Session 4: More work on the Resume and the Cover Letter

Now that we know Samantha remarkably well through the process of extensively rewriting her resume, we will have her update her LinkedIn profile and begin her cover letter. Although we prefer to complete the cover letter before beginning the case training, we are flexible on this point. Here, again, the format and style of writing is vital. Generic sentences which can be used by any candidate will damage an application.

The cover letter must address why Samantha is a good fit for consulting, why she has chosen a specific firm, such as McKinsey, and why her chosen offices are A, B and C. Moreover, we expect to see lots of details and well considered stories which again emphasize her analytical, teamwork, leadership and conflict resolution skills. We want to strip out emotion. Through this process, Samantha is actually learning new things about herself as well.

Things she may have considered to be unimportant. That is a significant advantage. She learns about her spike – the one thing she is both good at and which will differentiate her for the consulting recruiters. Like all candidates, she is eager to get the case training started, but we need to lay the foundation first, because once we start, we need to see through the training on cases to the end or she will lose momentum and forget important information. We will review her application documents closer to the time to do one final check.

Candidates are encouraged to view our best-practice LinkedIn example with notes and annotations to guide their own profiles – available to subscribers.

It is expected the candidate will work on different cover letter iterations with us over the next 2 to 4 weeks until we approve the document.

In the session descriptions which follow, we are using one description for 4 different candidates. Yet candidates do not perform the same, and while the descriptions are mostly accurate, there will be some differences as a few cases are brought forward, others moved back or candidates fail to prepare adequately. While these differences are minor, they sometimes occur.