We don’t require cover letters, but a lot of people send them anyway. Many of them are useless boilerplate. Even before ChatGPT, you could tell that a lot of people looked up generic cover letter boilerplate and treated it like a mad libs where they filled in the company name and job position.
I wish more people knew just how low the bar was for writing a decent cover letter. You don’t need to spend hours researching the company or choosing the perfect prose. Just a few short sentences that add some context to your application that might not be fully captured in a resume format can make a huge difference.
The weirdest part is that when you get people into a conversation, like on the initial phone call, they can usually come up with a quick elevator pitch for themselves on the spot that would have been great cover letter material. Yet there’s something about the cover letter format that makes some people clam up and get writer’s block. Or they just hate the idea of writing something for someone else to read, so they don’t put any effort in.
Regardless, I don’t think ChatGPT generated cover letters are going to push this ahead. The samples look like it’s yet another ChatGPT style generically safe output. I also feel like I’m rapidly getting good at sensing ChatGPT style writing.
Yep. The bar is so incredibly low for communication.
I know job searching isn’t fun, but it’s shocking to see how some candidates act like they can’t be bothered to even have simple person-to-person discussion about their application or career interests or write even a simple written description.
I wish more people knew just how low the bar was for writing a decent cover letter. You don’t need to spend hours researching the company or choosing the perfect prose. Just a few short sentences that add some context to your application that might not be fully captured in a resume format can make a huge difference.
The weirdest part is that when you get people into a conversation, like on the initial phone call, they can usually come up with a quick elevator pitch for themselves on the spot that would have been great cover letter material. Yet there’s something about the cover letter format that makes some people clam up and get writer’s block. Or they just hate the idea of writing something for someone else to read, so they don’t put any effort in.
Regardless, I don’t think ChatGPT generated cover letters are going to push this ahead. The samples look like it’s yet another ChatGPT style generically safe output. I also feel like I’m rapidly getting good at sensing ChatGPT style writing.