Comments on: The Senior Series: On Cover Letters, Cliches and Mistakes

By: generic bank examiner cover letter - RESUME PORTAL – RESUME PORTAL

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[...] Cover Letters: Cliches and Mistakes Description : My last job was at a Chicago-based bank. Not a tiny company by any means, but the recruiting process was much more personal. I spent a long ass time on making sure that cover letter was perfect for that position. … http://www.mscareergirl.com/20 .. [...]

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uberVU - social comments — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:00:27 +0000

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By: Srinivas Rao

Srinivas Rao — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:39:43 +0000

@Nicole: They definitely force you to be short and to the point in business school. Even the essays for applying are limited to 500 words. So imagine answering the question “tell me your lifelong goals, career aspirations, and how an MBA would help, and do it in 500 words.” So, you’re pretty much trained to be concise from the get go.

By: Nicole Crimaldi

Nicole Crimaldi — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:14:39 +0000

@Rob- Wow, that is such a great point about college vs after college. That really is ironic and funny. Yes, business classes should definitely make you focus on shortening things, unless you are working on a business plan, a market analysis or a research paper. Guy Kawaski would even agree.

@Srini- Did they make you write short stuff in business school? Was this a skill that was stressed?

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:41:09 +0000

Thanks, Srinivas. I’ve added it to my personal ‘book que’.

By: Srinivas Rao

Srinivas Rao — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:29:28 +0000

Nicole,

Great stuff. I’m guilty of writing too much and focusing on myself and not adding value. Obviously that shift happened to doing it the right way a while back and I started to really understand how to articulate that. I think given the attention span of the average person, we need to get to the point quickly.

@Rob: If you haven’t started reading Seth Godin’s new book Linchipin, I’d highly recommend it. Based on your comments, I think you’d really enjoy it.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:31:45 +0000

Great post. I have suffered from the “You write too much” mistake in the past, though I’ve been working on it lately.

A bit of a sidebar: one thing that’s been getting under my skin lately is how college professors approach writing assignments. They shouldn’t be assigning x-page minimum papers; they should be assigning x-page maximum papers. Churning out pages and pages of nonsense isn’t a skill. Writing clearly and concisely is. I feel like students are being trained that more = better. That obviously isn’t always true.