Cover Letters
A cover letter for a banking, finance or accountancy firm is a professional document, which should, in essence, be a sales pitch to accompany your CV. It’s your chance to sell yourself as a strong candidate for the role. Since most employers in the banking, finance and accountancy sector will (most likely) only glance at your cover letter, you need to keep it short. In short, we mean one side of A4 maximum and certainly no more than 500 words.
Step-by-step guide:
1. Try to find out the name of a contact to address your application to – a speculative application addressed to Sir/Madam usually doesn’t fare too well! It may be necessary to make a phone call to find this information out – but LinkedIn can be a good first step to find a HR officer or head of department.
2. Research each organisation that you apply to! This will demonstrate to the recruiter that you have a genuine interest in the business and position. Best place to start is the company website. Read the ‘about us’ and ‘our values’ sections, as well as the recruitment page. It is also worth doing a Google search and checking social media platforms to see if they have been mentioned.
3. Get to writing! See below for further guidance on what to include.
4. Follow up the application with a phone call a couple of weeks later. You may find that you receive better results by phoning up the company before even making the application so that they remember you when they eventually receive your email!
To make things easier for you, we have attached a rough cover letter template below:
