The cover letter was never about the writing

Every graduate in Riyadh applying for their first job learns the same ritual. A page that opens with excitement, lists three strengths, mentions the company's values and closes with gratitude.

Nobody really believed the page proved anything. The person reading it had two hundred of them and a few seconds each. What they could check was the surface: clean sentences, no spelling mistakes, the right length, the right tone. Those were easiest for people who grew up around confident talkers and good schools, and hardest for everyone else, whatever they could actually do.

So the letter was sold as a sign that you could think and argue. What it really showed was that you knew the format and were willing to follow it.

Now software can write that page in seconds, competently, on any subject, for anyone. A lot of people are upset about this, and some want it banned from the process.

I think it is good news. The ritual was weak, and it has just been exposed.

If the competent, polished, faintly empty version is free, it stops telling anyone anything. The cover letter, the routine report, the agreeable proposal: all of them just lost their value as a filter.

What still has value is the part a template cannot reach. A specific opinion about the company that the hiring manager has not heard. A question that makes them stop. A willingness to disagree with something in the job description and say why.

That was always the work. We just used to accept a neat page as a stand-in for it.

The bar did not get lower. It moved to where it should have been, which is somewhere only a person with an actual idea and some courage can reach.