A couple of days ago, I posted a short article on the importance of cover letters in Fog Creek’s hiring process. I was hoping it would be an informative glimpse into how our resume screening works. I have to admit, I’m rather surprised and disappointed at the responses I got about it.
Responses seemed to come from two different groups. One, which was mostly held over at Hacker News, generated good discussion on the value of cover letters in various hiring situations. These were the types of responses that I was hoping for. Some people agreed with me, some disagreed, and both gave good reasons why, which I found informative, and I’m hoping other people did as well.
The other group, from the Programming Reddit, was far more hostile. Some people immediately assumed that I was writing the article because something was wrong with our process, that our criteria are completely unreasonable, and that we should be able to determine everything we need to know from a Word-template resume. Some seemed to think that we were missing all the good candidates because of our criteria. The truth is, we’ve probably passed over a small few that we would have hired. But that’s ok; it’s better to err on the side of false negatives than false positives.
Others told me that that instead of suggesting that applicants include a cover letter to increase their chances (which any career counselor will tell you is a good idea), that we should change our hiring process to make it easier for people to apply. For some companies, this might make sense; if they’re just trying to find warm bodies to fill cubicles it would be exactly the right suggestion. But we like to be a bit more selective. And I’m personally motivated to be more selective. As a developer, I will often be working, directly or indirectly, with the people that I hire. That means the better developers we hire, the easier and more interesting my job will be. So if I have two candidates in front of me, one that included a cover letter about how he hand-rolled his own blog, comments, and feed aggregator for fun to learn a new framework, and another that just sends a resume with a one-liner in the body of the email, I’m going to be much more inclined to say “hire” for the guy with the cover letter, even if the second guy’s resume is a bit better. Similarly, I’ll be more likely to say “hire” to the Eagle Scout, triathlete developer than a candidate who bludgeons me with all of their “accomplishments”.
Another group of commentors seem to find writing cover letters too tedious to bother with. Instead, they’ll find jobs through networking, or the jobs will just come to them. Personally, I would be highly dubious of a company that hires simply based on who you know. That seems like the kind of company where you end up working with the boss’s nephew who is “good with computers”. A company’s hiring process is usually a pretty good indicator of what kind of talent it employs, and thus the kind of quality the company has. The higher the bar, the better the talent, the more interesting the company. I’m sure you can find exceptions, but that’s all they are, exceptions to the rule.
Both responses betray some sense of entitlement. They seem to think that a company should cater to its applicants, failing to understand the meaning of the word “apply”. Sure, we should also advertise why the candidate would want to work for us, and we do. But good jobs are not hand outs. We want the best developers we can find, and we’ll gladly pass over a few good ones to find one great one. As an employee, that’s one of the best benefits a company could offer.
Overall, I’m disappointed at the end result. But it did expose some interesting differences in communities. Hacker News took what was intended as helpful advice and created an interesting discussion around it, with good points and information on various views of hiring processes. Proggit, on the other hand, jumped into trolling and name-calling, and the community supported it. Personally, I don’t really mind; I’ve been called an idiot on the internet before and I’m sure I will again. But I think an opportunity to have a good and relevant discussion was missed.
This is becoming something of a series. In a few days I’ll have another post ready that goes into more detail about the criteria we use, and possibly suggest some things that candidates can do to show us that they fulfill them. Part One: Résumés and Cover Letters of “How to Get a Job at Fog Creek (and Other Selective Software Companies)” is up!
You’re an idiot! (For expecting intelligent responses from Reddit, Digg, Fark, etc.)j/k (You’re just naive)
I just checked my comments on your original post on reddit. Whoops. Sorry for calling you an idiot. To be brutally honest I was writing to a reddit audience. Having strong opinions and being a little ass-holish about something will get your point noticed (read “upvoted”) on reddit. That’s not an attempt at justification; it’s probably worse than calling you an idiot because really I through you were one.In my defence I did admit I misread your post. I even felt stupid for missing the “7 points” link which gave your post a lot more context (which I just saw an hacker news that you added after my original comment). I do think you could have made your point clearer – you spent more time complaining about applicants than providing constructive suggestions.
Reddit is 4chan without the child porn. It’s unfortunate, because Reddit used to be a great community. It’s garbage now.
what did you expect from our current crop of internet populace? everything should be free, all advertising is punishable by death, and everyone should get exactly what they want without putting in any effort. and they should get it instantly.we are all screwed. we’ve gone so soft it’s ridiculous.
Leonard Desnau is 4chan without the witty intelligence.
Well you’ve heard of reddit being that you chose to post there. So where is the surprise here? It’s populated by cynical nerds looking for the next lame pun. Pure entertainment – not a place for demographic studies or sincerity. I can’t believe you took the time to write this, what were you hoping to get out of this? Publicity? Idiot.
I love the amount of Reddit-hate in this thread. Anyone from Reddit reading this: you suck and I hate you.
