Dear JobsBlog:  I am trying to find out a way to submit my cover letter while applying for a job on Microsoft's career website. When I log on, it gives me an option to fill out my name and general information and paste my resume in text format. There is no text box to paste my cover letter. Does this mean that no one submits a cover letter while applying for a particular position?

Answer:  Great question since career sites vary so much throughout the industry. 

Applicants sometimes choose to submit more specific information along with their resume in the form of a cover letter.  Keep in mind that cover letters are not required, and not all recruiters recommend them. You can always provide additional information about your background in different ways, like including the highlights in a summary section at the beginning of your resume - or by providing a summary email directly to the recruiter once you are contacted about a position.

But if you want to submit your cover letter at the application stage, here is how you could go about doing so:

When submitting your resume via the Microsoft Career Site - as you've already noticed, there is no cover letter field.  However, you do have two options to ‘create’ your resume:

• Resume/Resume Builder
• Copy / Paste

If you choose to use the Resume Builder option and want to submit more information such as a cover letter, it would be best to do this (in my opinion) in the resume OBJECTIVE text field.  You could combine your Cover Letter and Objective in one area. 

If you choose to COPY / PASTE your resume, I would suggest you add your desired cover letter text to your resume and THEN copy and paste the document in its entirety into the copy / paste field. 

One thing that might be nice to know from the candidate perspective is that even though you apply to one specific position and choose to include a cover letter, all Microsoft recruiters will be able to view this data, not just the recruiter assigned to the position you applied to.

Check out our past thoughts on cover letters.

Angela