Resume boilerplate?

January 27, 2024 8:10 AM

Stepchild is sending out cover letters and resumes. In the past, I felt that a cover letter should sound like you are a personable fellow that someone would want to meet. Mrs. Musofire says that these days cover letters are parsed by AI and need all sorts of buzzwords in them to get past the filters. Which is better, snappy cover letter, or padded-out letter with buzzwords?
posted by musofire to Work & Money (22 answers total)

Padded out letter AND padded out resume. They both need to get past the algorithms.
posted by cooker girl at 8:16 AM on January 27, 2024 [8 favorites]

There are people out there who do resume and cover letter editing etc. Might be helpful!
posted by cooker girl at 8:20 AM on January 27, 2024

The cover letter should use words from the job advertisement and specifically describe how he is going to be able to do those things and bring value to the company with examples/ evidence from his resume. No one cares if he's a personable fellow at the cover letter stage.
posted by twelve cent archie at 8:21 AM on January 27, 2024 [22 favorites]

Seconding Twelve Cent. The cover letter proves that you have read the job description, that you can do the things in the job description, and that you understand what the job is. Personable is for the interview.
posted by joycehealy at 8:23 AM on January 27, 2024 [2 favorites]

Some extremely recent field testing: my 20something cousin was using Chat-GPT to write cover letters for an NYC job search (to my horror) and just got a job with the development arm of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Got the offer three weeks ago at most.

I’ve never gotten a job through contacts, but I’ve also never gotten a job via a big online job site or a large corporate HR. My current job at a university I got by googling until I found the hiring manager’s email, then emailing him my resume (the body of the email serving as the cover letter).
posted by 8603 at 8:33 AM on January 27, 2024

Several months ago I asked our recruiter at the tech company I work for how she felt about cover letters and what is the best cover letter and she said ugh please stop sending cover letters, they are a waste of everyone's time. Put the keywords in the resume.
posted by phunniemee at 8:34 AM on January 27, 2024 [3 favorites]

What field? Based on my experience, in a creative role or one where writing is a central part of the job, the cover letter should be well-written and convey something of who you are—because, in that kind of role, the cover letter is a work sample. In other fields, as evidenced by the other responses here, it's a different ballgame.
posted by Mender at 9:00 AM on January 27, 2024 [13 favorites]

I think it actually really depends on the job that they are interviewing for, and how many letters the people are likely to receive for such a job. In interviewing for law, I've found that interesting cover letters with very little from the job description have gotten me at least to the interview stage with an almost obscene amount of success compared to my peers using the buzzwords; however, I understand that is because 1) a lot of these are being reviewed by actual humans rather than AI still, and 2) most of the time, if you've gone to a decent enough law school, they know you can probably do the job and are just trying to sort out if you're the sort of person they would actually like. However, I understand the same is not true for jobs which are more 'can you do skill A' based.
posted by corb at 9:02 AM on January 27, 2024 [6 favorites]

Yeah, it probably really does depend on the field and the job. When I hire (for staff in academia), the buzzwords need to be in the resume to get you through the HR filter or I’ll never know you exist, but a good or bad cover letter can do a lot to push you higher or lower in the stack of possible candidates I get from HR who got through that filter. A good cover letter does address how that person meets the job requirement, but I’m also looking for it to offer a bit of explanation about any resume oddities I might have questions about, and convey that you’re able to communicate clearly and professionally. It’s a good bonus if it does convey a bit of personality, and a bad sign if you’ve e.g. left the wrong job title in it or told me how excited you are to move to (state this job is not in) or otherwise conveys that you did not pay enough attention to detail to fix the customization details before you sent me a cover letter you obviously used for a different job somewhere else.
posted by Stacey at 9:31 AM on January 27, 2024 [7 favorites]

To recent anecdotes:
1) An under 40-person software startup with a position that matched my skills incredibly well: My enthusiastic cover letter explained why my experience matched their needs exceptionally well, with examples from a previous job. The recruiter responded to me in 30 minutes.

2) A decades old software company with a few thousand employees for a niche app that I have experience using with the job description again fitting their needs exceptionally well. All of that was in an enthusiastic cover letter. After a week, their software portal listed my application as "Not a match".

My conclusion, is that yes, you should write an enthusiastic a cover letter with all the expected keywords (for AI pattern matching) on why you're good fit and excited about the position, but it may stand out better at smaller companies that aren't inundated with applications.

Useful info from Ask A Manager:
How to Write a Cover Letter That Will Get You a Job
here’s an example of a great cover letter … with before and after versions

posted by ShooBoo at 10:09 AM on January 27, 2024 [7 favorites]

I have reviewed resumes and cover letters at three different workplaces, and none of them used these tools. This may be standard practice at massive corporations, but even then, there is no reasons to cram buzzwords into a cover letter because the whole point of a cover letter is to supplement and personalize your resume.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:15 AM on January 27, 2024 [4 favorites]

With the caveat that I do not work in HR, I am someone reasonably well positioned to know what machine learning is done on resumes at the application stage and I'm pretty sure the answer is "not a lot", at least when it comes to "white collar" jobs. However, they are skimmed very, very quickly by people who may not have much, if any, actual domain knowledge (for technical positions, there are literally lists of key phrases built up by recruiting teams, but being able to generalise from such a list even if you know nothing about the actual work is a skill). This does mean you need to convey that you're minimally qualified via your resume and hitting keywords from the job description is a good way to do that. Elaborate buzzword stuffing is unnecessary in my experience (and a distinct negative by the time you get to someone with domain knowledge reading your resume). If you get screened out very early, it's much more likely you lost the luck of the draw than you failed to put enough buzzwords down.
posted by hoyland at 10:21 AM on January 27, 2024 [2 favorites]

This isn’t a new thing. I have been reading cover letters without an HR screening for a decade now. Just went through a round. Please make it easy for me to determine if you match the qualifications outlined in the position description. If you’re too clever, you’re making me work harder to know you match what we need.

