Parameters:

Let’s get right into the basics here. First and foremost, the cover letter should be, in total, 1 page. This means that from the address/heading down to the signature (and mention of attachments, if necessary), you should be no more than 1 page in length. I’ve seen cover letters that span over 2 pages, and let me be the first to tell you, straight up, this is way too long, and no one is going to read it, nor will anyone be excited by the amount of effort and/or information you’ve included in it. Simply put, this looks like you don’t know what to include and have therefore included way too much. So, we’ve got the 1 page down, but how should the 1 page look?

As you can imply from the name, the cover LETTER, is exactly that, a letter, and, as such, whether it is a separate attachment or the body of an email, it should resemble that of a letter. Start by including the basic information – essentially, your contact information and name at the top, then to whom you are addressing the letter – you don’t need a full address here, although if you’ve got the room, you are welcome to include it (this opening information can be left out if you are writing the letter in the body of the email, instead, just start with the next point, your greeting). Next, insert your greeting/opening – Dear Mr. XXX, or Good afternoon Ms. XXX (for non-email cover letters, you can also include the date just above this line if you want to and/or have room).

Moving past the opening and greeting, we get to the body of the letter. The body should be 3-4 paragraphs, although the last paragraph is a short paragraph, but we’ll get to that in a second. Paragraph 1 is the introductory paragraph, essentially, an introduction to you (school and major/current employer and role, etc – high level details only) and why you are interested in the specific opportunity with company X (the company and role to which you are applying).

Once you’ve got paragraph 1 done, you have paved the way for paragraph 2, which is essentially a continuation of the “introduction to you” in paragraph 1, but now with all details you want to highlight. Paragraph 2 should highlight your experiences with school and/or with your current/past internships/FT positions. Additionally, while you are discussing your experiences, you should briefly highlight their relevance to the position to which you are applying, especially if the relevant isn’t perfectly clear. For example, running the financial modeling of a closed deal as an IB analyst is obviously relevant to another IB position; however, being an engineering major, or even Finance major, or perhaps working in a corp fin role might not be and might warrant a quick few words on how the experiences are useful to IB.

Next, we come to our optional paragraph, paragraph 3, the extra stuff. Paragraph 3, just as the name implies, highlights other aspects of your candidacy that you feel are relevant and/or important to your candidacy, albeit not related to your professional or academic (major/coursework) experience. Paragraph 3 is where you will want to highlight your leadership, club involvement and non-profit experience. Paragraph 3 is a great opportunity to set yourself apart from other candidates and possibly even find some common ground with your prospective employer. Paragraph 3 can definitely be useful for those candidates applying to consulting positions, P/E and even smaller boutique IB shops in that these positions often look for what you’ve done besides grades and work, assuming, of course, grades and work are up to par. Additionally, paragraph 3 is often useful for those candidates that lack work experience, but have strong leadership experience, especially within relevant student organizations. Finally, while paragraph 3 can be helpful, it definitely isn’t necessary since: 1) you might not have enough room for it on your single page and you definitely don’t want to cut out important academic and/or professional experience to highlight something that is probably on your resume already anyway under a leadership or extracurricular section, 2) you might not have much leadership experience and you definitely don’t need a bunch of fluff in your resume and 3) many positions won’t really care that much about your EC experience and can find out what they need to know from your resume or from you in your interview – therefore, you can let your cover letter be a bit shorter and leave paragraph 3 out.

Finally, after all is said and done, we come to our last paragraph, paragraph 4. Paragraph 4 is a very quick paragraph in that paragraph 4 merely thanks the reviewer, mentions your attachments and contact information (phone and/or email) and closes out the letter.

