&gt; Once I talked a client into advertising a position themselves.  The signal-to-noise ratio was appalling and sorting through the flood of applicants took days.   Some cover letters were tragic, begging in broken English “I fast learner, my family starving, England less shooty, pliz you help us move?”.<p>Bah, you can rant without resorting to racist aping of ESOL speakers. Especially when the odds are good that the author only speaks one language.