Cover Letters can work.

And this is how it’s done.

http://www.businessinsider.com/student-sends-great-cover-letter-for-internship-at-bank-and-its-now-going-viral-on-wall-street-2013-1

I would like to do a quick play by play as to what made this cover letter standout in my opinion. First of all, he clearly introduces himself and recalls the place that they met previously. So this is not a “shot in the dark”/random application with a cover letter, in fact the person may have told the kid to “send him a resume and he would look at it” during their meeting however brief it may have been, but he attached a cover letter anyway – That’s smart.

Secondly he introduces the resume well and explains the experience with humor while also equating himself to the other applicants “I’m not going to over inflate the titles to make it sound more impressing” - Very subtle but also effective. In fact, interns are not expected to have all the experience in the world. Their optimism is usually much highly valued. During those second and third paragraphs he makes the cover letter read honest and bold. I would go as far as to assume that the person that he sent it to may have shown those qualities to the student and he used them in the tone of this cover letter. Which is perfect.

Possibly a deliberate typo on the word “crap”, this is extremely subtle. In my opinion in the world of auto correct and constant spell check everywhere (most browsers, word) it’s difficult to make a typo as blatant as “crapp”. Given that this kid clearly cares about this application, due to the aforementioned clues, I think he made it on purpose. Here’s why: the effect of swearing or using objectionable language is lessened when you make a typo (this is purely subjective to me). So he got to say crap without looking as vulgar – fulking A.

Then he mentions in passing that he already had an internship in wealth management and that he is taking specific courses and tells them about his plans, which I presume would align with this industry. Overall this Cover Letter is not just a slam dunk, it’s a 360 self oop dunk. You cannot write a better cover letter. 

LINKEDIN BEST PRACTICES: BASICS

This is going to be my first article in a series of a few that will talk about becoming the better business tech geek in the 2013. I will try to distil some of the advices out there by aggregating and summarizing them.

WHAT YOU WANT

First of all, if you haven’t got a LinkedIn profile, it is certainly a good idea to have one as many recruiters use it to find talent and many people use it to keep in touch when it comes to business relationships. Then you should fill the profile out so that it summarizes your professional profile. Think of it as a resume kept online.

This is a great start, now you have some online presence, which means that people can find you online. And that’s the key of this service really is to have that presence and a neat little point of introduction to you. People usually come across profiles by doing searches for either name or other key words, like particular skills or companies.

Now that you know what’s the purpose of this profile, let’s look at how you can keep track on how well this profile is doing. 

-       Your search appearances and profile views, which are on located on the right column of your home page. You can also view the industry that these views are from.

-       The incoming messages and Connect requests from people that you may not know directly. This is a good thing, but be aware of the mass connectors out there that may not use LinkedIn to create meaningful relationships. I’d accept an invitation from someone that I had at least a couple of messages long conversation usually, but I would likely deny the request of some random person. Good article on this is here: http://www.careerealism.com/dont-linkedin-collector-user/

This information is sourced from here http://www.careerealism.com/linkedin-strategy-clues/

HOW TO GET IT

If you want to get more views, then there are a few things you can do:

-       Update your profile and keep it current as things are happening. For example, got a new certification, great time to update that field on LinkedIn. This will push out this change as an update to your network; some may click on your profile and Voila! You got the view, or they can click like on the update and it would be pushed out to their network as well. 

-       Sign up and participate in groups, you can join group of interest and the ones that are relevant to your field. This can expose you to other people in your field and not only get views but also connections from these groups. (Hint: if you really want to network online look into LION – LinkedIn Open Networking groups).

-       Ask for recommendations. It’s great to say all these things about yourself but it’s a much bigger deal if someone else vouches for you.  Also you can get your skills endorsed, I find that with these people usually reciprocate once you have endorsed some of their skills, so take a gander at your list and see what you can vouch for, it’s actually pretty fun.

Some points are taken from this link http://socialmediatoday.com/monica-romeri/1016676/6-linkedin-best-practices