Cover letter gotchas (cover letters, job application, application, applications)

[Quietude]

I don't know what I've come to hate more: job applications that require a cover letter - but don't let you know until you're embedded in the online application process and have no real time to stop and write one, or applications that give no space for a cover letter, e-note or other introductory document.

I've been tripped by several applications lately that required an uploaded cover letter... at nearly the end of the process. They're across just a wide enough spread that a generic letter won't do any good, and at least one timed out and dumped me when I tried to rip one out that looked professional enough. And these are invariably for jobs where nothing much in a cover would add to the resume and info upload. "Hi, I'm really excited, please pick me..."

And then just now I applied for a job I'd like to get with a company I'd love to work for... but with no option to write an introduction, a note or upload a cover letter, I had no way to tell them about some exceptional and relevant off-resume qualifications. I will no doubt get bounced in the first auto-screening, since without that extra info, my resume presents as a meh and generic candidate. (I am a name someone in the hiring chain would likely recognize, if they knew the connections.)

And they're too big to have any kind of direct access for me to follow up and send the letter separately, as I have sometimes done with small to medium companies.

Sigh.

[Bo]

Cheat the system. Include your cover letter in your resume document!

[Quietude]

Originally Posted by Bo

Cheat the system. Include your cover letter in your resume document!

I've done that, but I prefer cover letters to be either the brief note services like Indeed allow you to write on the spot (which is often enough to include just a bit more info), or write a very targeted one for an exceptional opportunity that can use some background narrative.

If you don't know what the options are until you're halfway through an online process, it's hard to rearrange the ducks in mid-air, as it were.

Besides, the auto-process can rarely parse a simply-fomatted resume well enough to get the info in the right slots. Attaching a separate doc would likely get you filed as Bozo the Clown's left shoe polisher from 1942-1961.

[MilksFavoriteCookie]

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