Confirms candidate knows what job they have applied for, can read simple instructions like “send cover letter”, also vibe / culture check.
Comment on Take cover
jobbies@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Why ARE cover letters still a thing??
fizzle@quokk.au 1 month ago
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Abuse me harder, Corpo Daddy 🫦
fizzle@quokk.au 1 month ago
I get that the grind looking for a job can be tough.
As a small business with just 3 or 4 staff hiring is also tough.
Hiring the wrong person is very, very costly.
I dont think that asking for confirmation that an applicant has read the job advert is “abuse”, but if you do then there’s no need to apply I guess.
KaChilde@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
It’s not just your small business though. It’s Every. Single. Application.
Could I use a template? Actually probably not as more and more businesses are asking for specifics in the cover letters to combat templates and AI use.
To the business owner it’s only a few minutes to write cover letter, but when people are applying for dozens of jobs a day, that all ask for unique responses, and quizzes, and forms that are identical to the CV you are required to upload, it gets very hard to write an even vaguely inspired response to “why do you want to sell kebabs out of my food truck for minimum wage?”
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Sure, I am going to take unpaid time to write your little essay to pass your paternalistic test. “Oh it should only take a couple of minutes to write”, I hear you say. It would also only take a couple of minutes to talk to me. Must not be serious about working with peers.
hraegsvelmir@ani.social 1 month ago
I dont think that asking for confirmation that an applicant has read the job advert
Honestly there are way less annoying and time consuming ways to do this for you and the applicant, like just including a line in the posting “To confirm you’ve read the job description, all interested applicants should apply via emailing their resume to x@y.com with the job title and location in the subject line,” or something.
Cover letters are complete bullshit as they are currently used. If I were applying to a management role in a niche industry, or something in the C-suite or other positions one would only get after advancing a fair bit in their career, I can understand the point of a cover letter. When the hardware store wants a cover letter for their part-time cashier position or Taco Bell wants one for their shift manager job? They can get fucked, everything relevant to the candidate’s suitability for the role ought to already be in their resume, and at that point companies are just seeing who’s willing to degrade themselves the most and jump through the most hoops.
When everyone and their dog wants me to write them a cover letter telling them how it’s been my lifelong dream to have chance to listen to middle-aged ladies go apeshit over some coupon not scanning right in my new post as a Joann Fabric Cashier (<12 hour per week position), I cannot be bothered with it. At this point, it’s become so stupidly widespread beyond roles where it would actually be useful, I refuse to write them on principal and just assume that if a company rejected my application on that basis, they’re the sort of clueless people I wouldn’t want to work for anyway.
OwOarchist@pawb.social 1 month ago
Congratulations, you’ve passed the vibe check.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
this… is actually fair tbh, the current applicant applies to so many different jobs, some people I know just mass apply to every job available.
FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world 1 month ago
When I was a hiring manager, I treated it like a writing test to make sure people were basically literate. Reading and writing was super important in the field I was hiring for. I couldn’t get the same from a resume. That was before everybody was using AI to lie about everything to everybody else.
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
But in that case it’s more like a technical exam.
FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It very literally was just a cover letter. Nothing different about it than any other cover letter for any other job.
blackberry28@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Cos of the Boomer Managers. Boomers are allergic to changes lol
Pika@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I really don’t understand why myself. It’s not like a person is going to look at it anyway. It’s all automated now, anything that is short of a perfect image of what the HR thinks they need for the role gets throw out way before any actual human sees them.
A cover letter was great at the beginning because it let the HR person be able to get a summary of what the person has to offer without having to go into technical details of the resume, but now its all automated anyway so if its made it to the HR desk then they can just look at the details.
stickyprimer@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I have no idea what anyone else does, but I look at them as a chance to explain why my resume is a match for the job. Some people rewrite their whole resume every application to tailor it to the job, but that feels like more work and they’re going to know I did it when they see my LinkedIn and it doesn’t match. So I highlight the stuff that’s specific to that job because my resume wasn’t necessarily written just for that job opening.
criss_cross@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Now it’s just more AI text to shit out and hope their AI scanners pick up the correct keywords.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The more willing someone is to jump through hoops to get a job, the less likely they are to demand to be paid what it’s worth.
Zachariah@lemmy.world 1 month ago
☹️