Submitted by RDHodgson on
in
Forums
Another one of these posts arguing from the perspective of, "Hiring managers are busy, busy, busy!" This idea that your goal should be to work to the constraints of that, and ditch as much useless stuff as possible.
http://wisemansay.co.uk/2010/11/write-cover-letter-hint/
While I don't necessarily disagree that hiring managers are busy, I think this kind of attitude takes the wrong approach. Mark stresses the point that it's not about "efficiency" exactly... a hiring manager doesn't exactly go about ditching everything that slows his job down (such as a covering letter). What they do ditch is anything that isn't geared to make their life easier - they won't necessarily bin a covering letter (although maybe some do - anyone know?) but they'll bin anything put in front of them that isn't efficient and formatted in a way they can understand.
Anyway, I left a comment expanding on that point, on that blog post there, arguing that point, that formatted correctly cover letters are a good thing to use (so long as they are part of the email correspondence itself - he clarifies that some people attach it as a separate document).