With paragraph 4 done, you have your final lines starting with your closing remark (Sincerely, Best regards, etc) and then your name. If you want to, you can include an italicized line, 1 or 2 lines below your name (again, you want to keep it to 1 page) and call it “Attachments” or the like, and mention your resume – Ex. “Enclosure: Résumé”

Include it:

Now that we’ve covered the parameters and highlighted the major fields of your cover letter, let’s quickly run through what you should include in your cover as far as content is concerned. If you are a student, first and foremost you want to include some basics from your academia including your school, your grade, your major and any relevant coursework you have taken. When referring to relevant coursework (see Here for more), I am referring to the same coursework you would include in your resume – any finance and accounting coursework is at the top of the list, followed by math/statistics coursework, economics coursework, and, finally, any interesting strategy/leadership coursework. Moving beyond your undergrad basics, you want to include your club involvement, with a focus on those clubs that you have taken more of a leadership role in (especially those clubs relevant to IB – such as a Wall St. club, a Finance club, an IB or P/E club, etc). Finally, we come to your internship and non-profit experience. You definitely want to highlight any relevant work experience that you have as well as the interesting projects that you have worked on while there. If you have more than 1 quality internship on your resume, you can definitely highlight more than, but for each position/internship you list, you should include a little less experience/project responsibilities from each to keep the cover letter balance. For non-profit experience, I am referring to anything that is important to you or that you have taken a leadership in (for paragraph 3) and anything that is relevant to IB from a quant/analytical perspective (in paragraph 2 or 3 depending on how much additional work experience you have).

Now before anyone gets crazy, the previous paragraph is referring to undergraduate students or students in Master’s programs who don’t yet have FT work experience. Once you are a graduate, and have some FT experience under your belt, you want to change things up a bit. As a grad, you don’t need to include all of the information from your undergrad that you included as a current student unless you are applying for a position outside of your current FT role and your undergrad studies are relevant (meaning you work in IB and want to go into something completely different or the opposite). Assuming this exception isn’t the case, you don’t need to highlight all of your relevant coursework (although you can still keep it in your resume) and you only really need to mention your school, when you graduated, how you graduated (if it was with any honors) and what you majored in (although this last point isn’t necessary if it isn’t relevant to the position). From there, you want to delve fully into your current work experience first, and depending on how long you’ve been there and how many projects you’ve worked on, take the necessary space to highlight the position properly. After your current experience, you can briefly highlight one or 2 of your internships, again, if they are relevant, as well as a bit on what you worked on while there. The balance between FT and internships will, of course, vary, based on how long you’ve been at your FT role. Before I close out this article, let’s cover 1 last point – essentially, what not include in your cover letter.

Save it for the interview:

This section covers those points that, whether interesting or not, should not be included in your cover letter as they will be seen as more fluff, filler, or, at the very least, not relevant and when something is not relevant, it should not be included – remember, shorter is usually better (unless we were talking about a 3 sentence cover letter, in which case I would make an exception to the rule). First on the list is non-relevant coursework – essentially, if I haven’t listed it above, it is non-relevant. Yes, your history courses might be interesting, but they are probably not relevant. Therefore, if you want to discuss them, save it for the interview (see Here for help preparing for your next interview) and only if you are asked – don’t randomly go off on a 10-minute history course tangent. Next on the list would be non-relevant work experience. Included in this list is work experience that doesn’t involve leadership, analytical/quant skills or strong written skills. Essentially, you want to always be highlighting those experience that showcase the relevant skill sets sought after by bankers/potential employers. Finally, we come to the big no-no of cover letters and that is the dreaded overstatement (essentially, beefing yourself up too much). While you definitely want to be selling your candidacy, you also don’t want to pretend like you’ve done WAY more than you have, or taken on WAY more responsibility than you have (the same is ABSOLUTELY true for your resume). As a quick example, one of my friends from college was interning with a boutique IB shop the summer of his junior year and into his first semester. While he had an interesting experience and enjoyed his time with the firm, he really didn’t have much exposure to modeling – he spread some comps and such, but never really built any models. He had, however, seen some models and had taken some coursework in M&A and learned a bit about financial modeling and such. Well on his resume and in his cover letter, he figured that he knew enough to beef it up and decided to say that he built several DCF models and worked on several LBO models during his internship. While this seemed like a good idea at the time, he landed an interview with a BB and his first round interview was a technical interview and he got absolutely hammered on this experience and his financial modeling including his supposed DCF and LBO work. Suffice it to say that he did not do very well and did not get called for a second round.

That about does it for this article – as always, comment go below and emails can be sent Here!

What really constitutes a bad GPA?

Let’s cut right to it. A GPA of 3.4 or better is not, by any means, a bad GPA, and while many ill-informed people will try to tell you that you need a 3.8 or better to break into banking, they are absolutely wrong. There is no hard cutoff greater than a 3.4 to eliminate students across the board. Therefore, while you should certainly shoot for more than a 3.4 cumulative GPA, having a 3.4+ cumulative GPA is definitely strong, and will not keep you out of banking by itself. For more on the stronger GPA ranges as well as other GPA issues, click here.

Getting beyond the strong GPAs, let’s get into those that are not so strong. A GPA in the range of 3.2 to 3.4 is often thought of as bad, inexcusable, and hopeless in terms of breaking into investment. While a GPA in this range is definitely less than ideal, it is definitely not hopeless, and is not a terrible GPA by any means. Coupling a GPA in this range with a difficult major, some strong leadership experience, some networking, or some internship experience will definitely help to take the focus off your GPA and put your right back into IB opportunity contention. If you have the opportunity, I would absolutely recommend that you boost your GPA and get it as close to the 3.4+ as possible, but if not, even the strictest of cutoff points for IB is generally around a 3.3, and most of you in this range will fall at that level or above it (especially if rounding to 1 decimal place), so focus on the rest of your resume in addition to boosting your GPA and make the most of it.

Next we end up in the first category that I would actually consider bad – the 3.0 to 3.2 category. This category is the first category that is essentially eliminated from the applicant pool of many IB opportunities given the minimum GPA requirement of a 3.3, or even 3.2. Furthermore, applicants falling in this range of GPAs will have a tough time selling their candidacy to small boutiques, since these shops often rely on GPA as a bellwether of aptitude and ability to handle the workload and analytical demands of the job. Getting past the negative of the GPA, hope is not lost here in that there are still many firms that do not have hard cutoff points for cumulative GPA, and while the rest of your resume will be heavily scrutinized, if evaluated, you still have the opportunity to utilize some of the tips to break in, in spite of a weak GPA. Even with a GPA of this range, you are still in contention and can still show the cumulative GPA on your resume. Assuming you have a strong major GPA and have taken several upper level courses in your major, this supplemental GPA can definitely help to offset a weak cumulative GPA. While I would definitely focus on bringing the GPA up if in this range and make it a priority, if possible, I would not lose sight of the other aspects of my resume, and make sure to keep my major GPA as high as possible.

Finally, we come to the range that is truly cause for concern – GPAs below 3.0. When your cumulative GPA is below a 3.0, you need to absolutely focus on getting it back above a 3.0, even if the studying comes at the expense of other activities – in this case, if you have the opportunity, you want to that GPA above a 3.0 and you want a final, graduating GPA over 3.0. While some will disagree with this next statement, in my opinion, cumulative GPAs under 3.0 should be left off the resume. In other words, either display just the major GPA, or no GPA at all – I prefer listing the major GPA alone, but to each his/her own. The reason I suggest this if I see a resume without a cumulative GPA, I will usually assume that the GPA is around, but no higher than a 3.0 and go from there. If, however, I see a GPA of 2.86 or some such thing, in my mind I will have already moved past that candidate. Yes, I know many people will say that without a cumulative GPA they will do the same thing, for others, seeing a strong major GPA is enough to give the rest of the resume a look – however, if the GPA I see is a cumulative GPA of 2.91 or something, I will definitely have a very tough time getting passed it. Furthermore, I know a few friends in IB (yes, full disclosure, they come from target schools), who have cumulative GPAs in the very low 3s, and have decided to leave the cumulative GPA off the resume and display on the major GPA. Bottom line, if you’ve got the opportunity, you need to get that GPA above a 3.0.

Getting around the bad GPA

Now that we’ve pretty much figured out where the bad, decent and good GPAs lie on the scale, let’s go into how to best overcome, or at least try to overcome this one lacking attribute and still land in, or move towards landing in investment banking.

