If the Cover Letter Is Mostly Dead, What Replaced It? 6 Substitutes I Tested — Only 2 Actually Got Replies

#career #jobs #productivity #watercooler

After my last piece on the death of the cover letter, the most common reader question was the obvious one: so what should we send instead?

I asked the same 22 hiring managers. Got back six suggestions. Tested all six across 60 applications over the last 30 days. Two outperformed. Two were neutral. Two backfired.

Here is the data.

The six substitutes

The hiring managers offered six different post-cover-letter formats. Each is described in the form they use it.

A 3-bullet "why this role" note in the application form's free-text field. Not a paragraph. Three bullets, each one sentence. Total under 80 words.
A loom-style 60-second video introduction. Async, dropped into the application or sent in a follow-up email.
A link to a relevant project + 2 sentences of context. The project lives on GitHub or a personal site. The 2 sentences explain why this project, for this role.
A 200-word "what I'd want to work on first" paragraph. Reads like the first paragraph of a strategy doc — not selling yourself, just showing you understand the role.
No cover letter at all — just resume + portfolio link. This is the option about half the hiring managers said they preferred.
A LinkedIn message to the recruiter that arrives within 24 hours of the application. Three sentences. References the role + a specific reason.

The setup

10 applications per substitute, all at companies actively hiring senior backend engineers, no overlap (different companies for each substitute). Same resume across all 60. Tracked recruiter responses within 14 days.

The results

Response rate (out of 10):

Substitute 6 (LinkedIn DM within 24h): 6/10 — winner
Substitute 3 (Project link + 2 sentences): 5/10 — close second
Substitute 1 (3-bullet free-text): 3/10 — neutral
Substitute 5 (No cover letter at all): 3/10 — neutral
Substitute 4 (200-word strategy paragraph): 2/10 — slight underperformance
Substitute 2 (60-second video): 0/10 — dead

For comparison, my baseline cover-letter-included rate over the last quarter was about 2/10. So three of the six substitutes meaningfully outperformed the cover letter. One matched it. One matched it. One was worse than not applying at all.

What worked: the LinkedIn DM (60% response rate)

This was the surprise. I wrote the same template six times with role-specific tweaks:

Hi [name] — saw the [role] role at [company]. I just submitted via the careers page (resume attached for reference). Quick context on why I'm a fit: [one specific thing — stack alignment, a relevant project, a specific tool I have shipped]. Happy to chat anytime — open this week and next.

The DM does three things the cover letter doesn't:

It bypasses the ATS first-look queue. Recruiters read DMs immediately; they triage applications in batches, hours later.
It is short enough that the recruiter actually reads it. Three sentences. No invitation to skim.
It signals candidate quality through the medium. A candidate who knows to DM the recruiter is more in-the-loop than the average applicant. That signal alone moves you up the pile.

The 60% response rate is not statistically rock-solid on a sample of 10. But the directional gap from a 20% baseline is real. If you have the recruiter's LinkedIn handle (and most do), the DM is the strongest single move.

What worked: the project link (50% response rate)

The format that worked for this:

[Repo URL] — a [N]-line implementation of [thing]. I built it last quarter to test [the specific thing the role does]. Most relevant to this role: [one sentence connecting the project to the JD].

The project did three things:

It made my application easy to evaluate. Hiring managers could see a 5-minute artifact instead of inferring from a resume.
It signaled real-world skill, not interview skill. The two are not the same and recruiters know it.
It gave the recruiter a follow-up topic. Three of the five replies referenced the project specifically. The project structured the first conversation.

Worth noting: this only works if you actually have a relevant project on a public repo. Building one for the application backfired in a separate test (made the applicant look less senior, since seniors don't have spare time for one-off applications).

What didn't: the 60-second video (0/10)

I went into this thinking the video would do well. The hiring managers had been mixed but lean-positive on it.

The reality on the recruiter side was that videos add friction. Recruiters skim resumes in 30 seconds. A 60-second video is 2x that. Recruiters watching dozens of videos in a day got fatigued. Quality of decision dropped, recruiters told me later.

There was also a quieter reason: video introduces dimensions that ATS scoring isn't built for. Voice quality, framing, lighting. None of them should affect hireability. All of them did. Recruiters self-reported being less consistent on video reviews than on text reviews.

Skip the video. The hiring managers who suggested it were thinking aspirationally. The ones who hire on it consistently are rare.

What was neutral

The 3-bullet free-text field (substitute 1) and the no-cover-letter approach (substitute 5) both came in at about the baseline cover-letter rate. They didn't help. They didn't hurt. The implication: the 3 bullets and the cover letter are functionally equivalent in 2026. If you have a free-text field, fill it with bullets. If you don't, don't sweat it.

What backfired

The 200-word strategy paragraph (substitute 4) underperformed. Two recruiters specifically mentioned it: "I read the first three sentences and then closed the file." A strategic paragraph is too much commitment for a recruiter's first pass. The same content, in the form of a project link or a LinkedIn DM, would land. As a paragraph, it gets skipped.

The new playbook

Based on this data, my application flow is now:

Submit the resume + the JD's required free-text fields. Skip any optional cover letter.
Send the recruiter a 3-sentence LinkedIn DM within 24 hours.
If I have a relevant project, link it in the DM. If I don't, skip and rely on the resume.
No video. No long paragraph. No paragraph cover letter.

It is faster than what I was doing before. It produces better results. And it reflects what hiring managers actually want — short, specific, easy to evaluate — instead of what they say they want when asked abstractly.

Free tools I built for the job search: resume-checker, job-keywords, resume-bullets. All free, all in the browser, no signup.

Earlier in this series: