Do cover letters still matter Heres what data shows

Do titelseite letters mucksmuschenstill matter Heres what data showsDo titelbild letters still matter Heres what data showsIf you ever tried to craft a cover letter, you know how daunting this task can be. The Internet is full of tips on how to create a perfect cover letter, but they dont make the process less difficult and time-consuming.The question is Is the result worth the effort? Do companies still want candidates to send them the cover letters?Some studies say that only 18% of recruiters consider cover letters important. Others state that 56% of employers want applicants to send cover letters. Jointly, with the CV Compiler team, we performed our own data-driven research to see if cover letters really matter in 2019.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreHow many tech companies do demand a cover letter?To perform the analysis, weve looked through 300 tech vacancies from the compa nies of 3 kindsTech giants 5000+ employees (such as Google, Facebook, Amazon)Medium-sized companies 501-1000 employees (such as Snowflake, Puppet, Smartronix)Fast-growing startups 1-200 employees (such as Perfecta, Pietech, Exxact).For objectivity, we took only 1 vacancy per company. The following chart shows the result of our analysis - the number of tech companies that had a field for a cover letter in their application formsAs you see, the smaller the companies are, the more often they demand a cover letter. I guess thats because of the huge number of applications recruiters at big companies receive for each vacancy. They barely have time to look through all of the resumes, not saying anything about cover letters. So, the tech giants rarely include the corresponding field to their application forms not to waste both recruiters and candidates time.In general, more than half of tech companies (56%) still add the cover letter fields to their application forms. Truth be told, in the prevailing majority of those forms, the cover letter fields were optional. However, it would be wrong to say that the habit of writing cover letters already belongs to the past.So, is a cover letter really important?Id rather say if there is a possibility to add a cover letter, better do it. However, it shouldnt be the boring tirade about how communicable and stress-resistant you are. We usually give our users the following cover letter tipsSpecify the position youre applying for, and tell where you discovered it.Show your interest in the particular position and company. Research on the companys recent projects and achievements, and briefly describe what stunned you the fruchtwein and why you want to work exactly there.Dont describe your personal qualities, describe the benefits an employer will get if they hire you. It will be perfect if you briefly list your major accomplishments and prove them with numbers.Our favorite tip Keep things short, (300 words or less will be perfect).W hat format should a cover letter have?Here are the preferences for different cover letter formats among those companies that had a corresponding field in their application formsAs we were analyzing the vacancies, we noticed that startups usually had much simpler application forms than tech giants. So, its no wonder that many small companies prefer written text - they just add another text field along with the ones for your name, e-mail, and location. Some of such fields allow you to format your writing, some of them dont. As of the size of the written cover letter, companies usually want you to write up to 4000 symbols.In general, most of the companies want candidates to attach a file. Usually, the supported formats are .docx, .pdf, .html, .xlsx, or .jpg. So, if youre going to start looking for new jobs, Id recommend you to prepare a cover letter template in one of those formats. However, for those especially creative, attaching videos is also allowed in some of the forms ??Avoidin g pitfallsMy other advice is read the vacancies really carefully. You can come across something like this or this or even this and it would be a pity to miss an excellent job opportunity because of such a tiny detail.Surely, if an employer clearly states that they dont accept cover letters, or doesnt mention them in the list of the necessary documents, dont send one.If youre still in doubt about whether you need a cover letter or not, here is another fact from our research. Among those companies, who had a field for a cover letter, 56% of tech giants, 60% of medium-sized companies, and 43% of start-ups put the titelbild Letter field near the top of their application forms.Is LinkedIn a new cover letter?While browsing through the tech vacancies, we noticed another interesting tendency many companies add the LinkedIns Quick Apply buttons to their application forms. To be more precise, Im talking about 38% of big companies, 36% of medium-size companies, and 21% of startups. In addit ion to that, 12% of big companies, 3% of medium-size companies, and 10% of startups allow applying through Indeed, Seek, Xing, SmartProfile, or even Facebook.So, if youre not a big fan of spending 5-20 minutes on filling each application form, optimizing your social media profiles might be a good time investment. Along with the opportunity to apply more quickly, that will increase your web presence, which may result in attractive offers coming at your door even without searching and applying.As you now see, cover letters in the tech industry havent gone far in the past yet. I guess that for non-tech jobs, such as those in konzeption or marketing, theyre even more important. So, it would be great if you had a well-structured cover letter template, which you could adjust to every (tech) vacancy you apply to. Keep your cover letters focused, short, and personalized, and some of them may help you get that sought-after job somedayThis article was brought to you by the team of CV Compiler , the Machine Learning-powered resume enhancement tool for software engineers, designers, and managers in tech.Andrew Stetsenko is an HR-Tech entrepreneur, who founded Relocate.me, GlossaryTech, and CV Compiler, products used by recruiters and software engineers worldwide. Andrew has over 10 years of recruiting experience with a technical background.