Copy This Investment Banker Resume Template to Get Into KKR (Or At Least, Something Almost as Good)
We’re going to continue our series on investment banking resume templates and go through how you should write about investment banking experience in this article.
You can actually use a similar template for anything in finance, whether you worked on the sell-side or buy-side.
But you can’t use it for everything.
Who Should Use This (or a Similar) Template:
- Students who have had banking / finance internships (you will need to make some modifications, e.g. put Education at the top instead).
- Current Analysts and Associates.
- Anyone in other front-office finance roles who is now looking for something else within finance.
Who Should Not Use This Template:
- Anyone applying to business school – for that you want to present a more “balanced” picture of what you’ve done.
- Older, more experienced people – if you have worked on 20+ deals you will need a separate page for listing everything. This usually only happens at the VP-level and above.
- Anyone working outside finance or anyone interested in moving to something outside finance – the Peace Corps doesn’t care if you know what EBITDA means.
The Template, The Video, and the Tutorial
As before, here’s the template in Word and PDF format:
- Investment Banker Resume Template – Word 2003
- Investment Banker Resume Template – Word 2007
- Investment Banker Resume Template – PDF
And here’s the overview video:
Other Formats:
- View Large Version
- Download Large Version
- Download iPhone Version
- Download iPod Version
- Download MP3 Version
And if you don’t like any of these options, here’s the same tutorial in text format:
What’s Different In This Version
Actually, a lot of this is the same as in our university student template: the area at the top with your name and contact information, the overall format of the resume, and format of each work experience entry (name and position left-aligned, location and dates right-aligned, summary sentence, etc.).
What’s Different:
- The Order – Work Experience on top, Education below that and Skills/Activities/Interests below that. Note: If you were an intern and are still in school you should keep Education on top.
- The Focus – We are focusing much more heavily on your investment banking experience and have cut back on the rest.
Why?
- For buy-side recruiting, or even moving to another bank, this is all they care about 90% of the time.
- If you’ve had a banking internship, your full-time interview questions will be either technical or focused on your internship – or both.
Yes, you can include previous internships and jobs as well but you should make your banking experience take up most of your resume.
If you’re an intern returning to school, it’s fine to leave in previous internships but I would not devote as much space to them.
About the Banking Experience
You should give 1 or 2 summary sentences, and then go straight into your deal experience (or if you worked on the buy-side, “Investment Experience”).
The summary sentence should:
- Give the number and types of deals you’ve worked on.
- Say that you completed valuations, models, due diligence, research, and client presentations (or anything else – add and subtract from here as needed)
Research and qualitative items are OK to include but try to focus on clients / deals / technical work because those are what interviewers care about.
If you didn’t work on deals (if you were an intern) or didn’t do much substantial work, there are ways around it – which we’ll get into below.
Picking Deals / Clients to Write About
Once you have your summary sentence, you need to decide WHICH deals / clients / investments to write about.
If you were an intern, this is easy: take what you can get. Unless you were a miracle summer analyst and somehow worked on 10 transactions, you can usually point to a few major projects.
For those working in banking full-time, it’s more difficult to decide what to write about.
Some guidelines:
- Aim for between 2 and 4 deals total – just 1 looks strange, and more than 4 is excessive to get your points across. In THIS template there are more than 4 deals, but that’s because I wanted to give you examples of how to write about different deal types.
- Try to have a mix of “high-profile” or larger deals that catch recruiters’ attention (e.g. Microsoft / Yahoo) and deals where you contributed something more substantial (this one is more relevant for full-time bankers).
- M&A / Restructuring deals are better to write about than IPOs or other Equity-related deals. Debt Financings can be ok depending on what you did. Anything “unusual” like divestitures, distressed sales, etc. is also good to write about and talk about in interviews.
See Also: Private Equity Resumes for more on this topic.
It’s not the end of the world if you’ve mostly worked on IPOs. Despite rumors to the contrary, you can get into PE without having M&A or Leveraged Finance experience.
Whether or not a deal was officially announced doesn’t matter: just replace company names with industry descriptions (“Biopharmaceutical Company”) for unannounced transactions.
What to Do If You Don’t Have “Real” Deals
If you don’t have many “official” deals, you should turn whatever you did during the summer into “pending” or “potential” deals.
The more that happened, the better, but as long as you did something you can write about it as if it were a potential transaction.
Were you doing research on companies for a client or prospective client? Sounds like a “Potential” Buy-Side M&A deal to me.
Did the CEO approach you and ask your team to pitch for the business? Did you do a valuation and research potential buyers? That’s a “Potential” Sell-Side M&A deal, even if you didn’t do much more than the pitch book (if you’re paranoid, you can label this type of experience a “Pitch” instead).
You don’t need to list “deals” if it’s too much of a stretch – in that case, just go with a summary sentence and a few more descriptive bullets on what you did.
Writing About Deals
Within each entry, list the dollar/Euro/other currency amount – estimating if you don’t know for sure – and list the company that you were representing first.
“Media Company’s Acquisition of Software Company” would imply that you represented the Media Company on the buy-side.
Use “Potential” or “Pending” for deals that haven’t been announced or closed yet, and only give the names if it’s publicly known.
Aim for 1-2 bullets for each deal – if you can summarize it with 1 bullet, do that, but if you need more than that you could split up what you did into “qualitative” and “quantitative” parts and use a 2-bullet structure.
I’ve mentioned the “Specifics; Results” structure before and the same applies here – but you need to be careful about what you write:
- Focus on modeling or valuation work if possible in your “specifics” segment – due diligence or other qualitative work may be ok as long as you can make it sound good in an interview. Try to link anything qualitative to how it was used in the transaction.
In the template here, the banker is using the buyer list he created for the Restructuring deal as the “specifics” and then giving the “results” by writing that it was used in Chapter 11 proceedings to show that the price was fair.
