How important is cover letter
 

Do MNC companies such as db, Apple, google emphasize a lot on your cover letter and academic performance? Any tips on resume guide to secure an interview with these companies ?

Academic performance, past working exp determines whether you get call up. cover letter is useless.

if there are 2 equally good candidates, the next thing to look at is the cover letter. if your background credentials is really solid, heck you dont even need a resume.

I beg to differ. If there are two good candidates, these two will be called for interviews. In the case after interviewing, there are two remaining good candidates, the hiring manager and dept manager assesses each candidates' interview with a point/grade system to choose pick one. Your cover letter is invisible. No one reads cover letters.

Don't underestimate the importance of a cover letter. What does a badly written, full of grammatical errors cover letter tells you? Or one with the wrong job title in the subject is probably someone who is rather carelessness.

that's because you already found they are already good candidates - a cover letter doesnt matter much. when you have shortlisted 10-50 good candidates, the one without cover letter is basically labelled as lazy and insincere.

Cover letter is useful when you are applying to a job that does not really fit you in terms of previous experience, e.g. career change.

You use the cover letter to quickly summarize how your present attributes can match with the requirements stated in the job ad.

If you are applying to the same job or job nature/title in different company, then yes, resume alone might be enough already, or sometimes just a recommendation can get you an interview - if the company is really desperate to recruit (not a good sign though!)

Thanks for the replies. They help solve my issues.

cover your kukubirdz.

My two cents from reading hundreds of CVs:

(1) Don't use archaic bombastic English like they used to do. The Indian nationals FTs do this a lot. It is a big turn off.

(2) Don't mispell words (especially the company name and the post you are applying for).

(3) A nice polite cover letter written in clear and simple English is always appreciated and makes the hiring person take another look at your application.

(4) Show humility - I once gave a job to a candidate who wrote that she will do all the "rubbish" work as she had no working experience, despite the fact that she had straight As. She turned out to be a superb employee.

:)