Do recruiters and hiring managers read cover letters today? Absolutely! The reason cover letters get such a bad reputation is because most job seekers don’t take the time to write ones worthy of reading. When you write a cover letter that impersonal, old-fashioned and shows that you didn’t spend any time doing your research, it will get tossed. Just imagine being on the receiving end of a generic cover letter that someone copy & pasted from Google. To stand out from the thousands of applicants, it needs to grab their attention quickly and to be customized to the position and company you are applying to. The worst thing a job seeker can do is send a boring, generic, canned cover letter – that is how you quickly get a canned rejection back.