter should be:

- Letter head with your name and contact information

- Date you are applying

- Company's address

- Salutation to the specific hiring manager

- First paragraph explains how you heard about the company, which position you are applying for, and why you are a good fit

- Second paragraph elaborates on a specific tech project that demonstrates that you can do the job well

- Third paragraph explains another reason why you are a good fit for the job. It could be a past tech project you completed, a side project, or something that demonstrates industry knowledge

- Closing paragraph explains how they can contact you and thanks them for reading

- Valediction with your signature and name

There is a good example of a cover letter here: https://www.careerperfect.com/examples/letters/ceo-cover-sam.... (I have no relation to that site and only found it on a Google search now. Trust anything else on that site with a grain of salt.)

Good luck!

I actually treat a cover letter as a negative signal. Who has time to write one, and why you do think anybody cares? Show where you worked, what you did, link to some interesting stuff, all this in the regular CV structure, and that's it. I have about 10-20 seconds per CV, reading a cover letter is out of the question. The only thing the CV is for is to (i) send some signals to pick out the 5% of applicants that make it to the first screening round, and (ii) at later stages, to quickly open it to recall who the applicant is.

How did you get your current job, and what is your opinion about the summary or cover letter space in almost every job application form? Assuming of course that you don't have an alternative means into the company.

I guess there's some segments where cover letters are a thing, eg. academia. But I've never seen anybody care about cover letters at tech companies.

How DOES one hype oneself without being boastful? How DOES one sell without coming across as fake? What things about oneself WOULD the hiring manager find appealing?

These are all questions whose answers are far from obvious to probably the majority of job applicants.

Which sucks, because I really wanted to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm still fairly new to the field, and I don't have a vast network to tap into (which is what it seems like most people here prefer to do).

So here I am, thinking that my resume/CV is actually starting to look nice (PhD in a hard science where I spent the whole time doing/writing Monte Carlo simulations and analyzing data, plus 1.5 years at a tech startup doing backend and Android dev, plus proficiency in many languages, SQL, etc), and I'm getting almost no interest in my applications. I had one local guy contact me and one corporate job that made me take an SAT-style online test and a "personality test" that I guess I failed because I haven't heard back after that.

I think I've sent out nearly 30 applications in the last couple of months. I've been mostly sending them out via Indeed and WeWorkRemotely.com. Is this field really that competitive? I'm not even getting to the "perform like a trained monkey" interview questions- I don't get any responses at all!

I can't imagine that my cover letters are all _that_ bad. I mean, I try to customize them to each job. I try to keep them brief.

It's just all really, really discouraging.

If you do heavy maths like what you appear to do, I'd suggest you go for a finance company to become a quant.

Finding a quant position is probably what I need to do. Any suggestions on how to break into that?

I'd recommend you try to get in touch with finance companies through either your university network, job fair or acquaintance. If not possible, try to go through recruiters or apply directly.

It seems very useful in some fields which require the skills a cover letter shows off and could substitute for a screen or casual interview.

In many technical fields however, requesting cover letters usually suggests to me a lower quality in their hiring process. This undoubtedly bleeds over to my perception of the management, namely more into checking boxes than results.

General rules for resumes - no more than 10 years experience listed - no more than 1 page listing job experience - if you have another page, it should only include things like talks given and/or published papers

Try at all possible to find out if a cover letter is even necessary. Many employers don't ask for them, don't want them, ignore or throw them away. I have know individuals who have spent hours on theirs unnecessarily.

Regrettable the "rules" are all over the place because different employers require different things. Try to do some legwork before hand by inquiring with HR or referring employees.

HTH,

Vince Fulco, CFA, CAIA vfulco[@]weisisheng.cn

Now say that you get past this round and that your application gets picked up by someone in HR or the Hiring Manager. They have a pile of others they need to look at as well. What would they prefer to read? This is a bit subjective: some would like you to not waste their time - keep it short and sweet. Others would like to read a love letter.

So, what do you do? I'd say keep it short and sweet for most jobs that you apply to. Two, maybe three paragraphs with two to four sentences each with the last paragraph being an invitation to read the resume and get in touch with you for a meeting. One in ten.. maybe one in twenty jobs get a love letter. It has to be a job that you feel strongly about. But even the love letter - don't waste words - edit it well.

Good luck!

I like cover letters. They're an opportunity for you to tell me how your skills transfer to the position, why you're interested in it, and that you can communicate clearly in writing.

The transferability piece is important because it's rare a candidate has all of the bullets in the description, but we all know critical thinking and tech skills are broadly applicable - or at least I know that, but I need to know that you're looking at it that way. It also helps you avoid the HR filter with me (more on that in a bit).

Your interest is important because I think there's a lot of flexibility between tech skills and subject matter/domains. The issue is, we all like some and all hate some, so tell me why you like this one. This is sometimes a tough one because HR job descriptions sometimes are generic and don't explicitly provide this info. In that case, take a broad view and tell me what domains are interesting to you. If it doesn't align with your interests, you may get rejected, but do you really want to end up in a role working with subject matter you can't stand?

