Doing a short course atm. Was having a discussion around job applications and cover letters specifically.
We were told not to include any gendered terms, such as Sir/Madam, Mr/Ms, etc, because "In our modern era, you don't know whether the person you are addressing fits into those categories, even if you know their name" and "You should only ever use a first name, to avoid causing offence" (i.e. no "Mr Adams" or "Ms Smith")...
This is insane to me. I know this will obviously vary by country, but for an instructor to pass that off as some sort of "a given", or even like "You should already know that, you goddamn troglodyte" is... Pretty concerning, to me.
First it was "Use my preferred pronouns, bigot", and now it's "All gendered terms of address are offensive and outdated, bigot". In goddamn formal communications.
Madness. We really are at a cultural dead end.
HR is absolutely full of social justice losers that love pronouns. Since your application has to pass through HR first at most major corporations, this is good advice.
One thing I'd note though is that if you know the name of the person you're sending your application to, why don't you know their pronouns? You should at that point. If you got the name from a website then if the pronouns were obscure you can bet they would have been listed right after the person's name on the website to the public. If it just so happens that it's not a social justice thing but it's one of those circumstances where it's say a woman with the name Jordan and you assumed it was a man, this mixup happens all the time so even if you get it wrong, everyone in the office will just get a chuckle out of it. If anything, the mistake will make you more human. It won't impact your job outcome. If it did, you wouldn't want to work for Ms. Jordan anyway. The point I'm getting at is by the time you have a name for a job application you should have their pronouns anyway.