Networking

First, and foremost, networking is always the key to getting over any hurdle. If someone has deep enough connections, as I’m sure you’ve all heard stories, that someone can absolutely land a gig in IB regardless of background, GPA, experience, etc. Now I realize that most of us, myself included, do not have these sorts of connections, however, most of us do have some connections, or have access to a some sort of a network of bankers, whether through family, through friends or through school/alumni. The problem ultimately becomes the applicant’s trepidation to call on them. Yes, reaching out to alumni is often hard enough when you have a 3.8 GPA and attend a target school – it will certainly be more difficult, for many, when they have just a 3.3 GPA and attend a semi- or non-target. That said, you cannot, I repeat, you absolutely cannot talk yourself out of opportunities like that. Do not focus on the negative – instead, reach out to your contacts and build your network. As time moves forward and the relationship continues to remain alive, the comfort level will begin to rise, and the ability to overlook a small bump in the application/resume becomes much easier – result, you just might end up with a resume push/recommendation. To be fair, you may also end up with zero support – then again, if you don’t reach out at all, you will definitely end up with zero support. Don’t let fear and one dark mark on your resume keep you from pursuing your interests – I’ve seen analysts with a great many GPAs from a great many schools break in – don’t think that a lackluster GPA is going to shut every door.

Getting the grades up

This goes without saying, even though I’ve said it a few times already, but if you are still in school, you need to absolutely work towards getting your grades up – at least above a 3.3. While there are courses that you will want to take, and courses that you will have to take, for your major, for example, you should also look towards taking a few courses that are definitely easy “As.” No, you won’t be showcasing them on your resume as relevant coursework on your resume, but you will be using them to boost your GPA and, ideally, start to bring it up to levels that look much more attractive to both recruiters and bankers. Besides taking some easy courses, you will need to buckle down and focus. I know as students enter their senior year they often want to slack off and let the grades slip a bit – don’t – just don’t. Not only will you need to GPA to be as high as possible for FT IB recruiting, you will also need that high level when it comes to either pursue B school, or make a move to a boutique, P/E shop, or other buyside/corp position – all of these options will definitely check your GPA and will definitely put at least some weight on it. Therefore, don’t lose focus, or, if you already have, get it back and get it back fast – ge those grades and give yourself one less thing to worry about both now and a few years down the line.

Focusing on the major GPA

As I mentioned before, for really bad GPAs (less than 3.0), leave off the cumulative and focus on the major GPA. At the very least you should have a major GPA that is pretty solid – if not, you will definitely have a tougher time – especially if your major is applicable to IB – such as finance, accounting, math, etc. Additionally, even if you have a decent GPA – assume over a 3.0, but under a 3.2-3.3 – you should consider swapping the order of appearance for your GPAs. In other words, lead off with your major GPA, and then follow up with the cumulative GPA. Yes, it sounds like something insignificant and silly, but remember, bankers take very quick glances at these resumes, and seeing a 3.6 major GPA and then a lower cumulative GPA, is definitely more pleasant on the eyes than seeing a 3.2 cumulative GPA and then something higher for a major GPA. Always lead off with the best stuff – whether we are talking about work experience bullet points, GPAs, honors and awards, etc – since there is at least a chance that the first bullet or so is all that will be seen, or at least computed.

Punching up your experiences

Finally, work on punching up your experiences. In this case I am referring to both the language that you use in your bullet points to describe your experiences, as well as the quality and quantity of actually experiences/positions in your resume. Yes, I know that it could very well be a circular argument in that a bad GPA can keep you from getting internships/other opportunities, which will keep you from putting more stuff on your resume, which will keep you from offsetting the bad GPA, blah, blah, blah. Again, don’t focus on the negative – yes all of that might be true – however, you may very well find some opportunities despite your weaker GPA. Look to club involvement and non-profit work – specifically any leadership/officer (in the case of clubs) opportunities that you can harness to show that there is far more to your candidacy than 2-decimal point number no greater than 4.00. Beyond that, look towards taking relevant coursework such as accounting and finance courses – again, maintain that strong major GPA – and you can begin to look towards boutique opportunities and other opportunities perhaps outside of IB, but are at least relevant or applicable to IB. Remember, it won’t be easy, but no one ever said it had to be. Keep your head in the game, and keep your eyes open.

That about covers it – stay tuned for future posts on Getting your Foot in the Door, What an Analyst Really Does, and much more! Like what you’re reading let me know with a comment below or an email here! Have any follow up questions – follow the same rules as above – comments below, emails here!