Hustle on Cover Letter

My fellow chimps, do you think it's a good idea to briefly mention how much you've busted your ass to break into the industry on the cover letter for full-time recruiting?

I've asked around, but got contradicting answers. Senior levels seem to say "yes," while juniors tend to say "no." Since applications are mostly reviewed by alum analysts/associates, would including hustle on the cover letter appear a tool-ish thing to do?

Note this is for MM / BB IB from a target school.

5 Comments
 

It reeks of desperation and has virtually no upside. The trick to winning these things is to convince HR that you are a high quality candidate with lots of options. Graduating from a target with a solid GPA and relevant work experience is 80% of the mission. The rest involves showing the HR team that these hitherto achievements have been fucking easy for you to obtain. Think about it: letting them know that you had to work twice as hard as the other guy - for whatever reason - isn't very impressive, is it?

 

Do you care to elaborate a bit? I thought HR only forwarded emails, and it's only the analysts who scan through the apps.

But doesn't it also show I am motivated to break into the industry? I am sincerely confused at this point.

And would this be something to bring up in an interview?

 
Best Response

The short of it is that noone cares how hard you have worked to get where you are. They only care about results - in this case, a checklist of shit to tick off: GPA, College, Experience etc. Telling them how desperate you are to get into the industry is pointless and wastes valuable space in your letter. Just focus on being succint, confident, and well researched. Ultimately, you should try to emphasise cool charm as opposed to hard-working desperation. As lame as this might sound, I find that the guy who runs breaking into wall street to be a pretty good model of an attractive candidate: eloquent, confident, well researched, but constantly cool and composed. This is the shit that impresses bankers, not a whinge about how you had to work twice as hard as the other guy to get your foot in the door. On the job is a different story: you work your fucking ass off. In the interviews / application stages though, it's about showing them how easy it will be for you to produce amazing work.

Anyway, this is my 2c, and there is likely to be some disagreement on here, so take of what you will.

 

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