Episode 92: The Noise Around Cover Letters: The Internet Hates Cover Letters – Now What?!

Paul: You talked about culture and about kind of selling us sometimes. Well, of course, you’re going to do that if the conversation’s going well. You don’t do it with everyone. You’re not trying to sell yourself to every single person who you do a phone screen with. But you should have a little bit of a sell-yourself conversation in reserve when you hear the right things from the person on the phone during that.

Voiceover: You’re about to listen to an episode of What the Hell Just Happened. Join Paul Edwards and his guests as they discuss interesting HR topics and solve some of our listeners’ submitted questions.

Paul: And occasionally I’ll go off-topic to talk about whatever I want. Think barbecue, space exploration, growing your business. The things that interest all of us.

Paul: I have a crazy rant from a Reddit person about providing cover letters.

CeCe: Shocking.

Paul: And I’m afraid to read it because I think it’s going to make us so angry that we’re not going to be able to be constructive in our podcast. Hey everybody. Welcome to the podcast. What the Hell Just Happened is the internet has decided that cover letters are stupid. They don’t want to do them anymore. I got to say this just to get it out of the way. If you’re applying for a lot of kind of entry-level jobs or really a lot of jobs. Just trying to get a job, having to write a cover letter to work at McDonald’s probably doesn’t make sense. Having to write a cover letter to get the $120,000-a-year manager’s job at McDonald’s at a franchise where somebody local owns two or three of those things. Probably a good idea on your part to kind of write a letter and say why you want that job.

CeCe: Absolutely. And a more applicable skillset makes more sense.

Paul: Yeah, it does make more sense. So we are not saying that it’s a good idea to ask someone who’s going to be running the fryers at McDonald’s to write a cover letter as to why they want to work at McDonald’s. But this tool that we use is, I think it’s one of the most effective ways to not waste people’s time. So there’s the irony. That’s what I was looking for, the irony in this. Folks out there are saying to us, as HR people, this is a waste of our time. And we’re saying back to them, ‘Okay. I understand why you feel that way, but this is a way for us not to waste your time’. So if you send a cover letter in and it’s full of grammatical errors and it’s not well thought out and it doesn’t, it’s not applicable, maybe you didn’t do a couple of things that we asked you to do.

CeCe: Yeah.

Paul: Then you’re helping us not to waste your time. Yeah. I mean, that’s just one of the little… I mean, it’s just one of the little blips in here.

CeCe: It is.

Paul: Should I read this thing from Reddit? Wanna get mad, wanna get fired up?

CeCe: I could use a laugh.

Paul: We don’t know what the persona is, I think that this is a guy. This sounds like a guy.

CeCe: Okay.

Paul: Okay guy. Guy says ‘Not only I don’t use cover letters, I avoid applying for positions who demanded them because it tells me everything I need to know about what kind of company and person I would be working for.’

CeCe: Yeah. Such common sentiment.

Paul: Yeah. If you’re going to demand this of me, you’re just awful.

CeCe: Yes.

Paul: Just a terrible company. How dare you ask me to use my brain in order to convince you to do something? That’s what I need, is someone who’s…yeah.

CeCe: Yeah. But people are being socialized to think that.

Paul: I know. And this is what, this is what the hell just happened is where people are going. So he continues, ‘In my opinion, cover letters are all about an employer or hiring managers’ ego. They want you to tell them how much you love them and basically beg for the job upfront without a chance to get to know them first. I will never’ in capitalization letters ‘Do that and I never have and I never had to.’

CeCe: How successful do you think that person is?

