Letters

You should always include a cover letter when sending recruiters your resume. Your resume should look professional and be critiqued by several experienced executives. You should customize your cover letter for each investment bank. In your cover letter, you should focus on matching your strengths to the strengths of the particular investment bank. It is especially helpful to mention prominent deals that the investment bank has worked on in the past year. Remember that your goal is to show the recruiter that you are interested in his/her particular investment bank's analyst program and that you would be a strong fit with the team. Review some of the books that discuss investment banking as a career to understand the necessary strengths for an investment banker.

Send out as many cover letters and resumes as you can to investment banks, concentrating on the larger ones. Use all available resources to locate investment banks and recruiter contacts: Internet search engines, Yellow Pages, personal and professional contacts, deal or offering tombstones in the Wall Street Journal, job listings for other positions within investment banks, and news articles.

Make a copy of each letter sent and a copy of the resume or note of the version used with the letter. If you are sending your resume in batches then it will be easy to delimit the different batches of letters with a copy of the resume used for that batch.

Ideally, you'll want to address your cover letter to the recruiter listed on the web site or if you can't find a name, "Goldman Sachs recruiter", "Human Resources", or "recruiter". I personally do not like using "sirs" or "to whom it may concern" for obvious reasons.

Mailing Resumes

You have two options for mailing your resume package. You can use letter-size manila envelopes with address labels or use standard business envelopes with the addresses printed directly on them. For my job search I used Microsoft Word and a laser printer to print addresses on standard business envelopes. However, either method can be used effectively; the standard business envelopes are just cheaper to use.

NOTE: In Word 97, you can select File | New | Letters & Faxes to use the Envelope Wizard.

E-mailing Resumes

Some companies' e-mail systems are set up to not allow messages with attachments. Therefore, use e-mail only if you know e-mailing a resume to a company contact will work (e.g., instructions on web site request that you e-mail your resume). Even if you can e-mail your resume, I would suggest you opt for the paper variety since a lot of pretty resumes will look like garbage on a poor quality printer or one different from yours.

If you decide to e-mail your resume, be sure to use a cover letter. Simply use the e-mail message as your cover letter and attach your resume to the end of the e-mail message. You may want to reference "the attached resume" within your cover letter. Remember that just because you are e-mailing your resume rather than mailing it, you should not use informal messages worded on-the-fly (too many candidates screw up their job search here). Recruiters want to feel like you are very interested in the job and have put some effort into researching their firms and how you could fit into the culture and investment banking program.

NOTE: Please do not forget to attach your resume before sending the e-mail. It happens more often than you think.