What I look for in a cover letter

Almost every cover letter is the same letter. The same adjectives, the same enthusiasm for a company the writer learned about an hour ago. The ones that land describe a specific thing the person actually did, in the voice they actually speak in. That is hard to fake and quick to read, which is the whole advantage.

You can read a hundred guides on cover letters and still produce generic ones. The dataset that fixes it is the one you build by drafting, sending, getting ignored, and rewriting. The candidates who sound like themselves on the page almost always wrote a lot before that letter landed.

McCord and the Netflix team built a hiring culture where ”fully formed adult” beat ”ten years at a brand name.” The Culture Deck -- viewed over twenty million times -- argued that the signal you want is evidence of judgement under real constraints, written in the candidate’s actual voice.

When I am writing anything that has to do work -- a cover letter, a pitch, a homepage -- I try to land one specific signal well. The temptation is to stack five at half strength. The habit I am building is to cut four and let the one breathe.

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.