Paul: Well, I would like to, I would like some data input from this person. I’m sure they would tell us on Reddit that they’re…Yes, that they’re great. They go on to say ‘They’re not doing me a favor. I’m doing them one.’ Can I kind of take a break from this? How about you do me a favor, write me a short cover letter and show me that you can articulate as well as you’re doing here on Reddit. And by the way, why don’t you say some of these things to me in your cover letter while you’re trying to get a job from me? Because these are the things I really want to know about you. If this is your attitude, this is who you are and this is how you’re going to be in general with people. And this is how you write, and this is how you address a problem. Then be upfront. Put this, send this to me in the cover letter. I would really appreciate it. ‘I’m applying to do work in exchange for pay. My resume can speak for itself.’ No, it can’t.

CeCe: Can we take one step back there?

Paul: No, I’m mad now.

CeCe: I know. I understand on one hand the sentiment that yes, you are looking to exchange work for pay, but there’s so much more to that. Well, that’s what we want, though, right? I mean, that’s the goal is to have more to that relationship than just someone’s output. And then you give them money.

Paul: We’d like to give them free bowls of cereal. Everybody, we don’t have free bowls of cereal. I cringe every time I walk into a startup or someplace and they get those bowls, those cereal things on the wall. I’m just like…

CeCe: I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was just going to laugh right past that one. No, I have no idea.

Paul: No? Oh, thank you for humoring me. That was so nice of you. You could tell CeCe and I aren’t married. She’s still laughing at my bad, she still laughing at jokes I didn’t even make.

Paul: Hey, I’m Paul Edwards with CEDR and Grace has a great new course that she’s just done for all of our members.

Grace: We are talking about what to do when one of your team members stinks. Think body odor, perfume, smoke smells and more. We’ll prep you how to have the conversation.

Paul: Thanks, Grace. Everybody tune in.

CeCe: But that is the whole point, right? We want people who are going to give us more than that. More than just the bare bones.

Paul: I would like to get a sense of you, and I’m definitely not looking for anybody to stroke my ego. I don’t know how you could. I mean, we probably gave you a website. You may be able to learn a little bit from us. I want to know about you. That’s kind of what I’m looking for when I get a cover letter.If I’m through it. And yeah, I mean, I saw other posts on Reddit. I don’t know if I keep going to this, I’m going to be so mad I can’t do the podcast. I mean, there’s other people posting, you know, things about, you know, how much of a waste of time it is. And if you’re trying to apply for 50 jobs in a day and you got to write a thoughtful cover letter to everybody, I mean, it’s insane. And they can’t do that. And in his defense and everyone else’s, we commoditized… commoditized? There we go. Send in letters if it’s not a word. We did that thing I just said, that I can’t say twice jobs. The market we put everything online and we made it so that everybody can see all jobs everywhere at any time.

CeCe: Yeah.

Paul: And then we put people in front of a computer with a mouse and said, ‘Go.’ And we made it a checkoff kind of process. You know, I get it. I do. I understand when you’re trying to apply for jobs and, you know, maybe you’re trying to apply for as many as come up as often as possible. That would be a lot of thoughtful cover letters to write.

CeCe: Yeah.

Paul: But what I do want to say, and I know nobody on Reddit is an employee is listening to me, for the job that you want, that you think you want for the career that you’re looking for, for the step up in pay and responsibility. Maybe enjoy because you get to do something that you really want to do. You got to write the cover letter. I mean, you got to do something to get through. But, CeCe, if the Internet is saying ‘We hate cover letters’ and you’re putting the request for someone to write a cover letter in, what do you do? Because you might miss someone who buys into this idiot’s post.

CeCe: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that’s the challenge as on the employer’s side is however much you want, the thing where you have a good reason behind it and you know you’re not the person who’s just looking for ego stroking, we still have to combat that people are being socialized to think this way.

Paul: Yeah.

CeCe: And to be honest, even HR professionals are playing into that. They’re like, ‘Don’t send me a cover letter, I’ll never read it.’

Paul: That’s what I got too. And I get, we’re nerds. We’re in some of these groups and I couldn’t believe that I saw HR professionals going ‘Yeah, good for you. Don’t send in a cover letter.’