You were certainly bothered enough by reddit to formulate a whole blog entry dedicated to what big whiners reddit are, and they suck — but hey, HNN are totally cool man.Can I have my 5 minutes back?
Why were you surprised that the leftists on Reddit failed to understand the meaning of the word “apply”? As evidenced by their ideology all Leftists, including the entire Democratic Party, continue to fail to understand the meaning of the word “pursuit” in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.
You’re doing a brilliant job igniting such a relevant conversation. Never mind Reddit – let haters hate! Kind Regards, and great work -
I was shocked at the response to your cover letter post. We don’t even look at resumes that don’t include a personalized cover note. This seems so obvious I can’t fathom how it escapes people. If I’m one of the 100 companies you’ve spammed your resume to, you can be assured that you will not work here.
I work at a Fortune 100 company and we don’t even look at cover letters. Hell, we barely even look at the resume. Everything is scanned in and keyword matched.Of course we get hundreds (sometimes thousands) of applicants a week.
Jake, that seems to fit the “trying to find warm bodies to fill cubicles” thing that he mentioned nicely, no?
I don’t get it, your post made perfect sense and it sort of pained me that you even had to point it out yet the fact you did means that it needed to be pointed out as so many folk are doing it.I don’t post jobs often but when I do I also follow the, no decent cover letter (or even a little intro in the email) and your in the bin. Its a simple rule to follow for easy to gain points in my eyes.Failure to look after the little bits when applying for a job gets me worried about what other details they may over look when in the job, commenting, test, switching coding styles, etc. Its a filter but one that everyone should get through, its not that hard to do, yet so many fall at the first hurdle.More please
Whew! Thanks for writing this, and the other post; I don’t know about others, but I’m graduating in the next month and still in the middle of applying for jobs. A lot of the process on the company’s end is a mystery to me, and I’ve been worrying about the time that I spend on cover letters, especially as it puts a little chink in my productivity (I tend towards that get-it-right perfectionism, and having another thing to prepare and polish means that I spend time preparing and polishing it). I’m glad that companies are actually looking at it, and that they care. And it’s great to hear from people like Jake, because I feel like there’s a lot of places which are more set up to do keyword matching (I always get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I have to re-enter my resume in a few dozen text boxes on their website). I’m wondering about something else, though. So far, I’ve written only few brand new cover letters (mostly for different sorts of software companies: large companies, start-ups, etc…) which highlight why I think I would be an asset, and why I really care about software development. For each company, I customize this standard cover letter after I spend time and look through their website, writing a first paragraph about what attracts me to them. Is that too formulaic? Would it be better or more interesting from your perspective if I just stream-of-consciousness “I remember the night when my webhost said that the online game I developed in my spare time was taking too many CPU cycles, and threatened to close my account unless I fixed it…without shell access, without a way to profile it, and with the threat of suspension if I didn’t get it right the first time.”? I worry that such stories are too self-indulgent, and I think in the back of my mind, I’ve always thought that these are more appropriate for interviews.
As important as a great cover letter can be, it’s just one component of a successful application. I’m sure we’ve hired folks without cover letters, just like we’ve hired folks who A) don’t read software blogs, or B) don’t do programming on the weekends, or C) any of those other “magic bullet” qualities that all great software developers are supposed to have.It’s about assessing the individual and being able to see their entire quality, and imagine how that would fit into your organization.That said, a great cover letter is HUGE. There’s no formula for these things, but if you can understand what the organization is looking for, and can communicate how you might fit in there, then you’ve gotten past the first (the first three or four) hurdles right there.And I suspect the process of learning what you need to learn to accomplish this just makes you a better hire in and of itself.Great article! We’re always reviewing resumes and interviewing here at FreshBooks and it’s really hard finding folks who fit in with what we’re looking for.
I think you’re dead right in being as selective as you can be – the worst jobs I ever took were also the easiest interviews/application processes, and vice versa. Being surrounded by people who aren’t passionate about what they do is awful. If an applicant can’t muster enough passion about a place to write a cover letter or at least customize one to match the company, I wouldn’t want to work with them..And, nice captcha
As a behavioral psychologist, I always found this issue an interesting one and there is a lot of great research out there. Personally, I think a cover letter is a must for any company where hiring for team fit is important (certainly we don’t accept people without a cover letter at Thrive) and I see the whole process as a bit like dating: in a good fit, you want them and they want you. Want to get better people to your company? Become someplace that is genuinely worth working for. Want to get a job at an awesome company? Become someone worth hiring. And really, is a cover letter too much to ask?
This is my first visit to this site, so apologies for the meta-comment, but is that the Reed college griffin? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F… — I was surprised to see the griffin but no mention of Reed on your résumé. Is that a more universal symbol?
Good going dude..really the information shared by you is very important. These tips are helpful for freshers.