Why I started using this blunt cover letter after applying to more than 1,200 jobs and rarely hearing back

JANUARY 22, 2024

Kevin Cash. – Courtesy Kevin Cash.

This as-told-to essay is based on an interview with Kevin Cash. Cash, who lives outside Portland, Oregon, has a background in business intelligence and working in semiconductor manufacturing facilities. Cash, 42, served in the Navy, is a member of the IQ society Mensa, and has five degrees, including an MBA. He’s been looking for a full-time job since getting laid off in November 2022 and posted online a cover letter he recently wrote that he describes as “no-nonsense.” The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

At my last job, a handful of people got let go after the company was acquired. They came in and said everyone’s job was safe. Then the day after they took the keys to the company, they’re like, “You’re gone. You’re gone. You’re gone.” I’d been there for six months and I was one of the higher-up employees so it was kind of an easy choice for them to cut me loose. Before I got that role, my job hunt lasted two and a half years.

I’m keeping track of my job search in a spreadsheet. The only benefit really has been to my sanity. When you’re submitting a résumé online, the standard procedure is to read about the position, read about the company, alter your résumé, rewrite it for each application, and come up with a cover letter.

You put all this time and effort into this application. You get emotionally invested in it — reading about it. This pay is great. And this is the scale. Can you imagine if I was on the upper end? This is what they do and I’m going to go ahead and research what this is because it touches my job and it’s listed on there, but it’s not something I have experience in. So I want to make sure I know about it as soon as they call me for the interview. You can get really excited about it and I did that for a long time. And then when you inevitably get ghosted or get your boilerplate rejection letter, which from my data is 99.51% of the time, it’s defeating. It can send you into a depression spiral. And I’ve been in that several times this job hunt.

I know that every time I submit a résumé, as I said in my cover letter, “there is a 0.49% chance that a human will even see this application, let alone this cover letter.” So yeah, for my sanity, the spreadsheet is keeping me from getting too excited about job opportunities. It’s really just helping me maintain an emotional balance.

One metric that surprisingly has not come up yet in the 1,200-plus résumés I’ve submitted is if somebody writes me a personalized email that’s like, “Hey, Kevin. We took some time to look at your résumé. And, you know, it looks good but this is a concern so we’re not going to be moving forward.” But 100% of the rejection letters that I’ve received are boilerplate. I’ve gotten 336 of those.

Now I just expect the ghosting. I’ve been ghosted 892 times.

I have a ton of experience. I can figure things out. I’m well-educated in several fields. I’m even a member of Mensa. But none of that seems to matter.

I feel like I have a lot to offer: I spent 10 years in college; I have five degrees. Two are associates. Most people don’t count the associates but, man, I was working overtime — seven 12-hour shifts at one point doing semiconductor research and development work. I was a new parent. It took me five years to get my associate’s degrees. I’d have two or three hours to sleep and then have to go do it again. Before that, I was in the Navy for six years and studied electronics engineering. I had secret clearance and worked on the ship’s missile systems.

I stopped pouring my heart and soul into my cover letters

In the past, if there was a cover letter, I put my heart and soul into it every single time. That was really draining. Then after a while, I was like, why am I doing this? It’s not even required. And so I quit sending out cover letters unless it was mandated. After the ghosting and the rejection letters, I dropped the amount of effort that I put in. There have been times when I was just fed up. Maybe I had a day where I got 12 rejection letters or more. I’m applying to this thing and I already see the data coming through: At that point, it was like 67% were black holes and 30-some percent were boilerplate rejection.

There was a time this past summer where when a cover letter was required, I’d be like, “Honestly, you’re hiring for this position. And this is a work I do and I need money.” And that’s all I put for my cover letter. I never heard back anything from anybody doing that.

With this latest cover letter, it was the first time that I came across a required cover letter in several months. So I was like, I’m going to be honest. “You’re hiring for this and this is what I do. And I’d like to have a job. I’m good at what I do. Give me a chance. But you know, based on my research, you’re not going to.” I honestly doubted anyone was ever going to ever see that cover letter other than on Reddit.

A cover letter submitted by Kevin Cash that he says is no-nonsense. – Courtesy: Kevin Cash

The reason I posted it was maybe someone would find this funny. I was also thinking maybe some recruiters are going to see this and maybe it’ll change the way they do things. Maybe they’ll start thinking about applicants as people who need to make a living instead of, “I posted this on LinkedIn yesterday and I’ve got 4,000 applicants.” That’s 4,000 people. We need to be able to eat and stay warm during the winter and you’re just letting the software go through and weed out these people who are qualified. Hopefully, they’ll see it. They’ll be like, “Wow, there’s somebody who has this much education and experience and he’s having this hard time getting through. Maybe we should look at them differently.”

I’ve tried using my network

I had a contact through my girlfriend at one of the major mobile carriers. I would love to work for a company like that — for any of these major mobile carriers — because they have the money to pay me to do what I do at the level that I’m at and they have tons of work so they’d keep me busy. So I get in contact with the woman on LinkedIn. She’s like, “Oh, I’d be happy to help out. It sounds like you’re qualified for a lot of stuff that we need. Go on the company website and find something you want to apply to.” So I find something and I go through the process. And I sent it to her but she didn’t get back to me right away. And I was like, “Well, I don’t want to be a late applicant.” So I applied to it. Then I heard back from her and I said, “This is the position. I went ahead and submitted it because I didn’t want it to be too late.” Her response was, “Oh, that’s not a real position. That’s one of our generic positions that we post to generate interest about the company.”

So how many jobs that are posted aren’t even real jobs? And people are applying to them, spending time. This is why I don’t put a ton of work into my résumé anymore. I’m applying to jobs that don’t even exist.

To make ends meet, I started doing Uber Eats again this past spring. I did that during my prior job search, too. I’m grateful for Uber Eats because I can just sit in my car and listen to podcasts and you make 20 to 30 bucks an hour doing that. The only thing is it’s $75 for a tank of gas and it puts wear and tear on your car.

I think hiring software has made itself obsolete because so many people can apply for so many jobs so quickly. It’s not really a viable resource to get in the door at any company. It was supposed to make it easier, but it’s actually made it harder and now the only way that you can get a job is if you know somebody. It’s harder at my age to not have the income to go out to events but I’m still trying.

As I said in my cover letter, “I just need someone to give me a chance.”

Courtesy: Business Insider