Cover letter on hh.ru: do you need one and how to write it

You click "Apply" on hh.ru, the main job board in Russia, and it offers to add a cover letter. Writing one from scratch for every posting takes too long, pasting "Please consider my resume" is pointless, and leaving the field empty feels risky: what if the application is not opened without a letter.

There is no single rule. Some recruiters never read letters and go straight to the resume. Some read the first line in the list of applications and use it to decide whom to open first. And some postings make the letter mandatory, so the application will not go through without it. A better question is: in which cases is a letter worth your five minutes, and what should be in it.

When the letter gets read

A letter works when the recruiter has to choose among similar candidates or when the resume does not make your fit obvious:

• A small company or a startup where the team lead looks at applications personally.
• The posting explicitly asks you to write about yourself or answer a question. That is a check of whether you read the description.
• You are changing direction: from QA to development, from backend to data engineering. The resume shows the past, the letter explains the move.
• There is a question the resume will raise: a career gap, another city, short stints.
• You have a direct hit on the tasks of the role, and in the resume it sits on page two.

A letter changes almost nothing in mass hiring, where there are hundreds of applications filtered by keywords and experience. There the resume decides, and we have a separate post about it.

A five-sentence structure

A good letter reads in fifteen seconds. You do not need more than five or six sentences.

1. Who you are: role, years of experience, main stack.
2. Why this role: one specific detail from the description that speaks to you.
3. What in your experience matches the tasks: one or two facts, ideally with a number.
4. Practical details: format, city, when you can start, if it matters for the role.
5. How to reach you and that you are ready for a call.

The first sentence matters most: recruiters often read no further. "Hello. I am interested in your vacancy" says nothing. "Go developer, 5 years in fintech, built a payment gateway" says the main thing.

Example: a product company role

The posting: a backend developer for the payments team of a marketplace, with Go, Kafka and high load mentioned in the description.

Hello. I'm a Go backend developer with five years of experience, the last three in fintech. Your posting mentions moving the payment flow to an event-driven architecture: I did something similar, moving payment reconciliation from nightly scripts to Kafka, after which discrepancies showed up in five minutes instead of the next day. I've worked with loads of up to 3,000 requests per second and use PostgreSQL and Kubernetes daily. I live in Moscow, hybrid works for me, and I can start in three weeks. Happy to have a call, my Telegram and phone are in the resume.

The letter responds to a specific phrase in the posting and gives one fact with a result. The recruiter does not have to search the resume for why you fit: it is in the second sentence.

Example: a cold application

You are writing to a company with no matching opening, or applying to a role you fit only partly.

Hello. I'm a QA engineer with four years of experience, and for the last two I've been writing automated tests in Python and pytest. I don't see an open automation role with you right now, but I use your app and know the mobile team is growing. I could help with regression automation: at my current job I cut the manual pre-release run from two days to four hours. If such a role comes up in the next few months, I'd be glad to have a short call. My resume is attached.

It says honestly that there is no opening and offers a specific benefit. The ask is small: a call if the role appears. A letter like that is easy to answer with "we'll keep your contact", and that is already a result.

What not to write

• A retelling of the resume. It is in the next tab.
• "Responsible, communicative, stress-resistant." These words do not set you apart.
• "Please consider my candidacy for the position of…" The recruiter can see what you applied to.
• Your life story and reasons for leaving the last job. You will be asked on the call.
• Salary, unless asked. It is better to name a number at the screening, when you know more about the role.
• Empty compliments: "your company is a market leader." One detail you could only have learned from the posting or the product is stronger.
• The name of another company left over from a previous application. That is the most painful template mistake.

What to say when motivation comes up out loud is covered in the post "Why do you want to work here".

Template or tailored letter

A tailored letter is stronger, but you cannot write one for thirty applications a day. A practical approach has two tiers.

For roles you really care about, write separately. There are usually five to ten of them, and each deserves a few minutes: read the description and find one detail for the second sentence.

For the rest, keep a template, but a good one. Its first, third and fifth sentences stay constant: who you are, the main fact from your experience, contacts. Make two or three variants for different kinds of roles, for example product companies and outsourcing, and rotate them. A template should not contain a company name or phrases that sound odd without one.

An empty field is also fine if the posting does not require a letter and you have nothing to add to the resume. A bad letter is worse than none.

How to automate it

In Sobes auto-apply the letter is set at the level of a saved filter. There are three options: no message, templates (up to three variants, one of which is used for each application) and an AI letter written for each posting from your resume and your instruction. In the instruction, specify what you would do by hand: length, tone and the facts that must be mentioned. Auto-apply is available with a subscription.

Automation makes sense once the resume and filters are in order. Filters and resume bumps are covered in the post on visibility on hh.ru.

What to do now

Write your constant sentences: the first, the third and the fifth. Read them aloud and remove everything that could be said about any candidate. Then open the posting you like most, find one detail in it and add the second sentence. That letter becomes the model for the rest.