If you are applying for roles on a whim, and you aren't investing a great deal of your career aspirations on the outcome of your application, you might as well not bother to send a cover letter. It probably won't make a difference since most employers say that they seldom read them anyway.
However, if you really want the job, write a cover letter and make sure that it sells your candidacy. Because when you're in a tight competition with a similarly qualified candidate for an opportunity, it can actually make a big difference.
Here's where the confusion stems from.
Employers decide whether or not to interview you for a job based on how well the skills and experiences listed in your resume seem to match with the job and how they compare with the other applicants. They decide to hire you or not based on your performance in that all-important job interview.
So,what's the point of the cover letter? How does it factor into the hiring equation?
Of course, back when most people applied for jobs by either mailing or hand delivering their resumes to employers – or even faxing them over, it made sense to introduce yourself and your resume with a covering letter. This let the receiver know who you were and what job opportunity the accompanying document was being submitted for.
By contrast, the majority of job applications these days are submitted through online forms that automatically process resumes in conjunction with the relevant job posting. Not only does this eliminate any confusion, but it also makes it very easy to apply for jobs in just a few clicks. Consequently, employers often receive hundreds of job applications for their open positions, making it impractical to read through cover letters for each of the many, many resumes they have to consider. This is why they often ignore cover letters and simply evaluate the applicant's resumes. If a job seeker seems to have the qualifications and appears to be a match for the position, they can be shortlisted for a job interview.
But it is once you have made this shortlist that the cover letter may have some impact on the success of your application.
Should the employer determine that five or six candidates seem to have excellent credentials for the position, but they only want to interview three or four, they will take a closer look at the applications of those contenders.
It's not even the contents of your cover letter that matter the most in this scenario, although, of course, it should be a concise, professional piece of correspondence that markets you for the role. [See, How to Write a Cover Letter.] The very fact that you took the time to draft a cover letter and submit it with your job application shows that you spent more time and put more effort into applying for the job than any other candidate who did not bother to write one.
On those occasions where employers are weighing similarly qualified candidates to determine who to interview, you want to be the applicant who seems to be more motivated and more willing to put the work in. In this case, the candidates without cover letters can appear to have done strict minimum in their applications. They sent in what was required and nothing more.
How important is a cover letter? Put it this way. On a very first impression, who appears to be the better choice: the candidate who goes the extra mile or the one who cuts corners?
People often talk about the job interview being the first impression that an employer and a candidate form of one another. And, it is true that this is usually the first time they actually meet. However, at that meeting, the employer has some idea of what to expect based on what they have read about the candidate in their application.
Reading your resume and cover letter for the first time is the true first impression that an employer gets of your potential candidacy. You want to put all the effort you can into making sure that is a positive impression and that you come across as a motivated professional who is excited about the opportunity and a good fit for the role.
The fact that there is a good chance that the employer might not even bother to read your cover letter can diminish your enthusiasm for writing one. But when you are competing for a job that you really want, you should use every tool available to you to give yourself an advantage over rival candidates.
