Wall Street: The anatomy of the 'best cover letter ever'

It's every wannabe intern's dilemma: How to write a cover letter that impresses employers who need you a lot less than you need them. Here's a bit of a "shocker," says Maseena Ziegler at Forbes: On Wall Street, being absurdly, aggressively humble can be just the way to get the attention of hard-nosed financial executives. At least, it certainly appears to have done the trick for one "brutally honest and hilariously self-deprecating" college student who applied for a low-paying and, if necessary, demeaning job at a boutique investment bank. Here's the part that made the recipient promptly forward the missive to colleagues, and declare, "This might be the best cover letter I've ever received":

Applications from aspiring interns get forwarded around from time to time, and some of them are so funny they go viral, say Julia La Roche and Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider. Usually, however, they're such a hit because "the applicant is totally full of themselves or completely clueless," and everyone gets a kick out of laughing at their naïveté. This one is different, though. This applicant turns his lack of experience into a plus, prompting everyone in the email thread to agree that "the letter shows energy and pluck and honesty."

"It probably bodes well for his future in the industry that his risk paid dividends," says Neetzan Zimmerman at Gawker. Many daring letters from hungry undergraduate finance majors no doubt go straight into the trash. This applicant's note was "blasted to entire listservs of Wall Street bigshots," eliciting a string of praise for bravery. "THIS IS AWESOME," one exec exclaimed, caps locked. "No joke, I think we should consider this guy," one investment banker said. "I wouldn't be surprised if this guy gets at least a call from every bank out there."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

It's easy to see why this "courageous tactic worked," says Australia's Adelaide Now. Wall Street bankers must get tired of the endless stream of inflated letters from internship applicants "highlighting their brilliant skills, boasting about their past experience," and insisting nobody could possibly be better for the job. This must have come as "a refreshing change."