The Resume Host / The screen

Cover letters, where they are still read

Often skipped entirely, occasionally decisive.

Whether cover letters are read varies enormously by sector, seniority and organisation, and applicants have no way of knowing which case they are in. The rational response is a short one that costs little to produce and can matter when it is read, rather than either omitting it or spending an evening on it.

What makes one useful is that it does something the document cannot. It can explain a career change, address a gap directly, name a specific connection to the organisation, or state why this role rather than any role. Those are the four things a resume structurally cannot say, and a letter that says none of them is restating the document in prose.

The length that works is short: three or four paragraphs. The opening should not be a statement that you are writing to apply for the position, which the reader knows. It should be the reason this particular application is not generic.

Where an application form provides a free-text field instead, the same content belongs there, and the same test applies. If it could have been sent to any employer, it is not doing anything.

There is a specific circumstance where a cover letter matters more than usual, which is where anything about the application invites a question: a change of field, a relocation, a gap, an apparent step down, or an application from outside the expected background. In each case the reader will form an explanation, and it is better to supply one than to leave them to construct it from nothing.