I stopped writing cover letters. I send Loom videos now.

applied to 4 roles last month. zero cover letters. instead i recorded a 90 second loom for each one - me, my face, walking through 1 specific thing about the company i actually cared about and 1 specific thing i could fix. 3 of the 4 came back within 48 hours. one of them straight up said "we usually take 2 weeks to screen, you skipped the whole queue". cover letters are dead because everyone knows the candidate didn't write it and the hiring manager isn't reading it. its just compliance theater. a video is the opposite - it's obviously you, it's obviously specific, it can't be ai-generated (yet). if you're job hunting right now stop polishing the pdf. record the video.