CeCe: I know it’s wild, but so we still have to work within that sort of framework that people are getting this messaging constantly. We have to be conscious of, or at least make a choice that either we’re going to come across that way to potentially, some really good candidates, or we can find a different way to get the same information that we want.

Paul: You know, at one point we didn’t have an HR person here, so I had to be part of that team a little bit. Now, the other two people who took on all of that responsibility, they’re rolling their eyes right now. They’re like, ‘Paul I don’t remember you being a part of all of that work that we did on your behalf.’ Swear I was in it. One of the, we needed a graphic artist. We were advertising for it. Someone applied for it and there they were, a sandwich artist. They had worked at uh…they worked at a… What’s the footlong place? Subway. Subway? Yeah. And so they were like, well, you know, we asked, you know, what is the corollary correlation to what you’ve been doing? And of course they put that in there. Now I want you to know that I actually read that person’s cover letter because believe it or not, they might could have gotten a job out of me in another area by writing something like that, they got my attention. Of course, he was just or she was just fooling around and being snarky. But I hope you’re listening and I know you’re not. That was brilliant. That got my attention. I, you made my day. You made me smile. Nonetheless. We are reading, most people are reading the stuff that comes in. But, you know, honestly, if I get 175 people applying for a position, we’re skimming.

CeCe: Yeah, I mean, probably 10% of those at most are going to send a cover letter. But I’ll be honest, I really do read the ones, even if I look at their resume and I wouldn’t be interested. If they’ve got a cover letter, I will read it. It probably is a skim, but to see if there’s something compelling in there that makes me want to take another look at their resume or it gives perspective that I wouldn’t have had from the resume alone. Maybe one person at a time. That was a worthwhile endeavor, but it’s worth it for that 1% of people, because those are usually people who end up I mean, they were strategic in the way that they did it. You know, they put a little bit of extra effort. And so those people can really end up being a different maker somewhere.

Paul: They really can. Yeah. And what do we think about A.I? A.I’s writing these cover letters for a lot of people right now.

CeCe: Yeah. I mean, that’s one of the things that makes this, in my opinion, not a battle worth fighting. So between the coming across as a red flag to people and that you very well, if you push it, you might just get some canned piece of garbage that gives you no information.

Paul: Yeah.

CeCe: I think a better tactic is to just skills test them.

Paul: All right, so we’re on no more cover letters.

CeCe: Yeah. Or there have been times where, for one reason or another, it is important. And the tactic that I used, which was very successful, was to phone screen them and then tell them if you would like to be considered for the next round, I need a cover letter.

Paul: Right.

CeCe: And that weeded out people who I was on the fence about anyway. If they were like, ‘Nope, I’m not going to do that’ at the point that you’ve now engaged with them, they should be willing to put in some more effort than just applying.

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Paul: Oh so this one trick that all recruiters hate is, you need to have a conversation with anybody who sends in a resume that’s halfway decent and maybe a cover letter. Get them on the phone and have a set of questions that are about their skills, about their history, about them to see how they do. And then give them an additional requirement, which is to communicate in some way. You know, it’s not a bad thought. I mean, we could have somewhere. Right, to be the best, quickest designer for software. Don’t worry, Kristen, if you’re listening. We’re not looking for that person, and their cover letter could be awful. But we look at their resume, we see their experience, and the thing that we ask from them is not…We’re not really caring about their writing skills and about these other things that you might look at in a cover letter. So we’re less concerned about cover letters and we more want to get people into our phone screen as quickly as possible.

CeCe: I think so. When once you’ve engaged with them and given them some of your time, I think it’s… they’re more open to being asked for a little bit of extra effort. And at that point, you have had an opportunity to sell your culture. Sell why you have a better job than the person who’s maybe paying a lot more because you’re smaller than the big corporations that you’re competing with a pool of candidates for, right? And so at that point, if they’re not willing to do maybe a ten-minute exercise of writing you something about why they’re still interested or whatever your instructions are, then that’s probably not the person for you.

