Epic Wall Street Cover Letter Goes Viral

by NowPublic Staff | February 9, 2012 at 09:43 am

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Wall Street Cover Letter: Mental & Physical Prowess

When you send out your cover letter to seek a summer job as an investment banking analyst, you have to balance bragging with humility. You want to make yourself sound good, but you can't try to come off as Gordon Gekko. After all, you're a student, and you'll be interviewing with people who (for better or worse) do this for a living.

In other words, you're about to learn how not to write a cover letter. Without getting all inside-baseball, start with not mentioning how much you can bench press.

Below is the cover letter sent around Wall Street by an NYU student named Mark. He chose not to pump the brakes, and the result was, well, not what he had expected.

Mark's cover letter has bounced all over Wall Street, as well as making the rounds at NYU. It's never a good sign when your cover letter is forwarded with "lol" in the introduction.

Behold, Mark's epic cover letter in all its glory...

1/23/2012

J.P. Morgan

Dear Sir or Madame:

I am an ambitious undergraduate at NYU triple majoring in Mathematics, Economics, and Computer Science. I am a punctual, personable, and shrewd individual, yet I have a quality which I pride myself on more than any of these.

I am unequivocally the most unflaggingly hard worker I know, and I love self-improvement. I have always felt that my time should be spent wisely, so I continuously challenge myself; I left Villanova because the work was too easy. Once I realized I could achieve a perfect GPA while holding a part-time job at NYU, I decided to redouble my effort by placing out of two classes, taking two honors classes, and holding two part-time jobs. That semester I achieved a 3.93, and in the same time I managed to bench double my bodyweight and do 35 pull-ups.

I say these things only because solid evidence is more convincing than unverifiable statements, and I want to demonstrate that I am a hard worker. J.P. Morgan is a firm with a reputation that precedes itself and employees who represent only the best and rightest in finance. I know that the employees in this firm will push me to excellence, especially within the Investment Banking division. In fact, one of the supporting reasons I chose Investment Banking over any other division was that I know it is difficult. I hope to augment my character by diligently working for the professionals at Morgan Stanley, and I feel I have much to offer in return.

I am proficient in several programming languages, and I can pick up a new one very quickly. For instance, I learned a years worth of Java from NYU in 27 days on my own; this is how I placed out of two including: Money and Banking, Analysis, Game Theory, Probability and Statistics. Even further, I am taking Machine Learning and Probabilistic Graphical Modeling currently, two programming courses offered by Stanford, so that I may truly offer the most if I am accepted. I am proficient with Bloomberg terminals, excellent with excel, and can perform basic office functions with terrifying efficiency. I have plenty of experience in the professional world through my internship at Merrill Lynch, and my research assistant position at NYU. In fact, my most recent employer has found me so useful that he promoted me to a Research Assistant and an official CTED intern. This role is usually reserved for Masters students, but my employer gave the title to me so that he could give me more work.

Please realize that I am not a braggart or conceited, I just want to outline my usefulness. Egos can be a huge liability, and I try not to have one.

Thank you so much for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

Mark

This looks like something Barney Stinson would write; and, in hindsight, Mark himself seems quite aware of it.

When asked if he'd gotten a job at J.P. Morgan, he laughed. "No, not at all. Didn't you see my letter?"

In all fairness, though, how different is it from a typical investment-banking cover letter? Is this not the mindset you need to thrive on Wall Street? We'd think that an ego the size of Lower Manhattan is a core qualification. Our prediction is that Mark will indeed get a summer gig, and that gig will turn into a fulltime job.

After all, legend has it that director Amy Heckerling hired Sean Penn for Fast Times at Ridgemont High after saying that his was the worst audition she'd ever seen: audition notwithstanding, he had the overall quality she wanted for ultraslacker Jeff Spicoli.

That said, it's a horrendously bad letter.