Financial Analyst Cover Letter

If you’re interested in pursuing a career in financial analytics, you’ll need a strong resume, as well as an accompanying cover letter. A cover letter is your chance to tell the employer the story behind the skills, training, and education you briefly list on your resume. It’s your opportunity to infuse a bit of your personality into your professional materials, demonstrate your writing skills, and show them why you’re the person for the job. Read on to learn more about how to craft a stand-out cover letter in financial analytics.

How to Write a Financial Analyst Cover Letter

Finance is considered to be a competitive field. This means job hunters will be considering a pool of highly qualified candidates for open positions. Creating a strong cover letter is one way to gain a Recruiter’s attention. 

Writing a good cover letter takes time and multiple drafts, regardless of the position to which you’re applying. Crafting a Financial Analyst cover letter to supplement your resume likely will mean working with both of these documents to ensure consistency and avoid repetition. Some elements are universal to all cover letters, such as mentioning the job you’re applying for in the first paragraph and listing success stories that showcase your skills from the job posting. Other items, however, are unique to financial analytics. The following sections describe some of the most essential elements your financial analytics cover letter should include:

Refer to the job description.

Although it may seem obvious, referencing the job description in your cover letter is important to employers. You can indicate to Recruiters that you’ve done your homework and are familiar with the job, and also have done some research into the company itself and its culture. It’s also a good way to indicate that you haven’t just sent them a generic cover letter that’s being submitted to ten other openings.

Including keywords from the job description is one way to acknowledge you’ve read it and are familiar with the job requirements. You may want to select three or so keywords that are most in line with your background and training and use them in the body of the cover letter to further extrapolate on your skills. These words may also appear in your resume; the cover letter is your chance to expand the bullets listed there and tell a story about how you used them to help your previous employer. Be as specific as possible. The more you can highlight how you used these skills or tools and also the ways doing so benefitted the employer’s bottom line or budget, the more likely your cover letter will be remembered by Recruiters. 

Add industry-relevant words and phrases.

In addition to incorporating keywords in your cover letter, it’s also important to demonstrate to employers that you can speak the language of finance. How you talk about your skill set and prior academic and professional experiences in finance can make or break your job application materials. Don’t be afraid to infuse your cover letter with industry-specific language to demonstrate you’re financially literate and can speak the language of their workplace. The following are some words or phrases common to the field of finance you may wish to add to your cover letter:

• Accrue
• Interest rate
• Budget
• Accounts payable
• Balance sheet
• Cash outflow
• Bull market
• Bear market
• Collateral
• Recession
• Return on investment (ROI)
• Net worth
• Intangible assets

An impact statement and summary statement.

In the first paragraph of your cover letter, you should lead with a compelling statement that encapsulates your core financial competencies and experience in financial analytics. Core competencies are the specific characteristics that set you apart from other job applicants. Most cover letters are approximately four paragraphs in length or about one page. This space can then be used to provide specific examples that reinforce these financial competencies.

The final paragraph of a financial analytics cover letter generally provides a brief summary statement. This statement reinforces the points made in the resume and cover letter. Use this space to describe (without repeating the above-mentioned content) why your specific skill set and expertise match the job at hand. You can also mention your hope to move to the next step in the hiring process. 

A call-to-action statement.

A call-to-action (CTA) is a term in marketing that pertains to written or verbal content intended to prompt a fast response from the audience. In cover letters, a CTA is your chance to remind the Recruiter that you’re grateful for the opportunity to apply for the job and that you can be reached at any time to further the application or interviewing process. Most CTAs are a few sentences long and are placed at the end of the last paragraph of a cover letter. Ending with a CTA statement is a great opportunity to express your hope that the correspondence will continue. 

Content that creates desire. 

The “creating desire” paragraphs in a Financial Analyst cover letter follow the opening paragraph. In a four-paragraph cover letter, these would be the second and third paragraphs. This portion of the document is your chance to describe why you’re a serious candidate for the job. These paragraphs often include specific personal details pertaining to your finance skills, past professional experiences, and successes you’ve had. You should indicate to the employer that you not only have finance-specific skills but how your experiences reflect this skill set. Instead of repeating content from your resume, expand on the points you raise there, as well as anything you feel is important that wasn’t included in the resume. Instead of narrowly focusing on education or one work experience, it’s better to draw from various experiences to show that you’re a well-rounded candidate. 

5 Financial Analyst Cover Letter Tips

Creating a strong, well-written cover letter is a core component of helping you get a job as a Financial Analyst. It’s not enough to just include pertinent content with keywords; a compelling cover letter is your chance to tell a story about your skills and experience and allow your personality to come through. The following five tips can help you write a cover letter that will get the attention of hiring committees:

Create multiple cover letters.

Writing a cover letter is hard work. It will likely take multiple drafts and revisions to convey your intentions. Because of how much effort goes into creating this document, it may be tempting to draft one document and use it to apply for multiple jobs. However, it’s important to resist this temptation. Recruiters can easily spot generic cover letters that aren’t specific to the job. If your cover letter is tagged as generic, it may not be seriously considered.

