The World of Human Capital

The majority of people I speak with ask if they should include a cover letter when applying to a job.  My suggestion, don’t include a cover letter.

There are several reasons I believe that cover letters are a waste of time and are rarely ever read by HR or hiring managers.  Everyone has a busy schedule and never enough time in the day.  When companies are receiving hundreds of resumes a day for job openings, they don’t have time to read everyone’s cover letter.  They want to get to the resume and see what you can bring to the table.  So they get to the meat of the resume and want to see your professional experience, accomplishments, education background, and professional affiliations.  The WSJ published a story a few years discussing how long it takes a professional to review a resume and on average they spent 7 seconds.  That means you need your information to stand out, be easy to read/scan through, and to make an impact.  Once that time was up, they would then make a determination if they wanted to spend more time reading the resume or move onto the next one.

There are a few companies out there that will require a cover letter.  If you are stuck having to write one, please write a cover letter specific to the job you are applying for.  Make sure it isn’t referencing another job you applied for or talking in generalities.  Look at the job description and the bullet points under the job responsibilities and experience requirements.  Then sit down and formulate a plan to write out your cover letter addressing how you are qualified and summarizing why you can do the job.  Don’t specify a quantified salary requirement – say negotiable.

It is okay however, to write a few brief sentences in the body of the email introducing yourself and stating that you have attached your resume.  I am curious how many of you are including cover letters when you apply to a job?  Feel free to comment.

Over the past year I have had several clients and candidates note that the majority of the job boards contain confidential postings, most of which are by recruiters.  They have asked me for recommendations on where to look for jobs on the web and I think that Indeed is a great aggregator, but it will include all the recruiter postings from Monster and CareerBuilder.  So you will need to filter through what is relevant and what is not.

Another site I receive several inquiries about is The Ladders.  They advertise that the search results of their job board are only $100K+ and that all the jobs are pre-screened by their team.  I have not personally used The Ladders and I have never heard of anyone obtaining a new job through them.  So I decided to do some research on what others felt about their job board and resume review/writing service.  I was quite surprised to see that the majority of people out there are infuriated with this site.  If you Google rip-off and scam you will find several sites and comments discussing how inaccurate their job board is and how disappointing their resume service performs.  It appears that many of the jobs on the site are not over $100K and are a waste of time.

Here is one blog (with several comments) that talks about how terrible the job board really is.  And here is another blog that discusses the resume service (also with comments).

If you have any direct experience in using The Ladders services, please let me know.