I've read many different views on the subject, here's mine:


First, this assumes you are applying for a programming job in a US-Centric market. Every area has different rules. Applying for a job in Athens will have radically different customs than applying for a job in Berlin or London or San Francisco.

Most (but not all) of the US is fairly lax when it comes to formality during hiring. This is especially true in the game industry, and more lax in the west than the east.



For most big companies all they want is a copy of your resume, which gets entered to the database. Nobody will ever read a cover letter. Nobody will see it because it doesn't get into the database. It effectively doesn't exist.

For medium companies they want it as part of your email (not a separate document). They will look at it *ONLY* if they have looked at the resume and like it, and still want more info. Why read 200 documents when you can look at 100?

Even at small companies, while they might read your cover letter when the email arrives, it will generally not be a compelling factor in the decision to interview. If you have some links to your games they *MIGHT* click on them, but those same links should also be in your resume and are just as clickable for the person viewing it in Word or PDF.

You should still write something, since a few companies will consider it, and many will use it to route the resume to the correct department and job listing. Write something, but it generally is meaningless to the interview process.






If you get nothing else out of this:


The cover letter is only seen by a few people. The resume is seen by everyone. Plan accordingly.

Other than that, posters that said work should speak for itself are right, but I can't make things out of thin air; outside of these small demos I have nothing much to show further; that's what I've got, that's what I included in the letter. In my previous jobs I was a regular codemonkey of run-of-the-mill desktop database apps; nothing exceptional or remotely interesting I can speak of. In the resume, I list my skills in detail, the languages and APIs I know and a very brief word about what I did in the previous jobs, but other than that I can't sell what I don't have. In response to ChurchSkiz, I can't see how I could "prove" my technical skills in a short cover letter which is, as they state, used to 'introduce yourself'...I attached links of my portfolio in a seperate file(there are 3 file in the email: The cover letter, resume with education,skills,previous jobs and portfolio with the video links), that's all I have.

You HAVE demos, discuss them. What technique or toolset did you use? How did you apply it? You have 2 paragraphs about why you want to work there and not even a single sentence about your specific technical knowledge. It should be the other way around.

As for "just being a code monkey", are you saying you didn't do anything special or interesting at any of your jobs? You didn't learn anything or contribute to the team in any helpful way? You didn't work on an interesting project or come up with any innovative ideas? No one wants to hire someone who just gets by, they want to hire people that add value to their team. How did you add value to your last jobs? How will you add value to this company?

There's been a lot of good advice about what to put on it so far. I haven't written one in a while but if I did it would look something like this:

<brief introduction of who I am and what job/industry I was/am in>
<quick summary of what job I am applying for>
<1-2 specific examples of a successful project I was involved with. In your case I would do one from your work and one from your demos.>
<Tying those examples to the skillset that the employer would need>

On rare occasions my manager would ask for my opinion on a few resume's and cover letters and whether or not any of the people would be someone I'd want to work with. My understanding is that this sort of thing isn't unusual. The cover letter is a their first impression on me. When there isn't much in the cover letter I would start trying to read between the lines in what was there to see what sort of conclusions I could come to. The cover letter is an opportunity to explain why a CFO is applying for an entry level programming job. If it's not there I'd be thinking to myself that this person who used to have more responsibility is going to be bored in a lower level position. Or it's an opportunity to explain that despite a short resume, a candidate has had lots of experience with side projects which shows interest in the profession rather than they're just getting the job because mom and dad think that programming is a respectable job and that's the field they've been herded to. I used my cover letter to try explain that I was unemployed for a year to attempt to produce my own project. Otherwise there's this gap in my resume that might look like I was in prison or something.

The cover letter likely won't do anything to help you survive through the stage where 100s or pages are sifted through but it might be just the edge you need when you're down to the final 5. You still want to sound professional and organized but it may be the perfect place to detail your assets that aren't appropriate within a typical resume.