The cover letter as a writing sample is also great for me because we email a lot. We write user stories. We document testing. We IM. I don't necessarily need to hire Shakespeare, but I'd love for you to be able to communicate your thoughts clearly and with an appropriate level of polish.

Now, on that HR filter, I don't know how common this is but I ask my recruiter to pass through any application that includes a cover letter. So at least for my vacancies, a cover letter guarantees the hiring manager will directly review your materials. I think that provides an opportunity to candidates who don't check all of the boxes, but might have some transferable skills to consider.

As a person hiring, I would ignore them. I only care does the candidate have the minimum skill set to be worth taking time to phone screen. I'll find out everything else I think is relevant then.

In my experience, odds are good your cover letter won't get read or even make it to the right person. So I don't spend too much time writing them. However, a well written cover letter will help you and could be the difference in getting a callback.

My recipe for a cover letter; rewrite their job description with your work experience. Take each bullet point and tie it to something you've done. It shows how your skills fit their needs in a way resumes don't. Bonus if you do some research on the company (something not mentioned in the job description) and also match that to your skills or interest. Also, keep it to less than 1 page.

Attach the cover letter as a separate document. If you can, get the email of the hiring manager and let them know that you've applied through the standard HR interface. Tone should always be professional and cordial. If you can craft this cover letter well enough you will stand out from others who don't customize their cover letters. Do your research on the company and find where your strengths can play to their business objectives and communicate why you are the one they should choose (then you can link to GitHub projects accordingly). Good luck.

I'm not joking. I haven't even read the comments here, but I'm willing to bet people find them useful/useless. I bet people found it helped them/hurt them. I bet people will talk about how they don't read them/read them, expect them/ignore them, etc.

Personally, I'd write a generic one and submit it myself, and then I'll just bring it with me (along with resume) to the interview to provide as necessary. But that's me.

On the whole it doesn’t really matter though.

For the "cover letter" I try to match tone of whoever wrote job description and convey excitement and cultural fit. I believe this to be very important in hearing back when reaching out and will iterate until I get more responses; though each is taylored.

I think email messages are especially important if you're trying to preemptively explain resume issues like career switches, geographical relocation, taken a gap-year, etc

"Your posting caught my eye because I've been a reader of How-To Geek for years. In fact, I discovered your site through the article you wrote about setting up a Raspberry Pi as an always-on downloading box. Thanks to that article, I've now got 3 Pis sitting around my apartment doing various jobs.

I'm currently a Technical Architect with doejo, a digital agency specializing in WordPress development and one of only 13 WordPress.com VIP partners worldwide. What that basically means is that we work on enterprise-scale WordPress. (See also a talk I gave at a local meetup detailing some important considerations for large WordPress sites https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB_e7yZ4MCM)

I wanted to reach out because the position that you and How-To Geek are in sounds like the position that Investor's Business Daily, one of our former clients, was in a couple years ago.

When we were brought on with IBD, they were deploying code to production late at night or on weekends because they were scared their deploys would break. There were pieces of the site that just plain didn't work. And there was technical debt all over the place that kept their developers from doing their jobs effectively.

I led the team that took WordPress and bent it to our will to produce one of the most custom digital publishing workflows I've ever seen. After migrating 100k+ pieces of legacy content and completing and documenting the new WordPress build, we handed it off to their internal development team and got to work on their DevOps situation. I helped their operations team architect and deploy staging environments so they didn't have to be scared of production deploys anymore. We helped them replace their out-of-date source control with Git and put in place processes that worked with them instead of processes they had to work around.

This whole re-launch and re-build resulted in a site that loaded 25% faster and brought in a ton more traffic. Couple that with the fact that they now trusted their developers and felt comfortable pushing changes to production in the middle of the day, and it was a win all around.

As far as tech stack, I exclusively use Nginx these days and I've never looked back. Javascript and jQuery are squarely in my wheelhouse. I know WordPress actions and filters like the back of my hand and I'm not afraid to use them or trace through someone else's use of them to get things back on track.

To sum up, I'm really impressed you've grown How-To Geek as far as you have while still deploying to production from your laptop. I think it's great that you see the challenges you have when it comes to infrastructure and technical debt. I'm excited by these challenges and look forward to taking them off your plate so you can get back to running and growing one of the best tech sites online today.

I would love to talk more about the position and answer any questions you may have for me.

(And yes, I won't pull punches when I see some particularly terrible code. I have a library of facepalm GIFs at the ready.)

Talk soon, Keanan"

I always write very short cover letters that say who I am and what are my interests (e.g: ML, Distributed systems) Then I write why I think I would be a great fit for this position (e.g: I worked on something very similar)

I usually use it to explain my background, and how it relates to the position.

However...I find myself not having to do it much anymore since usually it is the companies that are seeking me out, or I have referrals.

Never ever worked however. Found all my job trough networking except one employee that found me randomly trough a social network and just decided to send me a contract.

Try thinking about what could peak the curiosity of the reader and interest them in talking to you on the phone.

Obviously, your cover letter should be adjusted to that specific position.

That also allows you to attach the same unchanged resume to [somewhat] different jobs.

For my company, effective communication is very important.

Not that this is advice. I have no idea either and would like to hear what other folk do.