Paul: Yeah, that makes sense. Is there anything that we anything else that we can give people out there? I just want everybody to know, CeCe’s really good at hiring. She’s just very good. And even for someone, CeCe I hope you would agree, even with your skills. And you do have a natural ability in this area. It’s still a little bit of a crapshoot, right?

CeCe: Oh for sure.

Paul: You’re just trying to get the very best you can. The best you can to get the best person, because we really don’t want to waste their time. And we certainly don’t want to end up training them and then losing them. But that’s always a concern on the bottom line. But on the other side of that, I hate the idea that I’ve held somebody out of the job market while they fail inside my company.

CeCe: Yeah.

Paul: And we could have detected that and stopped it from happening. And by the way, if you’re the person who fails listening, there’s another job out there for you where you won’t fail. It’s just, it’s not your fault. It’s not our fault. It’s just like not everybody kind of meshes and fits together. And that’s another thing that I think we could talk about a little bit here, just as a side note. You talked about culture and about kind of selling us sometimes. Well, of course you’re going to do that if the conversation’s going well.

CeCe: Yes.

Paul: You don’t do it with everyone. You’re not trying to sell yourself to every single person who you do a phone screen with.

CeCe: Right.

Paul: But you should have a little bit of a sell-yourself conversation in reserve when you hear the right things from the person on the phone during that 2-to-8-minute phone screen.

CeCe: Yeah.

Paul: CeCe, any interesting stories come to mind on phone screens? Like, I mean, you can email and say, ‘Hey, I’d like to give you a call’ and everything, but you’re calling..you sometimes just catch people.

CeCe: I always schedule them so I don’t cold call people and I have a really good reason for that. And it’s that if I cold call and there’s a bunch of noise in the background or they don’t answer or any of that stuff, I’ve gotten no real information from that now because they weren’t expecting my call. They didn’t need to be on time. They didn’t need to be in a quiet area they could focus.

Paul: They didn’t need to be focused on you.

CeCe: Yeah, but if we have a pre-scheduled time to talk and you don’t answer or you’ve got, you know, chaos happening in your house or something, then you weren’t prepared.

Paul: And that tells you a little something.

CeCe: It gives me some information about the individual.

Paul: So if we’re looking for the head of chaos here at CEDR, that person gets a job. See, people? We’re always thinking. We’re always thinking here. Okay, so you schedule your phone screens. Any stories we can think of? Anything? Am I putting you on the spot? I know you’ve done so many of them.

CeCe: Yeah, my gosh. I have a million stories. But I’ll say the common themes are always the people who just have no idea who we are. You know, they didn’t take even 2 seconds to reread the job post before the call. Those are really frustrating.

Paul: Who are you again?

CeCe: Yeah, I had somebody one time say, ‘You do mulch, right?’ Because our name CEDR. So they just pulled something out of thin air. That was hilarious.

Paul: That’s awesome. They work here now, don’t they? No.

CeCe: No, no. They do not. But those, you know that. So that’s always the first question I ask is like, ‘Have you heard of us before you applied? What do you know about us so far?’

CeCe: And they should be able to tell me the bare minimum. Yeah. I don’t expect them to have looked up when we started and who you are. And, you know, some people do have all that history, but I expect them to have retained the job ad, reviewed it, and know what’s going on there.

Paul: Okay, so what the hell just happened is the internet just killed cover letters for the most part. I think you could still ask for them. I mean, the person on here who was like, ‘I won’t even apply if there’s a request for a cover letter because it tells me everything.’

CeCe: And you don’t want that person anyway.

Paul: I don’t want that person. So you that’s that’s a good reason to ask for a cover letter because this is a bad apple, toxic person who’s ready to drop into your business and not the best way in, in my humble opinion. Okay. CeCe. So let’s take this What the Hell Just Happened in the jumble that I created here, that I created every podcast and let’s try to organize our thoughts just a little bit for everybody. The reason why we had cover letters in the beginning was we were first most time we were trying to see if they’d follow directions and we were trying to check on and gain information. We still need all of that.

