This, when I’ve got a new program or a program has updated I take my time to familiarise myself with it, it takes me more than five minutes because I’m visually impaired and have a learning disability, but it doesn’t take that long and I have fun exploring the program without pressure.
But when a program updates the UI the morning I start work and I realise I’ve got 5 minutes to figure out where everything has moved? It’s overwhelming and unfortunately I have a “freeze” response to stress and it took me years of therapy to push through that gut instinct to freeze up and just stare at it feeling like it’s too much and I can’t.
That said, I do still really struggle to find the button mid-meeting. I can vamp, but I can’t vamp while properly searching my screen because with my visual impairment that takes too much concentration, so the result is “okay I’m going to share my screen, but my UI has updated so everyone go refresh your coffees while I hunt down the screen share button” and some helpful person will try to explain where the button is, not understanding that my screen doesn’t look like there’s because I have adaptive software making things larger.
Though a few times I’ve logged a ticket to IT saying “I’m sorry, I know the issues exists between keyboard and chair on this one, I can’t for the life of me find the print button” and they’ll remote into my machine and say “oh, that’s because you’re enlarged font has pushed half your toolbar off the screen entirely. You’re missing a bunch of features” and suddenly it made sense why I felt like my co-workers were more efficient in these programs. Unfortunately they couldn’t fix it so I still have to work around only being able to see half the screen of this program they suggested “returning everything to the original aspect ratio and getting better glasses”
My boss seems to think our little 2 man IT department can fix Adobe’s bad adaptive UI.
I’m Australian and was always told the cover letter was unnecessary, especially if your CV has a bio.
The cover letter was for additional information not covered by the resume - name dropping the manager at the company you know who inspired you to apply, explaining why it appears your changing industries, justifying “overqualifications”, mentioning a personal hobby that’s relevant to the industry and isn’t technical work experience.
Basically the things you plan to bring up in the interview to wow them, you can introduce them while introducing yourself in a cover letter.
But if your resume lines up with the position description, you don’t need a cover letter.
Basically I was told a cover letter is necessary when you’re a burnt out nurse or teacher applying to be a cashier at kmart to avoid having your resume immediately thrown out.
That said. I’ve literally never written one, even as a serial industry hopper. If there’s no email address to send my resume too, then the system is too auto for a cover letter and they don’t want to read it anyway, if there is an email address, just include a few lines of a short cover letter in the body text of the email before attaching your resume.