Covering letters are very irritating, but mostly necessary

If you're applying for multiple jobs, and doing so online, you may reach a point at which you start to question the value of writing yet another cover letter describing why you're suited to yet another role that you're applying for speculatively and may get absolutely nowhere with.

Don't go there.

Although covering letters are time consuming, repetitive, can state the obvious, and may never be read, they're probably still worth it.

"CVs all tend to look very similar," says the global head of recruitment at one international bank. "The covering letter is a little bit of an opportunity to make yourself stand out. It forces you to try a little harder and to express your motivation for applying for that particular role."

"If you're responding to a particular advertisement, we would always encourage a covering letter," agrees Oliver Harris, a director at recruitment firm Robert Walters. "The covering letter is what brings a CV to life. It's a way of justifying why you're particularly suited to that role, highlighting areas of the CV that cover exactly the job in question and providing additional information such as your availability, aspirations, or work permit status."

Be aware, however, that your carefully crafted covering letter will count for nothing at all if your CV doesn't fit the role in question.

"We get so many responses to advertisements, most of them irrelevant, that the first thing we do is to scan the CV," says a director of another recruitment firm. "If it looks interesting, we might then look at the covering letter to see someone's rationale for applying.

However, he added that plenty of people write covering letters in an attempt to obscure their unsuitability.

"In most cases, covering letters are used to justify applications which don't totally fit the specified criteria," he adds. "If we're looking for two apples and an orange, and someone's got one apple and three oranges, they write a covering letter to justify why they're still appropriate.

And in the case of perfect candidates, he says a covering letter won't make much difference...

"Right now, employers are only looking for exact matches," continues the recruiter. "At the end of the day, if someone's CV looks right and they've got no covering letter we're going to contact them anyway."