When you’re getting your foot in the door, job applications are mostly a numbers game - especially with how many postings are completely bogus (job doesn’t exist, or is already going to an internal hire). MOST of the time I think the cover letter either gets a brief glance or doesn’t get read at all.

If you’ve got to churn out as many job applications as possible just to get an interview with a real company, you’ll go insane if you try to make them all thoughtful, beautiful, and crafted to the specific job posting. Worse: you’ll churn out fewer applications. The job application with a cover letter like weak tea is infinitely better than the job application that you never submit because you’re paralyzed by the need to write something perfect. I had a standard template that I modified slightly for each application, but I kept the time customizing it very low: swapping out a list of skills to highlight, etc.

That being said: after talking to my boss recently, apparently my cover letter helped when I was applying to this job (I’m enthusiastic about this area, so I put in some extra time and let my water nerd show). I think what I said is still probably valid for most junior developer positions, but your mileage may vary.

> MOST of the time I think the cover letter either gets a brief glance or doesn’t get read at all.

That might very well be the case for a big company that receives a ton of applications but the numbers game works both ways: as the person looking to hire somebody, I find it well worth the time to weed out people based on poor spelling, grammar, etc. It only takes a few seconds to spot the bad ones, and it ensures I don't have to waste my time with somebody who has poor communication skills to begin with.

A couple of maths professors I worked with had very poor spelling, grammar, etc. Good luck with your approach, if you are trying to hire a specialist in an area that is not middle management, HR or marketing. Let alone if you need people do something in the physical world such as building, cleaning or moving things.

We received a cover letter recently that had something like "[insert company name here]" left in it.

i see that kind of thing in job ads all the time too.

Incompetence, using ChatGPT to write cover letters, or both?

My money's on "both".

I'm just surprised to learn someone is actually reading cover letters in this industry.