Why ARE cover letters still a thing??
Confirms candidate knows what job they have applied for, can read simple instructions like “send cover letter”, also vibe / culture check.
Abuse me harder, Corpo Daddy 🫦
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.
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?”
I can’t speak for food truck guy but in a way part of the reason for cover letters is that they discourage drive bys like that. A bit like a bot test for visiting a website these days. “Do a little extra to prove you’re real”.
I totally understand that people work in exchange for money, but there’s loads of places you can work for money. As the employer there’s an advantage in hiring a person that specifically wants to work for me, or at least employers like me.
That means, candidates that reviewed 24 job postings and applied for the 6 which are more desirable to them, are the candidates which are much more desirable to me. People that just want a job and any job will do are obviously less desirable.
A template is fine, and kind of expected honestly.
Do interviews then. Cover letters discourages the real people whereas the"drive bys", as you called them, will just crap something out with AI in 2 seconds.
Asking for interviews also shows you’re as invested in finding a good match for an employee as the employee is in finding a good boss.
Interviews take a lot of time and resources. We’re hiring someone presently and interviews will take an hour for myself and two staff for each candidate. We’ve decided to interview 10 candidates.