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Kid Sends Blunt Cover Letter and Now People are Trying to Hire Him

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Re: Kid Sends Blunt Cover Letter and Now People are Trying to Hire Him

#81

Post by waylandsmithers »

mindslight wrote: post #33

One of the responses, fourth from the bottom: > Not sure if either of you guys are still looking for a lackey to build models and fetch coffee, but this kid could be worth a conversation Does "build models" mean what I think it does - actually coming up with the mathematical method that projects risk, return, etc ? And if so, is the author being sarcastic, or do they really consider this to be unimportant work best p…

Usually doing some sort of number crunching to figure out which deals might make sense, eg. Company A and Company B should merge because of X, Y and Z. Then pass that information to the higher ups (rain makers, big swinging dicks, and what have you) who have the contacts and experience to bring the business in and get the deal done.

Re: Kid Sends Blunt Cover Letter and Now People are Trying to Hire Him

#82

Post by tzs »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #70
goatforce5 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I filter far less aggressively, somewhere around the top 50-100 school mark. Would an otherwise good candidate be excluded solely for going to some no-name school?

I've recruited for Google, Facebook and NASA. It just blows my mind that people STILL filter based on school. I got admitted to a bunch of great schools and stayed close to home because my mom was ill. Does this make me not worth hiring? There are millions of people in semi-unique situations that kept them from attending an Ivy League school. I don't get why someone would want to eliminate tons of potentially great p…

It's a probability thing. For instance, suppose 90% of great people go to great schools. Suppose only 20% of non-great people go to great schools. Suppose only 1% of people are great. (Just making up numbers, as the exact numbers don't matter to illustrate the point. All that matters is that great people have a significant tendency to go to great schools, and that there are a lot more non-great people than great people).

Then a random candidate from a great school will have a 4.3% chance of being great, whereas a random candidate from a non-great school will only have a 0.13% chance of being great.

If you have a ton of resumes, and only time to examine, say, 1000 of them, pulling at random from a pool that mixes those from great and non-great schools will give you a pile with about 9 great candidates (8 from great schools, 1 from a non-great school).

If you tell HR to filter out the non-great schools, and then look at 1000 resumes from just the great schools, you'll have around 43 great candidates.

Re: Kid Sends Blunt Cover Letter and Now People are Trying to Hire Him

#83

Post by icedchai »

mvkel wrote: post #60
peterjmag wrote: post #30

After reading the responses, I'm really glad I'm not in finance. "Hilarious but bold"? "Best cover letter I've ever received"? It's good, but it's not exactly groundbreaking. For tech startups, I feel like this kind of thing is almost required if you want to get anywhere. If I'm reading cover letters, I want to see some personality, and yes, I want you to be honest. Have some fun with it, even. Is that really such a…

Agreed! I've been on the receiving end of cover letters like this and while I appreciated the honesty, it wasn't exactly intriguing.

Well, to be fair, honesty is probably something pretty unusual on Wall St.

Re: Kid Sends Blunt Cover Letter and Now People are Trying to Hire Him

#84

Post by FireBeyond »

rayiner wrote: post #72
goatforce5 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see that if you were getting dozens or hundreds of applications for a role you'd have to be pretty brutal about who to cut before you even spoke to them. I've never had that luxury, though. Any job i've been involved with advertising has had trouble attracting many applicants at all.

Goldman receives about 10,000 job applications per year (disproportionately for junior analysts). McKinsey receives about 100,000 per year.

"McKinsey receives about 100,000 per year."

Citation? That's highly dubious.

There are 111.5M adults in the US between age 22 and 55.

Of those, 64.9% are considered "participating" in the labor force. That brings us to 72.4M. Of those, 61% are considered "blue collar", i.e. manual labor. It's fairly safe to assume McKinsey isn't attracting that subset.

We're now down at 28M. Without further subdivision, I'm fairly comfortable in feeling skeptical that one in every 280 white collar workers in the US applies for a job with McKinsey every year.

Re: Kid Sends Blunt Cover Letter and Now People are Trying to Hire Him

#85

Post by tsmith »

"Kid"?

What is it about people that makes them think a person about to complete a degree and enter a Masters' program, and assumedly old enough to drive, vote, serve in the military, and reproduce, is a "kid"?

George Washington was a major in the Virginia militia at 21. Nat Palmer was the first American to discover Antarctica at 21. Bill Gates was 21 when he founded Micro Soft. Steve Jobs was 21 when he founded Apple.

People who call fully-grown adults "kids" can go stuff themselves.

Re: Kid Sends Blunt Cover Letter and Now People are Trying to Hire Him

#87

Post by cellis »

FireBeyond wrote: post #84
rayiner wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goldman receives about 10,000 job applications per year (disproportionately for junior analysts). McKinsey receives about 100,000 per year.

"McKinsey receives about 100,000 per year." Citation? That's highly dubious. There are 111.5M adults in the US between age 22 and 55. Of those, 64.9% are considered "participating" in the labor force. That brings us to 72.4M. Of those, 61% are considered "blue collar", i.e. manual labor. It's fairly safe to assume McKinsey isn't attracting that subset. We're now down at 28M. Without further subdivision, I'm fairly co…

You're making some gross assumptions. Firstly:

"in the US"

There are a lot more people, you know, elsewhere. Further, applicants typically take a scattershot approach, and apply to hundred to thousands of companies in their course of finding employment.

100,000/365 = 273/day. You don't think the most reknowned consultancy in the world can garner that?

Second you assume that only white collar workers will apply to McKinsey.

Re: Kid Sends Blunt Cover Letter and Now People are Trying to Hire Him

#89

Post by Gormo »

run4yourlives wrote: post #77
sw007 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always amazes me how HN is full of incredibly intelligent people yet some are so spectacularly void of common sense. Only on HN would the discussion turn to whether or not the kid would be annoyed at an email that's forwarded without someone asking him. Course he wouldn't - they are all lauding him. His email has achieved exactly what it set out to do - it's got him a gig at an investment bank.

Course he wouldn't - they are all lauding him. So basically, the ends justify the means? That's like suggesting that me giving away your credit card number is okay if you end up buying the product that the third party tries to sell you.

The context justifies the means.

Yes to forwarding resume/cover letter email to others who might seek to hire the applicant. No to sharing others' credit card numbers. Human beings - creatures capable of judgment and discretion - don't need to reduce every decision to predefined deontological criteria.

Re: Kid Sends Blunt Cover Letter and Now People are Trying to Hire Him

#90

Post by mvkel »

icedchai wrote: post #83
mvkel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! I've been on the receiving end of cover letters like this and while I appreciated the honesty, it wasn't exactly intriguing.

Well, to be fair, honesty is probably something pretty unusual on Wall St.

No offense, but I think that's a pretty typical (and boring) statement that is probably less true than it is on "main street."

Wall Street trading firms have to adhere to some pretty stringent SEC regulations; regulations no other private company has to deal with. That inherently means they're required to disclose more than the average "Main St." company. We all like to cite the bad apples (aka the exceptions), but by in large financial firms are as "by the book" as you can get.

So no, I wouldn't say it's unusual.

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