Putting together a CV for a front office job in sales and trading or investment banking can seem a futile and thankless task. – You spend hours crafting a document, only to find that recruiters spend a minute (or less) scanning it, and distill it down into bullet points if they decide to take your application any further.
Nonetheless, a carefully crafted resume is a necessary evil. If you want to get a front office banking job, your resume will need to be better than good: it will need to be close to perfect.
The absolutely perfect resume for any front office job in an investment bank, WILL….
1. Have impeccable academics
“Most banks get tens of thousands of applications and for the sake of simplicity they have to eliminate a lot of them on the basis of academics,” says Malcolm Horton, global head of recruitment at Nomura International.
In the UK, this typically means that you’ll need at least a 2.1 degree and a pile of A grades at A Level. In the U.S., it means you’ll need a GPA of 3.5+, says Peter Harrison, the ex-Goldman Sachs trader who runs Harrison Careers, a company specializing in helping students into banking. “Anything less indicates that you did not work especially hard at college,” Harrison adds.
If you look at Morgan Stanley’s 2015 analyst class, you’ll get an idea of the standard today’s junior bankers need to achieve. One of Morgan Stanley’s hires achieved four A*s and one A at A Level. Another achieved 110 out of 110 marks in his final exam at Italy’s top Bocconi University.
If you don’t have top academics, your investment banking resume – no matter how good in other ways – will be dinged. “We cut out around half of the resumes of the people who apply to us on the basis of poor academic performance,” says one senior banking recruiter. “We just don’t have the resources to go through each one and read the justifications about why they didn’t do well academically.”
Andy Pringle, director of recruitment firm Circle Square, agrees that so-called ‘mitigating circumstances’ hold no sway with banking recruiters: “If you’re in London and you don’t have a 2.1 degree or better, you’re not going to get any further. Banks have no interest in the reasons why you didn’t do well at university.”
Worse, Pringle says poor grades will continue to damage your resume throughout your career: “Last month, I had a good candidate with a 2.2 and several years’ experience. The line manager wanted to hire him, but HR said there was no one with anything lower than a 2.1 working for that bank, and so his application went no further.”
2. Make a big deal out of impeccable academics
Given that everyone with any chance of getting a front office job in an investment bank is going to be academically brilliant, excellent grades alone are not enough. It helps to win prizes too.
Victoria McLean, an ex-Goldman Sachs recruiter and founder of City CV, says extra academic achievements can be a big differentiator. “Mention any scholarships, times that you came top of the class, high percentages and grades you scored in particular exams,” she advises. McLean suggests that you continue doing this for five years after you graduate.
Again, Morgan Stanley’s 2015 analyst class is a case in point. The bank hired two winners of the CFA Institute’s Research Challenge, a winner of Bain & Co’s strategy challenge, and a winner of the National University of Singapore’s Stock Pick Challenge. People who’ve participated in – and won – Olympiads in maths or sciences are also popular.
3. Make use of bullet points and be concise and cleanly formatted
Financial services recruiters scan hundreds of CVs every day. They want to read something succinct and to the point. Bullet points will suggest that your CV is both. “Bullet points are standard,” says Horton. One page is standard in the US, although you may just about be able to get away with two pages in London.
McLean says that you should have no more than six bullet points per subheading: “Any more than that and it just becomes a list.”
If you don’t present your CV in the form of bullet points from the outset, recruiters will usually distill it down into bullet points for you. For this reason, you need to have some hard facts in your resume (see point 4). – Without these, there will be nothing for them to create bullet points with.
The exception to the bullet point rule is Germany. There, banking recruiters say it’s fairly standard to submit CVs that are 17 pages long. This is partly because German candidates attach all their school certificates, however.
Matan Feldman, a former J.P. Morgan associate who founded the firm Wall Street Prep, says you also need to make your resume easy to read. “We see a lot of strange fonts, extra-long CVs and non-standard formatting,” says Feldman. ” – Especially among international applicants.”
3. Contain the right key words and phrases
It’s not good to think in terms of vague clichés, but having the right key words in your CV will make a big difference.
If your banking resume contains the right words, it will get you past the computers says McLean. Also known as applicant tracking systems (ATS), these are the computer programs that banks and recruiters use to sift through applications.
Which are the right key words for you? Do your research, says McLean. “Look online at job boards – look at ads for the jobs you’re applying for and try to pick out the words that are relevant to your role and sector,” she advises.
These days, applicant tracking systems are becoming more advanced. – Instead of simply looking for particular words, they often use so-called ‘semantic matching’ technology to look for whole phrases and related words. For example, if a job requires Java programming skills and you mention SQL, you could still get picked by the machine on the grounds that people with SQL often have an aptitude for Java. For this reason, it makes sense to mention as many skills as possible (assuming that you have them) and to include skills that occur in clusters for the jobs you’re interested in.
