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Discussion on: To Whom It May Concern: Did you read my cover letter?

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Dian Fay • Edited

I don't usually read them, but I (as an architect or team lead involved in the hiring process) am also not the target audience. The cover letter is the booster stage that gets your resume past the recruiter and into my inbox. A well-written cover letter shows that you can handle basic social niceties and give a good accounting of yourself to someone who isn't super-technical. That's a lot to try to do in three sentences.

When I'm writing cover letters I aim for under half a page in three short-ish paragraphs: one introducing myself, one talking about a relevant aspect or two in my work history, one tying that to the job posting itself. Unless the posting asks for more -- I've seen companies request that the cover letter talk about my favorite interview question, explain which of their values resonates most strongly with me, or even pick a side and argue on Postgres vs MySQL.