CeCe: Yeah.

Paul: Okay. We were saying now that you could still request cover letter. The reason why you’re doing it is actually to keep from hiring the guy who’s a butthead, and you might get a good, thoughtful cover letter which would help someone set themselves apart. You still look at their resumes, obviously. And whatever it is that they write in, you make it a quick determination from there about whether or not you might want to do a phone screen with them, because your phone screen is yet another way to gather more information about them. About their organization, their ability to communicate, whether or not they prepare for something that.

CeCe: Can be on time.

Paul: Yeah, all those things. So these are things that, you know, you’re always gathering information on. Now that we’ve got them, we can ask them to write a cover letter or to do some kind of, we’ll just call it lightly, a skills test. I used the example earlier about maybe looking for a graphic artist. We don’t need a cover letter from them. We need examples, their portfolio. We want to see some things, maybe in addition, or maybe we ask them, ‘Have you ever designed software? I know you’re a graphic artist, but have you ever designed software? Can you show us an example of that?’ So that is the example of moving to that next level where you already are beginning to do your skills testing. Obviously, we would ask a copywriter to do something different. We’d ask an HR person to answer a different set of questions. We’d ask an administrator to do something different. But basically what you’re saying here is, and I’m going to repeat it, once you engage with them in a phone quick phone screen. Phone screens are short, sweet, and to the point they can end up being a little longer because you’ve got somebody good on the phone.

CeCe: Yes.

Paul: But I don’t want you to mistake this for a 30 or 45-minute phone interview. This is not what you’re trying to do here. You’re just trying to move people along and decide if they’re good enough, if they think you’re good enough as well to move forward with you. Once we get that skills testing going, if they’re even you know, if they do that part, then we get them in and we have a conversation with them. We don’t want to waste their time. We don’t want to waste our time. We don’t want to hire somebody by mistake. And it’s a bad fit for them or it’s bad fit for us. We’re just trying to make our way, people. Trying to find the best people for the job, I don’t think has anything to do with ego. I don’t think it has anything to do with anything else.

CeCe: No, I mean, that’s a really bizarre leap to make there. But, yeah, it’s just about trying to get information. I mean, that’s what the whole process should be built around. Everything you’re doing should be to get some valuable information.

Paul: Both of, both of us.

CeCe: Yes.

Paul: In a person who’s interviewing us more and more, I think that they have to take some accountability for kind of showing who they are, what they’re looking for and where they want to go in the you know, where they want to go in their career.

CeCe: And that you have goals beyond just ‘I want to exchange some effort for some money.’

Paul: For people who are listening, a lot of you are managers and owners of medical and dental practices out there. I say this I’m going to say it again at the end of this podcast. Your job is a good job. It warrants people putting in a little extra effort. Really, it matters. I mean, I don’t wanna be dramatic but it’s life and death. People who don’t pay attention to details and put the wrong thing in medical records can get somebody killed. So you do have a purpose for wanting to get, even your administrative person who’s answering the phone, you need somebody who’s sharp, who transcribes things, gets things right.

CeCe: Yeah, and cares.

Paul: And cares. And so that’s that part of the process. You know, this is all just part of that process. I think we’ve covered this? I guess. I just learned in my own podcast that I shouldn’t hold it against people who don’t want to send in cover letters because I thought they were all being stupid heads. But apparently there’s something to that consensus and so we’re going to adjust. And everybody who’s listening I hope you got something out of this and you’ll make an adjustment. Look in our show notes, we’re gonna put our hiring guide. We’ll put a link to the hiring guide in there where we talk about some of this stuff.

CeCe: That’s a great idea.

Paul: Alright, CeCe. As always, thanks for bringing your HR insight to our podcast. It’s been a pleasure.

CeCe: Thanks for having me.

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