#25: Are Cover Letters Really Necessary?
Plus, how to throw a cozy winter happy hour.
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Are Cover Letters Really Necessary?
Confession time. I love to write just about anything at all. But when it comes to writing cover letters…absolute agony. If I’m being honest, I would say my biggest barrier to entry to applying for any job is a required cover letter. I see the prompt to upload mine and think, nah…I’ll just skip this application.
Why all the cover letter hate? Please, let me explain.
Self-promotion is painful. Only psychopaths enjoy self-promotion. The rest of us grit our teeth and do it because we must. If you don’t consider yourself a psychopath AND can write a well-crafted cover letter that perfectly showcases your skills and experience while walking the fine line of relating those skills and experiences to specific bullet points in a job description, let’s talk because I want to observe you in your natural habitat, and maybe hire you to write all my cover letters. I propose that everyone find a cover letter buddy —a friend or colleague who can brag about your many accomplishments without shame or self-consciousness. They can write your cover letters and you write theirs. Problem solved. Anyone want to be my CL buddy?
Does anyone actually read cover letters? Every time I write a cover letter, I cringe thinking about how I wasted several hours of my life on a piss poor piece of self-promotion that just got lost in the echo chamber of an ATS never to be seen again. Please, if you are a recruiter or a hiring manager who reads through hundreds of applicants’ cover letters, speak out! I want to hear from you! Do you read cover letters? If so, tell me how you make time to read them. Do you find it gratifying? Enjoyable? Do it out of guilt? Have you ever been on the fence about a candidate and had a great cover letter tip you over the edge? Spill your secrets!!
Isn’t job hunting hard enough already? It’s an employer’s market, YEAH, we get it. When the employee’s revolution comes and we take the power back, I bet the first thing we’ll do away with is cover letters. Burn those suckers to the ground! Between the networking, the applications, the million rounds of interviews, the on-spec assignments/tests to land the job, and the subsequent rejections, can applicants be cut some slack? For the hours spent investing into often months-long hiring processes, can we please cross something off the list to keep our un-billable hours to a minimum?
Corporate fan fiction. @hrmanifesto was going for humor with this anti-cover letter reel, but I think she accurately identifies cover letters as corporate fan fiction. 🤣🤣🤣 More on her cover letter soapbox:
Pro-tip: Have a real convo with candidates, stop making assumptions based on cover letters, stop disrespecting candidates’s time, reduce hurdles for hire, and build a legit connection because it’s potentially the start of the employee experience! 🫶🏽
Yes, yes, yes to all of this! And going forward, I’ll only be referring to cover letters as corporate fan fiction, BTW.
Have thoughts to share about cover letters corporate fan fiction? Sound off in the comments:
Read More:
Worthy Time Wasters
Here are my weekly recs to combat doom scrolling.
🪴 Give Your Indoor Plants the Gift of a Good and Productive Winter (Dwell)
And now that I’ve given you 500 words on the agony of self-promotion…I’m going to do it myself. I wrote a piece for Dwell about how to save your houseplants from the winter doldrums. If you’re a plant person, I would be honored if you gave it a click. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
👩🏼💻 Hello Gloria
Gloria is described “as a modern media brand for adult women who aren't yet old, but aren't still young.” Well, if I’m not the target audience, I don’t know who is. Gloria has articles, expert interviews, fashion, and pop culture recs. It’s the Lady Mag meets newsletter hybrid you can read happily while getting a pedicure.
I’m priming the pump for this week’s premiere of Vanderpump Rules Season 11 by listening to Rachel’s (FKA Raquel’s) version of events. I was too curious not to listen and so far I’m pleasantly surprised by how engaged I am. Mostly, I appreciate a good breaking of the fourth wall moment. Like, we all know that reality TV isn’t real, but pesky NDA’s typically keep us from hearing the reality behind reality shows and we’re just left to theorize from our couches. Thanks to Rachel going rogue, I feel like I’m getting an unauthorized peek behind the curtain.
🎧 Alex Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
I started listening to this audiobook, narrated by Chloe Sevigny, while walking on the treadmill and literally can’t stop listening!
Alice Sadie Celine begins on the opening night of Alice’s Bay Area performance of The Winter’s Tale. Her best friend Sadie can’t make it and in her stead, sends her mother Celine to the performance. Celine is a professor of women’s and gender studies at UC Berkeley, her book on sex and identity made her famous, but she’s struggling to write her new book in a post-second-wave feminist world. In a turn of perplexing events, Celine becomes entranced by Alice’s performance and realizes that her daughter’s best friend is now an irresistible young woman.
Cheap Thrills: How To Throw A Cozy Winter Happy Hour
Things under $40 that are bringing me joy.
I enjoyed this recent article about why you need to implement an “evening commute” even when you work from home. Sure, an after-work walk sounds lovely, but not when it’s 19 degrees! On frigid winter days, I’ve been obsessed with throwing “cozy happy hours” to formally denote the end of my work day. Here are my cozy happy hour essentials:
Sake and potato chips! I didn’t know this was a thing until I tried it. My go-to pairing is Brooklyn Kura’s Number Fourteen - Junmai Ginjo ($20) and Boulder Canyon’s Avocado Oil Sea Salt Potato Chips ($3). (Alcohol-free peeps, I recommend pairing the chips with Pineapple Spindrift Sparking Water instead.) Literal heaven, especially when sipped from these adorable double-wall groovy cups ($28).
And to make happy hour extra cozy, of course, you need to light a candle. This budget-friendly candle smells fantastic and burns forever ($9.99). I recommend the Rose & Sandalwood scent! Add a pair of almost-slippers Le Bon Shoppe Cloud Socks in cerulean ($16) and you’re probably not leaving the couch for the rest of the night. But really, what could be better than that?
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