Mistakes to Avoid in a Management Consulting Cover Letter
Writing an interesting cover letter is one effective way of catching the attention of recruiters. If you don’t sell yourself perfectly, you will most likely not be considered for an interview. The cover letter demonstrates your written communication skills; skills that are very important for management consultants.
You can avoid these mistakes by completely being aware of the areas where applicants tend to fall short. Five of them are the following:
#1: Resume Rehash
Your cover letter is not a resume revision in narrative form. What you need to do is to highlight your main accomplishments that would prompt the recruiters to refer to your resume for more details. Your cover letter can also explain your main goals, inconsistencies in your resume, gaps in employment, or career shifts.
#2: Grammatical and Typo Errors
Writing skill is an important capability management consultants must possess because they need to:
- Write progress reports
- Send emails to clients and colleagues
- Create presentations for senior management
Hence,typographical and grammatical errors on cover letters may imply incapability to produce those deliverables. Your job application should be thoroughly proofread before it’s sent out. Ask a friend or a professional to help you out for their fresh eyes may notice errors you might have overlooked. As experienced by many, too much familiarity can lead to blunders.
#3: Inaccurate Information
At times, when you’re sending your application in succession, you tend to forget to change the name of the firm, the contact person or the position you’re applying. This projects your carelessness, something detrimental to your application.
To let you understand the scenario empathetically, imagine yourself getting a letter from a random stranger. When you open it and notice it’s addressed to someone else, what will you do? You will perhaps stop reading it because it’s not meant for you anyway. If a recruiter does the same thing with your application, you will lose your first opportunity to get through the process successfully.
#4: Generic Cover Letter
Are you just using, “Dear Sir or Madam,” or “Dear HR Director,” for your recipient? Then perhaps you are just using a one-size-fits-all cover letter. Using generic cover letters isn’t that terrible, but it is a lazy approach of reaching out to the management consulting firm. Recruiters will readily notice if you’ve written your application specifically for a specific position because of its personal feel. Hence, if you’re after of a good impression, go an extra mile in preparing your cover letter. It might be time-consuming but the value it creates is worth the effort.
#5: Irrelevant Information
The cover letter you send for a management consulting firm must contain relevant information. Babbling in detail about your life story or work history bores recruiters, and in consequence, it may put your application aside. Keep your thoughts simple in four or five paragraphs. Research on what needs to be included in the document. Remember that this document is not an autobiography but a marketing tool. Write only what the recruiters need to know.