4. Speak in terms of concrete achievements and detail exactly what you did
Your resume is there to advertise what you personally achieved – not what you achieved as part of a team. “Put yourself in the mind of your future employer,” says McLean. “Why are they hiring you? What impact have you had in previous jobs and how did you do it?”
Speak in terms of personal achievements rather than generalities. Your resume needs to contain statements such as, “I was the top ranked salesperson three quarters running and increased the value of key client accounts by 75% during that period.”
“For example, if you’re a trader, then explain which strategies you use,” says McLean. “Which ones have been most successful for you? How did you build client flow? How much money do you make for the bank – and where does it come from?”
When you’re applying for a job in IBD, Pringle says your resume will need to reference the deals you worked on and exactly what you personally did during those deals. Most M&A CVs will be supplemented with a deal list, but you’ll be expected to have summary detail in your CV too.
5. Show consistency
The best CVs show consistent ambition and a career path which progresses harmoniously with that ambition. You will, for example, be viewed with deep suspicion if you have a history of working in corporate finance and suddenly express an urge to switch to algorithmic trading.
“If you are making a change then you need to say why in your intro profile – even if just one line to explain. Recruiters are so busy that if there is any ambiguity they probably won’t read on,” says McLean.
6. Suggest personality
Banks don’t just want to hire automatons with A grades. They also want to hire well-rounded individuals who’ve done something a bit different with themselves.
“We want people who are balanced and not singularly focused [on getting a job in banking],” says Horton.
One senior banker said he puts candidates through the so-called ‘airport test’: how much fun would they be if you were stuck in an airport with them for 100 hours.
Banks like to hire people whose CVs evidence particular elite forms of extra-curricular activity: it’s not enough to deliver food to needy people locally, you need to go to Costa Rica and build some houses for Habitat for Humanity. Similarly, expensive hobbies take precedence: skiing, skuba diving and tennis count for more than running in the local park.
What about being a member of a finance society whilst at university? “Simple membership of a finance society doesn’t count for much,” says Harrison. “But history has shown me that the active officials who run the finance societies nearly always land fantastic jobs in the City or on Wall Street.”
7. Be free of spelling mistakes and grammatically correct
In IBD especially, attention to detail is imperative: banks need to know that you can assemble presentations that will help them win clients, and those presentations must be 100% error free.
“97% of hiring managers reject on the basis of 2 typos,” says McLean. “You can’t afford to let this slip – proof, proof and proof it again.”
8. Mention big name schools
Whatever banks say, they hire from elite institutions more than others.
“You need to go to a top name school,” says Pringle. “It has to be top tier. – A Grande Ecole in France, the Ivy League in the US, and a top five university in the UK.”
Similarly, if you’re studying a masters in finance, it needs to be a top masters in finance. If you’re studying an MBA, it needs to be a top MBA. Anything else, and you’re wasting your money.
9. Show you care
This is a new point. In this age of increased banking regulation and ethical banking, it’s become important to show that you’re passionate about more than just making a lot of money for your own personal benefit.
“We want to see your values as an individual,” says Horton. “What matters to you? What are you passionate about?” Extracurricular activities and hobbies are the place to show this (see 6.)
10. Show you’re cosmopolitan
Lastly, it’s no coincidence that banks like Goldman Sachs have a thing for hiring students who’ve spent time at universities outside their home countries. This applies as much in London as in New York and China.
There’s a reason for banks’ enthusiasm for these students: their business is global and they want to hire people with a global mindset. By the same token, if you’re applying for an IBD or sales job in London, Pringle says it will help if you speak at least two languages fairly fluently. “Languages carry a premium,” says Pringle. British candidates, who are often monolingual, can be excluded on this basis: “Britons make up less than 20% of some M&A teams,” says Pringle.
And the absolutely perfect investment banking CV WONT…
1. Be more than two pages long (unless you’re in Germany)
2. Be printed on pink/purple/baby blue paper. White is acceptable.
3. Include a photograph of applicant, surfing.
4. Have boxes around key sections. [ATS systems cannot read boxes, advises McLean]
5. Speak in clichés. Do not say: “Analytical thinker, demonstrated leadership ability, team-playing skills, an ability to learn fast on the job.”
6. List previous jobs and responsibilities without saying what your contribution was.
7. Be printed in a strange font. Recruiters are simple beasts, keep it easy.
8. Tell lies.
9. Include every single educational qualification you’ve since you were 16 even though you are now aged 43. You only need to add A Level results if you graduated within the past five years, say recruiters.
Related articles:
The cover letter template that will get you a job in bankingLooking for a cover letter template that will always (or almost always) get you a banking job? This is it.
The perfect graduate CV for investment bankingIf you want to get into investment banking straight out of university – if you want to get an analyst job, in other words – you’ll need to be good
Why investment banks reject you. And what you can do about itWhether graduate or experienced banker, you'll be faced with a lot of rejection during your finance career. Here's how banks suggest you deal with it.
Â
Â