My Investment Banking Cover Letter is explained in this video. This cover letter got me interviews at Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs, where I ended up working. It also includes tips and tricks for improving your cover letter to potentially land an investment banking job yourself. This is useful for spring weeks, internships, and full-time positions.
Hey everyone my name is kenji and in this video i want to walk you through my investment banking got me multiple interviews at places like jp morgan morgan stanley and bank of america it is true that in the end i ended up working on goldman sachs where they didn’t actually require a cover letter instead they require the
300 word personal statement and it is true some investment banks require more essay-like questions but the overall idea is still very much like a cover letter so i’ll also be attaching a cover letter template in case you want to use it for yourself so before we get into the details let’s first look at the
Differences between a resume and a cover letter so essentially in a resume it should be much more factual as in year one i did this year two i did this and it’s more like a bio in that sense whilst the cover letter has much more of a flow to it it’s more like a sales pitch where you have a whole story behind you as to why
You want this job and why you’re the right candidate a cover letter for instance if you don’t have amazing grades or if you study something that’s not finance related things like that you can really convey them and put a good story to it during the cover letter whilst it’s not really possible in the cv ring
So you’re probably wondering which one is more important well a cv is by far a lot more important basically a cv is the one that when you get to the interview room usually the person interviewing you nowhere to be seen but on the whole uh cover letter if you don’t do it well can still hurt you can still get you rejected
Basically but on the flip side it’s probably not gonna be the deal breaker it’s probably not gonna get you the job can see it’s only one page long it doesn’t really only want to put whatever is relevant in there and that being said you can see that it’s fairly simple there’s no fancy colors there’s no
Images no things like that that can be distracting to the viewer and that’s really how they’re meant to be for investment banking in terms of sections it’s really five main ones the first one is just the header or the contact details then you have the intro so essentially who you are after that you’re gonna have a section
Called widest company or widest position while you’re into it next up you’ll probably have something called a yu why you’re the right candidate basically but overall between why this company and depending on how strong you are of a candidate and what kind of a compelling answer you have and i’d say this cover
Letter the structure not only applies to investment banking but also to any other really like business oriented role all right so let’s get into the details of each section so for the header this is really quite simple essentially you have the recruiters info on one side so their email their contacts etc
Have your own contact details that might be said in my case at least i usually didn’t know the recruiters there so i didn’t really have their emails right so i would just omit that part and you only have your own contact details and that’s fine at least for me it wasn’t really a problem or you’ve gotten in touch
With that person it’s not gonna hurt your your cover letter all right so moving on to the intro section here you just wanna introduce yourself right so i was a full-time student so that’s essentially what i wrote right i’m studying at this university i’m in this year i hope to graduate by this time and this
Is my major it’s really that simple now if you’re a full-time worker you might have something like your position and the department you work at with the company name it’s really just that then after that you want to add how you learned about this company so maybe you had a networking event at your school or you know the
Recruiter or you know someone inside that’s recommended you things like that if you do have them make sure to put them overall they do probably give you a preference if you’ve already been to one of their events say but that said in my case at least sometimes i didn’t really have any connecting points so i just
Didn’t put anything right i just said that hey i’m interested in the position um whilst not really linking it to anything else and then towards the end of the paragraph you just want to say what specific position you’re applying to and what the company’s name is so after that we have the widest company and why this position
Section and here i typically have a first widest company and then i might have why this specific role so starting off with why this company if i’m applying to goldman sachs i might say something like i want to gain exposure to some of the largest transactions in the economy like most recently your airbnb ipo
Where you were an advisor to and things like that so overall you do try to give examples of some of the work that they do so they really see that you’re keen on it and you’ve done your research right now moving on to the widest position side suppose i’m applying to goldman sachs for their analyst position so here
I’m essentially going to say some of the tasks that analysts usually do a goldman sachs and explain why i might enjoy them so for instance i might say something like i’m very keen on the analyst position because of the high responsibilities the collaborative environment and the use of financial modelling all of
Which i consider fundamental to a career in the financial services industry or something like that then after that we get into the why me or why i’m the right candidate section so here it’s essentially a sales pitch right you wanna explain whatever you’re good at and how that’s gonna relate to the role ideally you wanna
Give some examples of that also you should have a good idea of the types of skills that they might look for in an investment banking candidate say for an investment banking analyst they might look for someone that’s good with finance and accounting that’s numerically oriented that’s a team player and say that
Enjoys a high pressure environment so all these things you want to try to relate them back to your previous roles or your university courses such that it looks like you’re the ideal candidate right so in my case for instance if we look at my example i previously worked at pwc in their financial audit team so essentially
The role is somewhat similar to the investment banking role finance so these are all things that are relatable to the role that said i realize most of you probably haven’t worked at pwc so let’s look at my other example where i worked as a belmont and but if you pitch it well um it can have some some kind of
Link and some kind of relationships between the two so for instance in bellman you work as a team right an investor monk as well so you say you’re a team player that’s one number two you might say you have attention to detail right if you work at a five-star hotel say that means that you’re clearly attentive to what’s
Going on and you want to deliver high customer service that’s the second one thirdly you might say you’ve have exposure to client interactions just like investment bankers do that’s another linking point and so on and so forth so you kind of get the idea you can use that for bartender roles say you can use that
For really anything that’s people related i also added a paragraph on my background i felt like it added to the application i speak that they could look at favorably hopefully you whether it’s that you you were an athlete that you did really well in a math competition or whatever it is and if you feel like it’s
Strong then just put it in there and overall there is no real guideline as to how many paragraphs it strongest right so if you really only have one work experience just put that one and you don’t really have to talk about what you did when you were 15 years old right and then lastly for the conclusion here
You just want to reiterate that you’re keen on this position that you really appreciate their time in reviewing the application that’s really about it there’s really no tricks on this section and you might wonder if i made a answer is no usually i just had a template rearrange that to whatever bank i was applying
To on and kind of put it in there for instance i wasn’t bothered and i just have the exact same cover letter only changing the name of the bank but if you have a solid template you should minutes and honestly if you’re applying to say 25 positions or more then you really don’t want to be spending one
Hour on each cover letter right useful was to have a cover letter for each industry that i’m keen on so for instance one of the industries was investment banking obviously another one was real estate or accounting and so i’d have one cover letter for each and showcasing and tailoring my skills to that industry
Right so yeah that’s the end of the video hope you found it useful if you did feel free to like and subscribe and if you have any questions do put them in the comments i’ll make sure to get back to you and i’ll hopefully catch in the next one
Transcribed from video
My Successful Investment Banking Cover Letter + Free Template By Kenji Explains