Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
I was recently helping a client with a cover letter and he kept coming back to me with more things to include; everything from foreign language skills and a computer programming course he had taken, to a leadership position his freshman year in college. I find that clients are constantly wanting to put MORE into the cover letter, while my role is to remove as much useless information as I can.
When you approach a resume or a cover letter from a personal standpoint the tendency is to include way too many skill sets. A successful cover letter, however, includes targeted skills sets (for the job at hand) and includes specific demonstrated results for each skill listed (stories).
Concise. Specific. Tailored. These are three ingredients to a successful cover letter.
Tags: Irrational Exuberance
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Friday, February 18th, 2011
If you are preparing for a career in finance or just want to learn more about the stock market you may have noticed the enormous amount of material on the internet and at bookstores. Most of this information is not worth the paper it’s printed on.
Save yourself some time and focus on the best books. The following are ten excellent books on finance, economics, and investing. The list contains a mixture of textbooks, humorous accounts of the industry, as well as guides from the top investment professionals. And now, in no particular order…
- Monkey Business (Rolfe and Troob) – A classic book recounting investment banking war stories. Provides an insider’s perspective of what goes on behind closed doors on Wall Street.
- Liar’s Poker (Lewis) – A humorous account of the Sales and Trading floor at Salomon Brothers. A must read for any future banker.
- When Genius Failed (Lowenstein) – Analysis of how Long-Term Capital Management- the highly acclaimed hedge fun- failed (the fund lost $4.6B in the span of 4 months in 1994).
- Financial Analysis for Managers (Higgins) – Popular Finance Textbook.
- Principles of Corporate Finance (Brealey and Meyers) – Popular Finance Textbook.
- The Intelligent Investor (Graham) – Originally published in 1949, this is the classic guide to “value investing”. As Warren Buffet says, “by far the best book on investing ever written.”
- Irrational Exuberance (Shiller) – An excellent introduction to behavioral economics and the irrationality with which investors approach the markets. Originally written in 2000 as a warning about the rising stock market which eventually crashed.
- Stocks for the Long Run (Siegel) – One of the best known books on stock market investing. Evaluates the history of the stock market and makes a case for investing in stocks.
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Malkiel) -Burton Malkiel argues that the stock market is essentially efficient and that investing in individual stocks is a silly proposition.
- This Time is Different (Reinhart, Rogoff) – This recent book explores the history of financial downturns. It argues that there are clear patterns and understanding them can help us avoid future recessions.
Originally published for my friends at Online Degrees Today.
Tags: Finance Interview Prep, Graham, Intelligent Investor, Interview Prep, Irrational Exuberance, Liar's Poker, Monkey Business, Random Walk Down Wall Street, Shiller, Stocks for the Long Run, This Time is Different, When Genius Failed
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