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Discussion on: Are cover letters worth the time?

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Ashley Sheridan

I've never written a cover letter for any job, and I've been in this industry for 16 years now. It doesn't seem to have hurt my chances at all, but I would say that a clean CV layout really helps. The people reviewing your CV may not always be very technical, so it needs to be as readable as possible, and should be easy for anyone to be able to skim read and pull out what they feel is relevant to them.

Also, as someone who's interviewed many developers over the years, I've seen only a handful of cover letters, it's almost always only CVs. Sometimes I might be reveiwing many CVs at once, and it comes back to a clean layout again. As long as the CV is formatted nicely and is clear to read, then it's going to get my full attention. For me, the information I need is on the CV, a cover letter won't tell me anything that I can't get from their CV and a quick look over any public social media they have shared.