"Due to the overwhelming number of applicants..." Dang. How many times have I heard this one? You mean they get so many resumes they just have the form email go out? This game of job hunting can be highly discouraging.

What about the ones where I send a carefully crafted cover letter off into the electronic void and get nothing back at all? Are they so overwhelmed they can't even send a simple form email? I picture some office worker buried alive in piles of resumes, a printer churning out an infinite queue of reasons why people think they should be hired.

I don't know what's more discouraging, being told you are in a pile so massive they will never get to you, or never hearing anything at all, keeping alive the faintest hope that, perhaps, these folks aren't being 'overhwelmed by the number of resumes'. Every hand-crafted cover letter is like one of my children and all I want is closure, to know if my resume was printed up in some far off Human Resource office to be pondered by an actual human or deleted without a second glance. Until one of my little children finds me a home I suppose I'll never know where these carefully designed testaments to my personality and work ethic are going. So I push on, clicking 'apply now', sending cover letters off into space, hoping and dreaming one will find its way back to me, with a boss.