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

Top 5 reasons to join a professional student club council.

1.       Opportunity to meet people. University may seem overly task and grade focused if you don’t find ways to enhance your University experience with other activities. Student club is a perfect place to meet people that you may otherwise not meet on campus. They may be from different majors or from different years and overall just people that you do not gravitate toward naturally. This is a great opportunity to meet people based on your interest, and develop these interests into passions together.

2.       Develop your soft skills. Yes you can make an argument that being in university alone develops your soft skills and perhaps many things that involve dealing with people develop your soft skills and that you don’t really need to join a professional student club to improve them. However, being involved in something that you are passionate about and that you enjoy doing and learning about will certainly give you motivation to participate and get the most out of your involvement. For example, you can certainly exercise at home, but being in the gym will give you extra motivation for reaching your set targets. That’s an interesting slogan: “Professional student club, it’s like a gym for your interests”

3.       Crystallize your interests and career objectives. Building on the previous point, leaning into your interests would enable you to find out more about the profession. The more you learn about different specializations of your profession the more determined you become as your goal in your career becomes clearer. You are starting to paint a big picture perspective for yourself, and most of all you start to figure out which place you would like to fit yourself in after graduation.

4.       Network with people in your industry. Professional student clubs are usually somehow connected to outside organizations, either through personal connections or more formal sponsorships and partnerships. This is a good setting to meet the people from these organizations. Also, and perhaps more important are the connections made at the council, as your colleagues have seen you in action and likely have plenty of good things to say about you. Also they are likely to be in the same field of work as you, so that just increases your network of professionals.

5.       Improve your grades. Although surprising but virtually guaranteed correlation exists between being involved in a student professional student club and the scholarly achievements. Usually people that are involved with professional student clubs are the people that prefer to stay busy and hence are good at prioritizing their tasks. This quality is certainly developed rather than innate, as I can say with certainty that I have developed that trait myself when I was involved in the professional student clubs and studies and worked part time. The key here is to find the balance and maintain the focus on pursuing your passion.

To find out more about the clubs that I was involved in you can view my LinkedIn profile, which is connected to the badge on the right hand side of this page. Feel free to connect with me over LinkedIn if you wish.