Cover letters - why do companies bother with them? I know at least a dozen people who have admitted to nicking a perfectly written cover letter off the Internet and just changing the names and the work experience to their own. (Well, one of those people actually forgot to change the name from “John Smith” to her own - needless to say, she never heard back.)

When I’m in the position to hire people, I don’t give a hoot about where they used to work, what their bosses said about how they worked, what happened to that job, whether they live with their parents or with their ex girlfriend and her cat. In fact, I’d be a lot more likely to hire someone who can sum up their motives and motivations in a paragraph or two. What they’ve got to offer, why they think they’re good enough, and how we can contact them.

Sharp, smart, and simple.

Thinking of it like that, cover letters and softwares have a lot in common. We don’t want to have to go through tediously long “how-to-use” guides just so we can decide whether or not we want to pay for it. We want to see it and intuitively know what goes where and how it works. Now that’s efficiency, and that’s what we want to strive towards.