Ask HN: Writing cover letters for tech jobs

Not that this is advice. I have no idea either and would like to hear what other folk do.

I had three or four standard cover letter templates I rotated through with a couple of places to add research I'd done about the company and why I would be a good fit for them. Often stuff based on what stack they use, who is on their team, etc.

I think applying to jobs directly is worse than networking and worse than working with a recruiter, in that order. If you do decide to go that route and write a cover letter, only include in it what is directly targeted to that company and the person reading it.

My advice is the opposite of another comment: Write one only if you have a "direct pass" that avoids the HR/recruiter filter. Recruiters don't seem to look at them, and HR folks usually don't know enough about the job to value them.

Try thinking about what could peak the curiosity of the reader and interest them in talking to you on the phone.

  Hi Team,

  I'm a software engineer in [LOCATION] looking for new opportunities. I have experience with your stack and would love to hear more about the company and openings.

  You can see more from me here:
  [WEBSITE/GITHUB LINK]

  Please have a glance at my resume and see if my skills and experience could be useful.

  Thanks,
  [FIRST LAST NAME]

Especially for entry level positions, a well-written cover letter is a much stronger positive signal than a bullet point style resume. Far too often the resume is a regurgitation of university class projects and career center templates.

Think of it like a pre-interview, but you get to choose the questions. Since most entry-level resumes look the same, this is your chance to explain why you stand out. (a passion for the industry, strong open-source contributions, etc)

If the position isn't entry level, my advice is the same. Use the opportunity to stand out and score the interview ( which is where the actual decisions will get made). At a small company, someone will read it.

If you are applying online to a big tech company, it almost always goes into an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The ATS scans your resume and cover letter for keywords, and matches it with the keywords in the job description or specific keywords as asked my the hiring manager. (You can get through ATS just by copy-pasting the job description in your cover letter. Don't do it). Once you pass through the ATS filter, the recruiter don't seem to care much about the content of your cover letter, but it makes a huge difference when it goes to the hiring manager.

Apart from convincing why you are a perfect fit for the role, share interesting stuff about you like a link to your website (highly recommend this for new grads in tech roles), github profile, previous internship experiences and what excites you about this role.

PS - The most effective way to get a call is to network.(and avoid the whole ATS blackhole).

Example: Job ad says "we look for a proactive and self-reliant person" then my cover letter says "to successfully finish my PhD, being proactive and self-reliant was important". This technique works even better for the technical parts.

I'm not sure if it was worth the effort. In the german job market, employers are quite desperate these days. A friend sent out simple template letters and got interviews just as easily.

I always sent a PDF. If sent by email, I duplicated the cover letter in the email. My experience is that many had a print out at the interview and PDF works best to ensure a good print.

1. Who am I, short description of career so far.

2. Why I think hiring me would be good for your company. This is essentially a sales pitch, based on prior research on the company I'm applying for.

It is also what I like to see when being on the other side. It helps filtering out people that have an actual interest vs the ones that send mass mails, and also it already gives a first personal impression about a candidate.

Attach the cover letter as a separate document. If you can, get the email of the hiring manager and let them know that you've applied through the standard HR interface. Tone should always be professional and cordial. If you can craft this cover letter well enough you will stand out from others who don't customize their cover letters. Do your research on the company and find where your strengths can play to their business objectives and communicate why you are the one they should choose (then you can link to GitHub projects accordingly). Good luck.

The tone doesn't matter that much, but I would avoid the extremes of very informal or very formal. It should be the first thing that I read, so if you're applying by email it should be the body of the email.

A cover letter is an opportunity for you to tell me why you're interested in this job/company specifically and to highlight things that might not be readily apparent by reading your resume. Some of the best cover letters call out specific achievements that are relevant to the job you're applying for, or preemptively address concerns that someone reading only your resume might have. Even just including enough information to show that you did some research on the job/company before applying already puts you above most cover letters. A generic cover letter makes me wonder if you're just applying to every job ad.

For professional jobs, the pattern is as follows:

1. Locate professionals at the company you would like to work at.

2. Email them through a friend if that is possible, and if not, cold email them and say you are interested in learning more about XYZ company. Ask if they can grab a coffee or do a quick call.

3. During the coffee, ask them good questions to learn more and if you think you would still be interested, ask them if they have any advice on how to apply.

4. Do their advice, which typically means giving them just your resume and having them insert you in to the HR recruiting process.

Any other strategy is a gigantic waste of time.

Two key takeaways (in my opinion):

- If you care about the job, do a little bit of research about the company. What does the job posting focus on and how do you align with that? What's their engineering stack and when have you worked with those technologies? This isn't "required" (i.e. you can certainly find jobs by mass-sending the same generic intro) but investing a little time in finding out about the company goes a long way towards telling them that they should take the time to find out about you in return. I also think this helps with the question of tone -- you probably won't go wrong matching the tone of the job posting itself.

- Make it easy for them to see if they want to hire you. Include your resume and make it easy to read (a short, well-formatted PDF is great). Include a direct link to your GitHub/portfolio/etc. If you don't have any public work, just say so and give them a Cliff's notes instead -- "Most of my recent GitHub contributions are private, but for the past six months I've lead a team of four developers in developing a new widget using React, Redux, and ES6, which I see is a close match to your tech stack."

Speaking as someone that has interviewed a lot of senior level engineers in the last 2 years. The fastest way to get a black mark is to hand me an 6 page resume. Frankly as a lead, with 10 resumes on my desk.. most of whom don't have the right skill set. The last thing you want to do is make me hunt to see if you can do the job. Cover letters in the rare case I got them, I didn't read at all. If your resume interests me I'll look at your linkedin.

That said, I am a senior / lead android dev. So I don't exactly hurt on the job front.. I have noticed the smaller the company the more they want you to know about them. Especially start ups (the more obscure and small the higher the expectation)

I don't particularly care about tone, though. I'm looking to see if the applicants can string thoughts together, and if they understand what sort of position they're applying for.

I always write very short cover letters that say who I am and what are my interests (e.g: ML, Distributed systems) Then I write why I think I would be a great fit for this position (e.g: I worked on something very similar)

Now say that you get past this round and that your application gets picked up by someone in HR or the Hiring Manager. They have a pile of others they need to look at as well. What would they prefer to read? This is a bit subjective: some would like you to not waste their time - keep it short and sweet. Others would like to read a love letter.

So, what do you do? I'd say keep it short and sweet for most jobs that you apply to. Two, maybe three paragraphs with two to four sentences each with the last paragraph being an invitation to read the resume and get in touch with you for a meeting. One in ten.. maybe one in twenty jobs get a love letter. It has to be a job that you feel strongly about. But even the love letter - don't waste words - edit it well.

Good luck!

As a person hiring, I would ignore them. I only care does the candidate have the minimum skill set to be worth taking time to phone screen. I'll find out everything else I think is relevant then.

It seems very useful in some fields which require the skills a cover letter shows off and could substitute for a screen or casual interview.

In many technical fields however, requesting cover letters usually suggests to me a lower quality in their hiring process. This undoubtedly bleeds over to my perception of the management, namely more into checking boxes than results.