Or not.

Over the past few months I've been helping the recruitment for a software firm. It's a small company that has produced award-winning products and is run by two smart and talented individuals. They have a decent amount of cash in the bank, a full order book, a lovely working environment, great people and are at the forefront of some very cool technology. (No, I can't name them.)

His role in this is to impart the importance of the covering letter and how critical it is to get your CV looking spick and span. More directly related to our discussion here is the process he outlined - which mainly centred around building a database of companies you would like to work for, writing a cover letter and hassling each of the companies in turn until one of them gave you a job.

What's (generally) wrong with agencies

This is

One good way to do this (to return to the example of my client at the top of this article) is to have a detailed job spec on your site, together with contact information and tons of information on the product or the company.