Less than 30 seconds. That is all the time you have to make a first impression with your resume. Investment banking professionals are busy people, which means you need to have a perfect resume to make a great first impression and land an interview.
The following article provides best practices and tips for constructing investment banking resumes that will prevent you from making costly mistakes, and improve your chances of landing interviews.
Keep your resume to one page
This is a common and well-known tip, but you won't believe the number of candidates that we see that do not follow it. Given that investment bankers only spend a few seconds scanning candidates' resumes, you need to keep your information succinct and concise. Only what is essential and relevant to the role should be included. If you are an undergraduate student, you should be able to fit all of your relevant experience (i.e. education information, work experience, extracurriculars, and skills) on a single-side of an A4 page.
To get there, you may have to cut out experiences that you are proud of or that seem important. It can be a painful process, but it is absolutely necessary. For starters, ensure that all high school education and experiences are removed once you are at the end of your first-year of university. The only exception is if you did something truly miraculous (Ex: founded a company, won a national academic competition, etc.) or that is interesting to the reader (Ex: rare hobby).
Stick to a tried and tested structure
You should use a clear structure with your resume with headings for a) Education, b) Work Experience, c) Extracurricular / Leadership Experience, and d) Skills / Interests. These headings are tried and tested across finance resumes and will allow the reader to clearly identify your experience and read your resume in an organized manner. You can have more flexibility with naming and organizing your 'Extracurricular Experience' and 'Skills / Interests' sections depending on your experiences, but you should aim to include the typical content from these sections in your resume no matter how you choose to name and organize them.
Ensure you include one line at the bottom of your resume listing your interests, as this is often something that finance professionals use to gauge your personality and uniqueness as a candidate. Refrain from using a 'Summary of Experience' section if you are an undergraduate student - these sections are rarely used in finance, and when they are, they are reserved for tenured professionals with years of experience.
Use clean and clear formatting
Your resume formatting must be impeccable. Investment bankers spend much of their time formatting pitchbooks and other transaction materials, and thus they have a keen eye for clean and clear formatting. Use an appropriate and neutral font that is professional in nature (I.e., Times New Roman, Arial, Garamond, Calibri, or Cambria as examples). Ensure that headers and subheaders use consistent formatting throughout each resume section, and that dates are formatted in a consistent way across your resume. The key to formatting is consistency across the page.
Further, ensure that you leave adequate white-space on the page to facilitate easy reading for your resume readers. If a resume is too congested and it is difficult to discern your experience, your resume will not be selected. You can format the page margins and the spacing layout between sections and bullets of your resume to achieve a balance of text and white-space that makes reading clear.
Use industry terminology where appropriate
When writing bullet points about your work experience, try to use relevant terminology and key words that relate your experience to the work of investment bankers and private equity professionals. The idea here is to use finance terminology appropriately to convey your understanding of the terms and maximize the transferability of your experiences to investment banking.
Be cautious not to overuse certain terminology or to misuse terms, as this will be detrimental to the resume reading experience and will likely communicate misunderstanding. You want to convey competence in your bullet points, so ensure that terms used are relevant and concise. When you get your resume reviewed by Top Bucket Blueprint, we spend considerable time ensuring that terminology is effective and appropriate for your resume, as we use this terminology everyday in our careers.
Check for errors, print it, then check again
It is well known that junior professionals at investment banking and private equity firms require a high level of detail and can notice the slightest grammatic or formatting mistake. Ensure you can showcase your attention to detail by having an error-free resume. If an investment banking professional notices a spelling error or formatting error in your resume, the likelihood you get picked for an interview moves close to 0%.
Ensure you review your resume multiple times. We find that printing your resume on a physical paper helps dramatically in identifying errors and mistakes.
If you want to ensure your resume is ready to use in investment banking or private equity applications, get your resume reviewed by our team at Top Bucket Blueprint.
