I review about ~100-200 CVs per week in bulk, for Data Science.
I actually treat a cover letter as a negative signal. Who has time to write one, and why you do think anybody cares? Show where you worked, what you did, link to some interesting stuff, all this in the regular CV structure, and that's it. I have about 10-20 seconds per CV, reading a cover letter is out of the question. The only thing the CV is for is to (i) send some signals to pick out the 5% of applicants that make it to the first screening round, and (ii) at later stages, to quickly open it to recall who the applicant is.
> Who has time to write one, and why you do think anybody cares?
How did you get your current job, and what is your opinion about the summary or cover letter space in almost every job application form? Assuming of course that you don't have an alternative means into the company.
Last 2 jobs I was headhunted. But that's because I'm "old" in this industry (10+ yrs of experience) and have the right signals on my Linkedin = worked at good companies (Prezi, Facebook). The biggest signal is what company you worked at, second biggest what school you went to (if it's a big one).
I guess there's some segments where cover letters are a thing, eg. academia. But I've never seen anybody care about cover letters at tech companies.
Yes, this whole process could be automated with ML, I don't know why no startup has done this yet in a good product. I'd definitely pay for it. HR is actually not my job, I'm hiring Data Scientists for my team; the reason I'm doing the screening is because I'm doing a gig in the Middle East and the HR people here don't know much about DS or how to screen for it (plus, looking at all these CVs is quite the cultural experience). It has occurred to me several times in the last 1-2 years to take some time out and work on this. Friends at Google told me Google has this internally; I wish the guys doing it would spin off a startup!
I actually treat a cover letter as a negative signal. Who has time to write one, and why you do think anybody cares? Show where you worked, what you did, link to some interesting stuff, all this in the regular CV structure, and that's it. I have about 10-20 seconds per CV, reading a cover letter is out of the question. The only thing the CV is for is to (i) send some signals to pick out the 5% of applicants that make it to the first screening round, and (ii) at later stages, to quickly open it to recall who the applicant is.