I have never once seen a real hiring manager look at these, most good candidates aren't going to be writing ones specific to your company. I'm sure its nice to be 37S.
If you're talking to a "hiring manager" who "doesn't read cover letters", you've already conceded the game. Also, speak for yourself --- I read cover letters in advance, and often don't even bother with the resume until the candidate is in front of me.
I have no idea why you think most good candidates won't be "writing specific cover letters for your company". Top talent doesn't shotgun resumes across 100 companies; they pick places they think they'll like, have a reason for doing it, and do everything they can to get the best possible offer.
Why would you not read their resume before the interview?
I spend a good 30-45 minutes building a list of questions based entirely on the contents of their resume. I couldn't imagine just looking at a resume and then interviewing a person off the cuff. Seems a little rude.
It is rude, but this happens a lot, especially at smaller startups. The chain of communication is usually a bit chaotic and most people are very busy. Sometimes people get pulled into the interview at the last minute, and so on and so forth...
Why would you interview someone based on their resume? Why wouldn't you take 30-45 minutes across all your candidates to build a list of questions that were actually relevant to your business? The cart seems to be dragging the horse here.
As a hiring manager, my experience has been the opposite.
When hiring staff members that need to be able to write documents as part of the job and explain things clearly, the cover letter can make a significant difference. Most good candidates do write ones specific to your company. A generic cover letter is an extension of the resume (at best) and often an indicator of a lack of interest (at worst).
Hi, I hire people. I read cover letters. I consider them almost as important as a resume.
If they are generic form letters that have been obviously sent to everyone without any modification, then I probably won't even talk to the person applying.
If they aren't interested in what we're hiring for, it makes me a lot less interested than what they have to offer.
Cover letters aren't hard. At all. I have a generic cover letter that I tweak a little bit for each company. Fill in the position I'm applying for, explain relevant experience, say that I'll "help the company $WHATEVER_THEY_DO", and if I'm particularly interested in working for the company, explain why. It takes 5-10 minutes tops. I don't think there's ever been a time that I didn't get a response when the job was particularly interesting. People tend to want to hire people who want to do the job.
This is seriously all it takes. All I want is some indication that someone has read the posting, and that they comprehend what we're looking for. Anything on top of that is a bonus.
I always tailor my cover letters to each company. On the other hand, I'm not shotgunning out 100s of resumes.
But, my experience on the other side of the table is that I've never actually gotten a cover letter passed on from HR. Or, if HR gave them to the hiring managers, they didn't pass them on to the engineers reviewing resumes & doing interviews.
I've done a fair amount of job interviews and cover letters are always stripped by our (internal) recruiters. When external recruiters are involved it looks like they do $ cat resume.doc | strings | mail iigs@company.com.
Maybe there's a strategy here:
Cover letter: I love frat-houses and beer! I want to bring my spiky hair to work for you!
Resume: When I'm not submitting patches to the RoR team I'm writing Scala code for my EC2 cluster.
It's a shame the economy is so bad. It would be fun to do some exploratory job hunting to see if this strategy would work.
