{"id":403,"date":"2013-01-17T00:10:08","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T00:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scqa.hult.edu\/en\/news\/hult-labs\/2013\/january\/want-to-make-your-cover-letter-go-viral\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T16:04:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T15:04:51","slug":"want-to-make-your-cover-letter-go-viral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hult.edu\/blog\/want-to-make-your-cover-letter-go-viral\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to Make Your Cover Letter Go Viral?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An email<\/a> from an undergraduate asking for a summer internship at an investment bank may have forever changed how we go about applying for jobs. And he did it by exhibiting in his email some of the exact characteristics that CEOs have been telling us they want in MBA graduates: integrity and self-awareness.<\/p>\n

For the last six months, we at Hult Labs have been interviewing about 100 business leaders around the world to ask them what they want to see in MBA graduates. They have noted a number of characteristics, but at the top of almost every single list are integrity and self-awareness.<\/p>\n

During an interview one CEO said to me, \u201cI\u2019m so tired of interviewing MBAs who have been coached to tell me that they can do everything. Just once I want someone to say: \u2018In the job you\u2019re hiring for there are three real skills that are necessary. I\u2019m good at one of those, but I\u2019m a bit weak at two of them. I\u2019ll need team members around me who are stronger in those areas, or I\u2019ll need a boss who can teach me how to get better.\u2019\u201d This CEO told me that he\u2019d hire an MBA like that on the spot. But in all his decades of meeting with job candidates he\u2019d never had a single interviewee who was that clear and honest about personal strengths and weaknesses.<\/p>\n

There are real implications here, both from what we\u2019ve been hearing from CEOs and from the cover letter that\u2019s gone viral.<\/p>\n