In my 300 failed job applications, the most preposterous thing is the cover letter. The reasons are obvious as follows:
1) If employers want to assess the wording and personality of an applicant from the cover letter, I am afraid they will be disappointed. ChatGPT can generate a beautiful cover letter with the information in a job advertisement;
2) If your CV does not contain essential keywords wanted by employers, then your cover letter will be consigned into a dustbin without any chance of being read.;
3) Nowadays, employers demand CVs brimming with internships and work histories, expecting undergraduates to boast a minimum of two years of work experience and four internships by graduation. Alternatively, they only want applicants from a select few prestigious universities. Without these credentials, your cover letter is likely destined for the trash bin;
(For this point, I have some funny experiences. Many HRs wanted the algorithm developed during my PhD years but rejected my job applications because I did not have any internship experience on my CV)
4) The most ridiculous thing is that employers want to find your passion for the job in your cover letter. Corporations today want every entry-level employee to outshine Bill Gates or Elon Musk, even their day-to-day task involves filling Excel spreadsheets, only. In the words of HR, they only want to hire the most outstanding graduates on this planet in the Solar System. From the perspective of the applicants, they (we) only want an ordinary job within our expertise to pay their bills. However, employers want to see we have been getting prepared for their positions since we were born; they want to hear we say “I cannot imagine life without this job!” Eventually, applicants have to sound ostentatious and melodramatic in their cover letters.
Finally, I have to subjectively note that we should not get astounded by the right-shift of the world, like the latest European Parliament Elections have demonstrated. When there are more than 100 applicants for every plain job, the hostility against elites and businesses are unlikely to be impeded.