IBM Junior Product Manager Cover Letter Sample

Why me?

As presented in my CV, my university life was filled with side-project activities, competition participations and internship experiences. All these extracurricular activities brought not only awards and CV-friendly features, but more importantly, invaluable experiences, books and concepts I would not have tried otherwise, and project based thinking with a can-do attitude. However, life is an ongoing journey and I keep learning and exploring, currently doing online courses in Innovation Management (Coursera), The Art of Storytelling (Khan Academy) and Digital Marketing (LinkedIn learning).

Why IBM- Client Innovation Centre?

I started thinking about IBM as a career possibility this spring/summer, when I managed to successfully present myself with a winning solution of a project for IBM Slovakia – “Are you living in reality” (see https://davidmantic.wixsite.com/ibm-challenge). Besides that, what I appreciate and what aligns with my work-life attitude and IBM is project based work, design thinking principles, can do spirit, room for creativity, and a work approach of combining art, science and technology. 

Why this role?

Client's behaviour changes with the leading generations, social status and life preferences. Strong economically active current (millennials) and future (Generation Z) generations find digital as natural. They do not buy things, yet experience. They like alternatives, experiments and freedom. Companies do recognize these shifts and keep innovating and customising their strategies in order to meet the clients’ very needs. Job of the innovation-evangelist is to comprehend, create and deliver compelling solutions.

My practical experience might be categorised in three blocks:

• Creating solutions for given company problems - using a challengest.com platform, I have been working on real-life problems of particular companies including banks, reinsurance company, hospital holding company, Adidas, and IBM. This work combined research, customer identification and development, creative and out-of-the box solutions implementing entrepreneurial thinking, client orientation and feasibility of the solutions. 
• Working on my own business project – as part of my internship at Crowdfundinghub in Amsterdam, I was working on my business project regarding office snack delivery. This work put me in the shoes of the entrepreneur and I used this time for stakeholder interviewing, prototyping and overall business model generation and creation. While applying design thinking and lean business model canvas, I managed to change the initial hypothesis and kept iterating based on the stakeholders’ feedback. On top of that, I learned the fundamentals of graphic design, online app prototyping, paper prototyping, and basics of Adobe Illustrator.
• Working for a startup as part of my master thesis – I was responsible for the overall go-to market strategy of the Honeylog startup – cyber security solutions for computer network. This work combined the spirit of the previous two blocks and, in addition, team work, communication with investors and funding seeking.

Concluding note

Dear recruiting team, I have introduced the three hiring reasons why I am applying for a graduate trainee position. Since I have been living in three different countries and was part of various international groups, I think that this adaptability together with the presented skills and personal traits are suitable for this position and IBM culture itself.

Thank you for considering my application and I look forward to hearing from you

With Kindest Regards