typo in cover letters
so i just realized that i have a small typo in some cover letters i sent. does this = auto ding?
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Career Resources
Do you have any of the following listed below:
a. A magnificent resume with a near perfect 4.0 from a target institution.
b. Know someone who can retype your cover letter in HR.
c. Your dad, uncle or cousin are prominent members of the firm.
If not, sorry kid. In my experience, your app probably didnt get past the mail check...but good luck...
I had a typo in the 1st sentence of mine for my GS submission, but i also fell into category A above and therefore got away with it.
exgsbanker, how big was your typo? mine is just the addition of one extra letter where it shouldn't be.
pretty bad. I repeated something twice...
The girl was walking was walking to the store.
During my summer internship the group I was in was looking at applications for full-time. An associate commented that he didn't really 'read' the covers, but he was looking for grammatical mistakes and typos. If they were even selected for interviews, they were likely asked/hassled for it.
More often than not, when working on recruiting, I didn't read them. When you get 400 resumes from 1 school and are picking 12-24 interview slots, cover letters take too much time to consider.
and this cover letter had the same typo as EXGS. Got all 5 interviews, 4 banks didn't notice, the last bank hassled me but once I did well in the beginning of the interview it became something I laughed at with my interviewer.
Like GS, I had a near perfect GPA from a target school and wasn't a dork.
Don't worry about it too much, what is done is done.
I put the wrong year in the date in my cover letter. I had used it for some applications in december and when January rolled around I changed the month and day, but not the year. I still got interviews everywhere I applied except 1 bank. Although I'm sure my gpa did help out.
I wrote something like 'My resume in enclosed'. Still waiting :(
typos in cover letter (Originally Posted: 08/27/2014)
So i've started to submit my applications to some of the top consulting firms, and just discovered a typo in my cover letter. I use the phrase "with graduate", instead of the proper phrase "will graduate". On a scale of 1 to give up, how much will this impact my chances? Be honest - if this is something that essentially disqualifies me, please let me know, as I will have to plan accordingly and pursue more alternatives.
If those two words are less than 1% of the entire cover letter (which I'm assuming to be the case), I'm sure it won't make a big impact unless someone has serious OCD.
High chance it won't even get read or noticed even if read
Don't make the mistake again though
Small Error on Cover Letter/Resume (Originally Posted: 07/01/2015)
Hello,
Before anyone else tells me to use the search bar, this situation is slightly different.
On my application, I mentioned that I worked at a research shop and did some equity investment analysis based on a company's FY 2014 and FY 2015 results, not knowing that I was confused and that FY 2015 results are not published yet. I should have stated FYE2014 and FYE 2015 (fiscal year ended 2014 and 2015), as those results are published.
Will this mistake result in an instant rejection?
Or am I being overly pessimistic?
Thanks.
Let's just hope the skills needed for the job are not attention to detail, analyitical or written communication huh???? Just kidding... No one will notice... What job you going for?
Thanks for the answer.
I'm currently applying to some smaller boutiques for potential school-year internships.
Any more insight regarding my situation is appreciated.
Cover Letter Typo (Originally Posted: 01/26/2012)
I JUST realized that I put the wrong date (2011 instead of 2012) on the header of ALL of my cover letters. how screwed am i?!?!
Better leave the country because you're going to get black listed from the street.
lol you're fine. fez is joking in case u didnt figure that out.
for myself, i may not notice since i write 2011 at work still pretty often others may find it funny
thanks hope you're right. that is such a dumb mistake though
Made this mistake on two of my cover letters (for MM IBs in Europe). I was rejected in a ridiculously short time of both banks.
Hope you'll have some more luck!
Honestly, you just drastically reduced your odds of getting interviews.
It's a fucking TOUGH job market out there right now. Firms are having to ding numerous, well-qualified candidates for the smallest errors simply because everyone else's is so good. I've dinged several kids in resume reviews for shit as petty as spacing issues, so the wrong year would have made you get a ding unless you had a SUPER exceptional resume. But even then, it would hamper your credibility, as how could someone with an amazing resume lack that kind of attention to detail?
Good luck.
Will this constitute a typo in my cover letter? (Originally Posted: 09/20/2013)
In a large majority of cover letters I've sent out, I've put "large account receivables" as opposed to "large accounts receivables"
is this going to be an auto ding?
Thanks
IMO, both are incorrect. Shouldn't it be, "large accounts receivable?"
This is probably the worst thread in the history of threads.
Agreed with ChiTown.
But honestly, don't bother worrying about this. It may be an autoding, it may not. Most places don't even read your cover letter so you're probably fine. But there's nothing you can do about it at the firms you already submitted to, so just fix it in your future apps and move on.
EDIT: haha yeah agree with duff too
cover letter mistakes (Originally Posted: 01/08/2013)
Hey new member here but long-time lurker of WSO forums. Just made some rookie application mistakes and decided it's time to post. So, in my efforts to try to be a good applicant and write individual/personalized cover letters for each bank I applied to, I seem to have made 2 mistakes on 2 different cover letters. You don't need to tell me how dumb these are because I'm fully aware and feel like an absolute idiot right now. The first mistake I made was having a word twice in a row, ie. "the the M&A group". The second is even dumber and I forgot to put my full address on one and just put my house number and street and forgot City, State, Country (I'm aware how retarded this is).... Am I screwed or could these go unnoticed / how much would a recruiter care if they DID notice. I know this would signify I have bad attention to detail if someone notices but I'm just curious. Auto ding? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
Did you apply to a BB? Most of the time no one even reads the cover letters so I wouldn't really worry about it too much. Hopefully you have the right address/contact info on your resume though...
the consensus seems to be that nobody reads cover letters and that you are good to go...
I normally scan cover letters for any blatant mistakes, and the address one would probably have a higher chance of being noticed.
Try to see if there's a way to reupload your documents?
Cover letter mistake (Originally Posted: 12/15/2009)
OK so I did it, instead of writing complement I accidentally wrote compliment. No body who read my cover letter spotted this and I already whizzed it off to 30 or so banks.
How bad is this?
well lets pretend this were an interview sizing question
30 cover letters assume that 25% actually skim it = 7.5 assume that actually 25% of those actually read it = ~2 assume that 50% or 1 of the 2 is a complete asshole and will punish you
--> (1) 1st round in the trash! adjust assumptions accordingly :)
No one will find it
Honestly, most people I've met at investment banks are TERRIBLE at spelling even common words. I'd be surprised if they even found it.
Yea, relax. Honestly nobody will really read it anyway (they go straight to the resume and look at GPA/School most likely), those who do probably won't pick up on it, and if they do they may care, they may not. My MDs send out emails with spelling errors and grammatical mistakes all the time, just make sure you don't do it again, and don't do it on something that will eventually be put in front of a client, because anything going into a client will get a lot more than a 4 second skim like your cover letter will.
Chill
I had a friend who applied for summer internship to barcap and started his cover letter like this:
"Dear JP Morgan Stanley Recruitment officer"
The interviewer goes,
"ok...a quick question first, JP Morgan Stanley....is that a new company?"
haha very funny. my friend has a similar story: she had an interview with MS but went to JPM office only to realize she was in the wrong place at the right time.
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