while the resume merely states facts about you the cover letter lets you tell the full story of
why you're the ideal candidate for the job so in this video i'm going to walk you through how to
write the best cover letter possible to maximize your chances of getting to the next stage in
the application process and stick around until the end for a pro tip on cover letters you've
probably never heard before so let's get into it so starting off with the cover letter structure
and it's generally structured in the following way firstly you're going to have the header
where you're going to have your contact details as well as those of your recruiter
followed by that you're going to have the opening or the introductory paragraph
then you're going to have white disposition or why this particular company where you basically state
your motivations after which you're going to explain why you're the ideal candidate
sometimes these two paragraphs can be flipped depending on how strong you think that's going
to make the cover letter and then towards the end you're going to have the closing in which
you thank them for your time and you reinforce your interest for that particular position
using the structure should get you around one page in length for the cover letter anything longer
in that is not recommended it is fine though if you have some white spaces within that one page
also for most corporate roles it's not recommended to have any images or fancy colors instead it's a
safe bet to just stick to a dark color and split them into a few paragraphs so it's easier to read
now that we know the structure let's get into the details of each section
starting off with a header section and this is fairly straightforward on the one hand you're
going to have the recruiter's information and on the other hand you're going to have your own
contact details and make sure you keep this appropriate especially with the email if you
haven't bothered to change it since you were say 13 years old and yes i used to like dragon ball
then and at this point you might be wondering what if i don't know the recruiter's info
don't worry too much about that i personally applied many times without having their contact
information and yet i still managed to move on to the next stage in the application process
overall there's really two main solutions to this number one is just to have the name of the company
and their address instead of actually having their is contact details and the other one is
just to delete that section so just have your own contact information instead overall when you greet
them you can start with dear sir madam or to whom it may concern if you don't have their details
obviously if you have the information make sure you put it as it's better than not doing so
next up we have the first big section which is the intro or the opening here you want to explain
a bit about who you are maybe you're a third year student at harvard university studying economics
or maybe you're a full-time employee at google say in their engineering department
then you want to express your interest in whatever particular position that you're applying to
and make sure you state it clearly some people like to have a hook in the first paragraph of
the cover letter basically to grab the attention of the recruiter usually this is something like an
accomplishment some recent news that the company has been involved in or what's probably most
common which is a mutual connection for example this can be as simple as after attending a career
fair at harvard university i had the chance to speak with bill smith a management consultant
at mckinsey and i was very impressed to hear about the company's unique culture
specifically now this person demonstrates that they've done their homework they went
out of their way to go to a career fair and try to meet with some mckinsey reps
and they even managed to talk with a management consultant in bill smith also now the recruiter
is intrigued to know what they mean by the unique company culture of mckinsey overall if you can use
a hook that's great but it's not going to damage your cover letter if you don't have one either
next up we have widest company slash disposition so here you want to explain what motivates you to
apply for this particular role at this company and it's often very useful to read through the
company's about page to see what they're all about and at the same time go through their job
description for example if we were applying to a role at mckinsey as a business analyst we could
look through their job description and here we can discover that the company really places a big
emphasis on developing their employees as you can see they provide training mentoring and leadership
opportunities among many other things so to answer the why this company part we could mention
in a paragraph something like i'm attracted to mckinsey as junior employees receive training
mentoring and substantial responsibilities to continue growing in their career at their company
and then for why this particular position you can look at some of the bullets that describe
what you'll be doing so here it seems like it's going to be problem solving working with teams
and presenting effectively so you could say something along the lines of the business
analyst role is particularly appealing to me for a challenge of solving complex problems
collaborating as a team and communicating our findings effectively to senior management
as a bonus you can mention specific news articles that the company you're applying to
has been involved in this is quite common in law or in banking with it where they tend to
be high profile transactions and so you can often read about them on the news as well
next up we have the why you're the ideal candidate section and this is your sales pitch basically
you want to highlight why you this company and this particular position are the perfect match
and again it's helpful to look through the job description to see what the requirements are
so going back to the mckinsey business analyst role you can find that they're looking for people
that can break down and solve complex problems specifically through quantitative analysis
and they should also be comfortable with ambiguous ever-changing situations with
that in mind you should be able to find relevant examples of you doing that in the past for example
this could be this past summer i interned at an ngo fighting poverty or i was involved in
solving the complicated logistics of delivering perishable food to people in need across the city
i created an excel model that predicted the departure and arrival times of food containers
allowing us to efficiently transport food to over 50 000 people with savings worth around ten
thousand dollars a year now this example is made up but it highlights that it was a complicated
problem that was ever changing and it required an analytical tool in this case excel to try to solve
it and lastly you i tried to quantify wherever possible just to make sure that the recruiter has
enough context of how big it was as you saw from this example even though mckenzie is a management
consulting firm while the ngo is completely non-corporate the way we presented it it does
look like there are quite a few transferable skills while this example is for a job it can
also be for an extracurricular activity like a competition or as part of your coursework as well
one common mistake that i often find in this section is apologizing for a lack of experience
for example i often see things like although i have limited professional experience i believe
that my relevant courses in university provide the necessary knowledge to succeed in this position
here there's no need to mention that you have a limited professional experience after all you're
just highlighting your weakness when they haven't even asked for it instead you can flip this around
to something more positive like i'm excited to apply the business theory i've learned at
university in a more practical environment such as this business analyst position now it doesn't seem
like you have a weakness instead it just looks like you're excited to transfer some of your
theory knowledge into more practical stuff as for how many examples or paragraphs you should have
in this section there's really no clear guideline as long as it makes your cover letter stronger and
it doesn't surpass the one page mark you should probably have it in there next up we have the
closing and this has to do with two main things firstly you want to reinforce your interest in
the company and secondly you want to thank them for their time so it can look something like this
for the first section it can be i'm confident that my background education and work experience
will yield the right set of skills for the business analyst role at mckinsey
so it briefly summarizes the points you mentioned in the cover letter and it clearly states what
role you're interested in in particular making it a full loop all the way from the intro
then for the second part this doesn't really have much to it it can be something
like thank you very much for your time and consideration in reviewing my application
and the big elephant in the room should you update your cover letter for each application that you
send i personally recommend having a few different templates depending on the industry that you're
interested in so for example if you're a business student you could be interested in finance
accounting and consulting and so you would have three different templates after all a
consulting job and an accounting job are probably going to have some significant differences on the
other hand if you're applying to a consulting job at ui or e-consulting job at kpmg they're
probably going to be somewhat similar and so it makes sense to use that same template for that
and here's two additional resources you might find helpful the first one has to do with a free
cover letter template that i've linked in the description and make sure you hit that like and
that subscribe along the way and secondly it has to do with specifically for students it's a career
center at your university i personally studied at cornell and this is what their career center
looked like basically says to come see us for help with your career exploration cover letter
and so on after all when you think about it from their point of view if their students are going to
the best companies in the world that's obviously reflects positively on them and so it's in their
interest to really try to help you up alright so the pro tip that you've been waiting for once you
have a cover letter storyline that you're happy with you can recycle its content for example you
can take a portion of your cover letter and put it onto a cold email similarly when they ask you
in an interview to tell me about yourself you can use the cover letter introduction to answer
that question or lastly in your linkedin bio you can also put it in there as your summary
so that's a pro tip if you want to see my actual cover letter you can check out this video over
here and if you want to see how to make a proper resume check out this video over here that's all
for this one hit that like hit that subscribe if you liked it and i'll catch you in the next one