Cover Letter of an Overzealous NYU Undergrad to Wall Street Firm Goes Viral

In today’s corporate world, it is important to emphasize one’s own strengths while knowing the weaknesses.  And this should be done when crafting your resume.  But sometimes people get too carried away in a competitive situation.  Given how things are in the job world in the US – specially in the banking and finance sector – one undergrad student from NYU got carried away and pasted a rather interesting Cover letter to his otherwise robust resume.  The contents of the letter makes it a rather hilarious read with gems like:

“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 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.”

The letter (and resume) was sent to Bank of America Merrill Lynch – where the director who received it forwarded to his team, asking if someone could point out what was wrong with it.  The letter then was shared outside of the firm and has gone viral within a week.

As it stands now, investment banking and accounting teams at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Citi, Deutsche Bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Wells Fargo, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Perella Weinberg Partners, and Barclays Capital have all by now read the cover letter

and

looked at his resume!  A rather un-nerving situation for a new undergrad trying his best to put his best foot forward, a bit too hard though.

Moral of the story is – be aggressive, but not so much that it becomes a compelling and interesting read for socially connected and viral hungry world of networked individuals.  If what you write is inconsistent with what you want to achieve and at the same time, un-put-down-ably hilarious – you ar “unequivocally” (to use the student’s lingo) inviting disaster with unflagging (again, his vocab) zeal.

While Wall Street’s doors may have closed as of how for this young man, he might want to try becoming a copywriter for a social media company instead… given his unusual experience in viral copy writing.