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Apps = appetisers
As ‘Internship Season’ approaches and we see more and more of our classmates attending banking information sessions, decked out in penguin suits, the higher our anxiety over our own futures gets. Staff Writer Gabrielle Kloppers investigates the phenomenon known as the “cover letter.”
At first, the cover letter seems exciting, especially if you’ve found a great opportunity in a field that you’d really like to work in. What is more likely is that you are writing this letter to a mid-level HR manager in a finance/consulting firm, a field which you, in troth, care nothing for. Yet, they’re the only ones hiring. There comes your first grief in the cover-letter writing process; authenticity. Where do you find authenticity? And how do you fake it so someone will hire you? You dig deep into your wellsprings of enthusiasm, but there just seems to be… nothing there. Perhaps it’s the extra shot of vodka you took at Homecoming yesterday, perhaps it’s the fact that you have three midterms next week and this letter seems really trivial compared to Calculus III, but you’re finding it really difficult to talk about your … passion for stocks and bonds.
The next stage of grief comes over formatting. Sure, you could use one of the hundreds of cover-letter formats that are available on Google, but that just seems really impersonal. Besides, if it’s the top Google search, wouldn’t every applicant use that one? Shit. You’re lost. You don’t even know what the purpose of a Cover Letter is, so how are you supposed to know how to format one? Why does that seven page paper about Wordsworth now seem so extremely tempting? Anything but this. Solution to this stage of grief: just get a template from your most successful friend. You know the one, they had an internship the summer before freshman year and enjoy talking about the latest articles in the Economist. Yeah, they didn’t use the top search on Google. Luckily for you, they slogged through the hard miles for you. Don’t be afraid to take advantage of their labour.
Finally, the worry is: what actually do you have to show them? Why should they hire you, above all the other surely dazzling applicants? Honestly, nobody ever knows. How do you really show off what you learnt at that internship last summer, save an incredible knowledge of Excel Spreadsheets? Bwog advice would be: just be honest about it, and tell them that you learnt about Spreadsheets. Sometimes, the basic skills are all that are needed. Besides, you’ll probably just be printing, copying and filing papers anyway!
Awk hand model via Pixabay
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4 Comments
@Cover letters are for schmucks Write one cover letter and send it to all jobs. No one reads them anyway, I promise. (Only true for finance and tech).
Also, everything the career center tells you is shit. Don’t listen to them — they’re hacks.
Real-world tips:
0. Network, network, network.
1. Spend no more than 10 minutes on a cover letter.
2. Reuse that cover letter everywhere.
3. Better yet, easy apply on linkedin is your friend (esp in tech).
4. Embellish the shit out of your resume. Everyone’s doing it. It’s to the point that of the hundreds of resumes I’ve seen, not one is believable — NO ONE CARES! You just need them to get past gatekeepers (read: idiots working in HR who read buzzfeed articles to ascertain which skills are most desirable). Give your GPA a boost, increase the impact of an internship project by an order of magnitude, and have a cigar! Fuck it — seriously there are zero consequences.
5. ABSOLUTELY don’t be afraid to play companies against each other or even completely renege on an offer for a better one. If you show any loyalty, you’re an idiot and deserve whatever comes your way. That company wouldn’t think twice about firing you should a better candidate come along. Always remember that. (Obviously don’t do this if you’ve networked your way into an offer and accepted, you can however still play that company’s offer against another one before accepting).
6. Get everything in writing.
Sincerely,
An alum whose sick of Columbia career center’s bullshit.
@Cover letters are for schmucks who’s
@Anonymous Agree. I work in tech and doing the opposite of what CCE told me to do has served me well.
I’ve found many of CCE’s recommendations and guidelines to be poison. Following them puts students at a severe disadvantage unless they’re in the top few percent or so of their graduating class. Also worth mentioning – lionshare (handshake now?) is a scam. CCE doesn’t even guarantee that the opportunities on there are real! what a joke!
@Sad Alumnus Don’t apply to jobs in finance or consulting if you don’t want them. Instead, network the hell out of New York City.
You don’t want to end up like me, who wrote hundreds of cover letters only to end up applying and getting rejected for cold-calling sales jobs in his hometown while his friends have fun, exciting jobs in cool industries.