How important is a cover letter when its optional on corp site?

Just curious how important it is to put a cover letter when applying for a job on a corporate site ie the careers section. They say its optional or maybe the wording is, "if you'd like to include it". Is this another subliminal test or do you think that very few people actually read the cover letter?

Also, those not applying to IB interships and the like, are you guys mainly applying through the corporate website or is that kind of useless these days?

5 Comments
 

a cover letter is an annoying paradox: it's not important, but you should definitely send one otherwise you risk getting dinged. that being said, nobody ever spends more than a minute reading the cover letter, so no need to obsess over it.

Capitalist
 

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