Instead of using one cover letter to apply to multiple job openings, it’s better to create one strong letter in response to the job opening you are most interested in. This document can then be tailored to other financial analytics openings. For example, positions at accounting firms may have different expectations and requirements than an opening at an investment bank or small nonprofit organization. In addition to revising your cover letter to reflect each of these job openings, your cover letter will likely change. The skills you highlight and the experiences you describe may differ from one position to another. For some jobs, you may also wish to omit certain skills or experiences, whereas, for others, you may wish to add different points to match the job posting. 

Keep it brief.

Brevity is a virtue in a cover letter. Most cover letters are four paragraphs in length or approximately one page. This means you must resist the impulse to include too many details. Instead of choosing three work experiences in which you used Microsoft Excel to help organize data, you may wish to include just one and instead spend the time highlighting other important skills, such as your experience using SQL or SAS. In addition to deciding which details to include in a cover letter, you also should make sure the language you use to describe them is free of excess verbiages, such as adjectives and adverbs. Write concise, to-the-point sentences.

Tell the readers a story. 

A cover letter should do more than convey your skills and experiences in finance; it should also tell a story of your growth and evolution. Consider storytelling a secret weapon you can use to connect with a Recruiter. A well-told, brief story in a cover letter is your chance to build your personal brand and go beyond the bullets in the resume. Just like novels take the reader on a journey with the hero as they explore new ideas and adventures, a cover letter can tell a more condensed story of your own professional progression.

If you’re interested in using storytelling elements in your cover letter, you may want to start in the middle rather than in the beginning. Begin with the most compelling action or experience you had, which may not be at the start of your financial analytics career. Doing so allows you to pull the reader right in by hooking them with a memorable moment in your career. Additionally, you may use some space in the cover letter to explain why you’re interested in joining forces with this particular employer. What can you offer them, and what can they offer you? Ending your cover letter with a strong conclusion that references the beginning is also a useful writing technique. Because the last paragraph of your cover letter is the part an employer is most likely to remember, you want to end strong. This may mean referring back to the beginning of your story to show it’s an ongoing path. 

Let your personality come across in your writing.

When you use your cover letter to tell a story about your financial analytics experience, don’t be afraid to let your personality inform your prose. It’s a common misconception that cover letters should be bare or even mechanical. While it’s important to use professional language throughout, and to include strong, pointed writing, you can do so while still infusing elements of your personality. 

It’s common to see cover letters that begin with a standard opening sentence like “My name is X, and I’m applying for X at X company.” Odds are Recruiters see many cover letters that have a very similar opening. They are likely to overlook yours in this case. Instead, try beginning with something more engaging and personal, such as a relevant story about your experiences in finance that are directly applicable to the job opening. Word choice is also important in allowing your personality to come through. Trite phrases like “I am a hard worker” or “I strive to go above and beyond” convey little helpful information and are too abstract for a cover letter. Instead of these overused phrases, describe your inspiration for pursuing this position, your professional goals, and what innovations you can bring to their organization.

Get Feedback

Once you’ve written a cover letter you feel confident about, it’s important to reach out to others for feedback. This step is essential since it can be difficult to spot errors in your own writing. While you should definitely proofread your work before sharing it, you may also ask former teachers, colleagues, or employers to review the document. Those with a background in finance may have suggestions based on the content, such as what details you may want to describe in more detail, as well as which ones you may omit because they aren’t as relevant. It’s also a good idea to share your cover letter with strong writers who can provide feedback on grammar and usage. When sharing your cover letter with readers, consider including your resume as well so they can see how the documents work together and provide suggestions on both.

Noble Desktop offers one-on-one mentoring in its FinTech Bootcamp for those who want additional help creating a stand-out cover letter.

Learn the Skills to Become a Financial Analyst at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop, an educational provider located in New York City, offers a range of classes devoted to financial modeling and analysis. Financial Modeling Bootcamp is a hands-on, 18-hour course that teaches students fundamental financial concepts, such as corporate valuation, accounting, and finance. Participants in this small class create their own discounted cash flow using Microsoft Excel. Over three days, expert instructors also help students develop a comprehensive financial model for an actual company. As a prerequisite to this bootcamp, students should have intermediate Excel proficiency.

Noble also has a Financial Analyst Training Program that provides expert instruction on timely corporate and financial concepts, such as making a full valuation model. Those enrolled in this intensive program receive instruction on fundamental Excel skills, such as using shortcuts and PivotTables. Advanced Excel techniques are also covered in this 30-hour program, like Goal Seek and cash flow projection tools. All learners also receive instruction on creating a three-statement financial model for a public restaurant company.

In addition to the Financial Modeling Bootcamp and Financial Analyst Training Program, Noble Desktop also has in-person and live online financial modeling training courses. The

Excel Bootcamp offers 18 hours of instruction on core business Excel skills like working with VLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH, and What-If Analysis for Goal Seek. FinTech courses are also available, like Algorithmic Trading with Python, Python for Data Science Bootcamp, and FinTech Bootcamp. This course provides students with hands-on training from expert instructors in FinTech skills like working with Python and SQL for data analysis, creating machine learning models, and working with different data types like integers, floats, and strings. All students have the option of a free course retake for up to one year, as well as one-on-one mentoring.