Writing a Cover Letter that Gets You Interviews

Cover Letters can look like a waste of time and effort, yet for most firms, they’re the only things that firms see apart from your CV in the first stage of the application. This means that in order to get past the initial screening stage and make it to interviews, it is important that your Cover Letter stand out from other applicants. In this guide, we shall discuss how you can write a Cover Letter that’ll get you past the screening process.

The Basics

As with your CV, the most important parts of your Cover Letter are the format and the content. Before we begin to look into these in detail, it’s important to remember some basics:

1. Your Cover Letter should be between 350 and 500 words in length. Anything higher is too long and HR wouldn’t want to read it, anything less is too little and it’ll feel blank.
2. The ideal font size is 10–12, however, regardless of what size you use, your Cover Letter should never be longer than a page.
3. There is no preferred font, so you can use any professional font for your Cover Letters such as Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, or Helvetica.

How to Structure your Cover Letter?

The ideal structure for your cover letter is to divide it into 4 paragraphs:

1. The Introduction paragraph
2. Why Firm?
3. Why Division?
4. Why You?

While people might choose to switch around paragraphs 2 and 3, I have found that talking about Why Firm before Why Division gives you the opportunity to really stand out with highly personal reasons that can make all the difference in the few seconds that HR spends going through your Cover Letter.

Let us discuss each section in detail.

Introduction Section

The introduction section is the first part of your Cover Letter, and its purpose is to tell HR who you are and what division you are applying to. This might seem like an unnecessary addition to the word count, after all, all this information is already in your application. However, the rules are the rules, and they must be followed.

Not to mention, HR might not always have your entire application handy when they’re reading your Cover Letter and mentioning these details could make all the difference.

So what should you include in this section? Generally, I like to include my name, the university I’m in, the course I’m pursuing, the name of the firm I’m applying to, as well as the specific division and program I’m interested in.

For example:

I am Nishit Kumar, a penultimate-year Accounting & Finance student at the University of Warwick. I am applying for the Morgan Stanley (MS) Summer Analyst 2022 Program. Please find below my motivations for this application.

You will notice how I mentioned MS in the brackets after the full name of the firm. This ensures that for the rest of the Cover Letter, I can simply write MS instead of Morgan Stanley, and this is a useful trick to save words in your Cover Letter.

Why Firm?

This is perhaps the most important part of any Cover Letter, and it is usually what makes or breaks applications. The idea is for you to have at least 2–3 strong, relevant, unique, and personal reasons to apply to the firm. This could be anything: maybe you talked to an analyst at the firm and really liked the way they described the firm culture, maybe the firm is very active in a particular industry that you’re interested in, or maybe you like something specific about the program you’re applying to that only they offer.

The way to succeed with this section is to avoid being generic or waffling. Here are some things you definitely need to avoid:

1. Generic facts about the company with no context. Mentioning how the company crossed a certain milestone in deal value or an award they won without any follow-up is pointless. HR doesn’t want you to tell them facts, they want to know why you want to work for the firm.
2. Waffling about ESG initiatives: These days, ESG is all the hype, and firms are going out of their way to support such initiatives. However, simply mentioning some of the firm’s ESG programs won’t get you anywhere, unless you have a very particular and specific reason for why you are impressed with the program. Refrain from mentioning such initiatives unless you can connect them to yourself and make them personal.
3. Stuff that sounds like it could be about anyone. When writing the Why Firm section, there is an easy test that I like to carry out whenever I feel like I’m done. Say you’re writing a Cover Letter for Morgan Stanley. After you’re done, replace Morgan Stanley with Goldman Sachs throughout the Cover Letter, and read it again. If it still makes sense and everything still applies, then you haven’t been specific enough, and you need to go back and work on it some more.

The biggest difference-maker for this section is the research. Spend some time going through the firm’s website, career blogs, news articles, and every source of information you can find about a particular firm. Go 10 or even 20 links deep into the website until you find something unique that resonates with you.

Or, you know, just get the Firm Research Guide from us!

Why Division?

This is one section of your Cover Letter where the least amount of personalisation is possible, and this basically stays the same across applications. That’s why it’s all the more important that you work extra hard on this section the first time around.

For this section, the first thing to remember is no matter what division you’re applying to, DO NOT MENTION THE MONEY as a reason why you want to pursue a career here. Everyone knows that the comp is a factor, but if there is one thing HR hates more than anything else, it’s a candidate that looks like they only want the job for the money.

Next, you need to understand what they’re looking for in this paragraph. The optimal outcome is for you to come across as a candidate who understands the responsibilities and expectations associated with the division, and has the competencies needed to excel there. Mention specifics about the job that excites you. For example, in my Sales and Trading Cover Letter, I mentioned how I liked trading roles because “nowhere is the stark difference between winners and losers more clear than it is in the financial markets”. Your reasons don’t have to be as cool, but they do have to be specific, personal, and accurate.

The best way for you to communicate that you understand what the role entails is to mention any similar experiences you might have had. This could include insight events, internships, or work experience in similar roles. It could even include society competitions or online programs like those offered by Bright Network or Forage. Through any of these, you can demonstrate that you have an interest and a penchant for the kind of work required in the division.

As an intern, while the firm definitely would want you to have had some exposure to the industry in the past, they don’t need you to know everything there is to know about the technicals. They just need to know that you’re not disillusioned, that you know what the job entails, and that you are willing to learn.

Why You?

In this last section, you have the opportunity to show them that you are exactly the candidate they have been looking for. But how do you know exactly what they’re looking for? Two resources: the job description and the firm’s values. By going through both these places, you can get a much better and clearer idea of the kind of candidate that the firm is interested in. The first step is to put together a list of 3–4 qualities that you would like to demonstrate to the firm.

Then, you need to come up with examples and instances of where you have shown this quality. For this, you can simply follow the same model we used to write about work experiences in your CV: mention what you did and what impact it had. Only this time, add another part at the end, a part that shows what skill you gained from this experience that you can transfer and bring to the role. Towards the end of the paragraph, all that is left for you to do is to tie it all together and conclude the Cover Letter by saying something along the lines of “Thank you for considering my application. I look forward to hearing from you.”

Conclusion

Writing a successful Cover Letter is more an art than a science, and it really depends on how you want to approach it. Within the given structure, you can choose to apply any strategy or approach that you think would work better for you. Just remember: Be personal, be relevant, be direct, and do your research!