Yes, I also want enthusiasm. But please don’t make me hunt through your letter and resume to figure out if you’re qualified. I will do that but I presume others will not.
posted by bluedaisy at 10:42 AM on January 27, 2024 [3 favorites]

The last hiring committee I was on (academic library) was staffed completely by people who did the job being hired for, HR did not filter out any applications, and we read every resume and cover letter multiple times and both affected our decisions. You are not going to get a universal answer to this.
posted by one for the books at 10:43 AM on January 27, 2024 [6 favorites]

I wouldn’t say you need buzzwords. But if my organization collects and organizes widgets and doohickeys and thingamabobs, please tell me how you have collected and organized widgets and doohickeys and thingamabobs. Like, please match and reuse that position description language if it’s relevant. It doesn’t help me to know you’re a pro at fanciness.
posted by bluedaisy at 10:45 AM on January 27, 2024 [1 favorite]

I work in nonprofit communications, and as was mentioned earlier in my field the cover letter is a work sample. If the cover letter is not pursuasive I won’t even look at the resume. But I believe my small organization is not typical of the overall market.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 12:31 PM on January 27, 2024

I think it's safe to assume that however the cover letter is being read, it's being read quickly by someone/thing looking for key words and phrases. If it's a human they can do better than a computer can at working out what things are functionally equivalent to the words they used in the job description. But they may not have the time or inclination.
posted by plonkee at 12:41 PM on January 27, 2024

I think the lesson here is that nothing is standard practice & doing the maximum for each application is a cover-your-bases exercise that is a tradeoff for your time.

The only way to know is to have a direct contact at the company with knowledge of the procedures.

It is up to you whether you want to adopt the philosophy that job-seeking is a pure numbers game & no one application is worth anything more than a premade resume UNLESS you know more about the company/industry, consider it to be a true dream job, or actually find it easy to customize your resume and draft bespoke cover letters. One could make a case that there are enough bogus job listings, careless recruiters, and buzzword-heavy industries out there that one padded-out resume does the job in all but a few niche cases.

But one thing I can guarantee you is that no recruiter is ever going to write an article telling you to cut corners. It's inherent to career journalism to tell you to do everything the hardest possible way for all available jobs. Thus the traditional advice is that the extra effort is always worthwhile, even though anyone with experience in the job market knows that not to be true. It is sometimes worthwhile; we can't tell you accurately when it is and isn't worthwhile. It is part of the cruelty and disrespect of the whole thing. Your time means nothing to a stranger who has a job req to fill. Act accordingly.
posted by brianvan at 2:34 PM on January 27, 2024 [6 favorites]

Many hiring managers don't even read cover letters these days.

I personally love getting them from applicants because it gives them the equivalent of an elevator pitch of why I should give them a shot, in a format that's different than a chronological list of things done at work.

Most of the jobs I hire for have a wide range of desired skills (and most are not required). The letter is an opportunity to tell how they think the ones they have will combine to fit for the position.

It also gives some ability to judge writing quality and most of the positions I hire for require clear written communication skills. Obviously, someone can have someone else write it for them, but it's something.
posted by Candleman at 3:38 PM on January 27, 2024 [4 favorites]

I read applications sometimes. (Used to a lot more). What I'm looking for in a cover letter is two things: why do you want this job, ideally something other than "I need money" which is a given; and what facts in your resume should tell me you'd be good at it? The resume is the facts, the cover letter is the analysis. "You'll see in my resume that I have experience in ____ which would be a good fit for the role of _____.

Whether that analysis should include buzzwords or not depends on how the company uses cover letters. We human-read them, so playing buzzword bingo and repeating everything that's already in the resume is only likely to piss someone off. A meaningful letter that shows you understand what you're applying for and have thought about whether you would like it or not and how your skills match might get you in the interview pile even if HR keyword-matching on the resume didn't. If they machine-score them, probably the opposite is a better strategy.
posted by ctmf at 9:50 PM on January 27, 2024 [1 favorite]

I do work in HR, and the main thing I have to say is that it is a moment of wild variation across all industries as to the level of screening done by a software and by humans, and as to whether or not people want a cover letter at all. My company doesn’t use any software screening, and we have a questionnaire which asks for the information we actually want to see an ideal cover letter, rather than making applicants guess as to what we want to know.

That said, cover letters are going to get skimmed pretty fast, and the main questions are whether or not the applicant can form complete sentences, and what relevance they have to the job description.
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:39 PM on January 27, 2024 [1 favorite]

ATS. Please have this person research ATS and create an ATS-friendly resume and cover letter. It's fine if it's more than one page if it gets all the ATS words into the ATS system.

Mrs. Musofire says that these days cover letters are parsed by AI and need all sorts of buzzwords in them to get past the filters.

I mean, she is vastly more right than you are but most commonly it is not AI. ATS is a database that does keyword matching and it's very straightforward and not very smart. If I'm hiring for a geoscience role and I tell HR I need someone who can use Tableau but your resume just says "fluent in a wide variety of GIS applications" your resume will not match and I will never see it.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:18 AM on January 28, 2024 [5 favorites]