(“Fair” may sound ridiculous to you if you haven’t worked in finance before, and it would take me about a page to explain the term here – but for now just keep in mind that the work he did was used in court proceedings, which makes it good to write about.)
- The level of detail for each deal depends on how much space you have and the rest of your resume. If this is your first and only full-time work experience, be as detailed as you can, but if you have lots of other solid entries then you don’t need to write a Wikipedia page about each entry.
In this template, the banker has gone into detail on some deals and hasn’t written much about others – which is fine.
- Be very careful about your “results” for each deal. If you write something like, “Negotiated 10% lower purchase price,” you’re going to get called on it in interviews because Analysts and Associate don’t “negotiate” anything (except for food prices at closing dinners, maybe…).
If your work impacted the deal, that’s fine – but be careful with your wording and make sure that you frame the results as you having “supported” the senior bankers.
Also, don’t feel pressured to include false “results” – if all you did was create a presentation, just write that rather than pretending you made $10 million for your firm.
What to Do If…
Here are answers to some other common questions:
You’ve Had Multiple Investment Banking Internships
You can still include the other internships, but cut back on how much you include, and keep the focus on your current or most recent one.
You Had Experience in Private Equity, at a Hedge Fund, or Something Else Outside Banking
Still include a summary sentence but write about “Selected Investment Experience” instead and list the investments / potential investments you worked on.
Focus on modeling, due diligence, and how your work impacted the deal process (if that’s what happened).
See the video for more detail and an example of how to do this.
You Can’t Fit Everything On One Page and You Don’t Live in Australia
Decrease the font size, cut out experience, or do whatever it takes to get it on 1 page. 2 pages is still not appropriate in most regions, unless you have dozens of deals and need separate page(s) for them.
You Didn’t Have Any “Real” Deals
See above.
The Rest of the Resume
Again, it’s fine to leave in other Work Experience but you shouldn’t focus on it quite as much – which is why this section has been reduced here.
Education should be shorter if you’re working full-time – no one cares that you were on the Dean’s List. GPA and standardized test scores are fine to keep in. If you’re still a student, you can keep this section more detailed.
Skills, Activities & Interests should also be shorter (it’s named differently here as well) because people care even less what activities you were in once you’ve been working for awhile.
Again, students can keep this section more detailed but don’t go overboard.
Caveat Emptor
So that’s a quick overview of what’s in this template and how to use it – please do not just copy this blindly unless you want to get a lot of questions you can’t answer in interviews.
Use the basic format and style and adapt it to what you actually did.
Note: Also, I assume no liability in case this template does not, in fact, get you into KKR.
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Tags: Due Diligence, finance internships, investment banker, investment banking, investment banking resume, M&A resumes, Mergers & Acquisitions, private equity resumes, Restructuring, Summer Analyst, understanding investment banking, Valuation
Other readers who liked this article also liked these:
Hello and congrats on a great site! i’m currently working in PWM as a financial advisor at Rothschild in Paris. I’m looking to transition into a sales/broker position at a large bank to access a more fast-paced environment. I have 2 questions:
1- is this doable? I guess everything is, but is it realistic?
2- Would this template apply to my situation?
And I was wondering how PWM is seen in more “elite” finance groups? Do they see it as a better than nothing experience or is it seen as a “low-end ” job?
Thx a lot and carry on!
1) Yes, but it’s heavily dependent on networking.
2) Yes, because you definitely want to focus on your client experience in PWM.
Bankers usually don’t think too highly of PWM, but that is mostly because bankers tend to be annoying and arrogant… it’s certainly better than non-finance roles, though, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Does this resume format also apply to individuals (who recently started a FT job) but are looking to recruit again for more high level jobs (IBD,S&T, Consulting…etc.). I have recently started with a valuation shop and have been here for couple months but am looking to find jobs that could better position myself for b school. Please Advise. Thanks.
Yes, that would fall under category 2 above “Anyone in other front-office finance roles who is now looking for something else within finance.” – just position your valuation experience in a similar way to what I have here.
Hi i’m currently a rising senior in my penultimate year in a target Australian university and i’m interested in breaking into investment banking.
I noticed in this and a previous post that within Australia it is acceptable for resumes to go longer than a page long. What else do bankers generally like to see on resumes and cover letters in addition to the usual stuff mentioned in your post?
Thanks!
There are at least 10 articles on this site on resumes and cover letters, and more than that in the Q&A… I would start there and read everything under “Core Content” to get an idea…. look at the university student resume template and use it, you can make it longer and more detailed though.
Rather OCD question here:
I’ve been helping some friends who go to Wharton undergrad prep their resumes for FT on-campus recruiting since I’m graduated now and presumably “knowledgeable” about recruiting. One of them has asked me about rounding his GPA on their resume from a 3.33–>3.4?
When I rounded my GPA before I went from 3.56–>3.6 but that was okay only bc it was above 3.55 in my opinion so I told my friend no. But when I searched your site I found a comment saying that it was okay to go from 3.44–>3.5? Does a similar rule apply here?
Usually they only check GPAs right before you begin working… by that point, who remembers what you said in interviews or wrote on your resume?
Honestly I’ve seen people get away with BSing a lot more than a simple GPA rounding… I really don’t think rounding 3.33 to 3.4 is a huge deal, and I don’t even think it would help much with recruiting.
Sorry if I’m beating a dead horse here, but I was a little worried about the GPA I put on my resume (I’ll be a junior this year). I have a 3.86, is it still ok to round it to a 3.9 or is it less acceptable as the GPA gets closer to a 4?
I know you must answer questions like this all the time but I would like to put 3.9, just not if it will make me look dishonest.
Go ahead and put 3.9 but it makes 0 difference in terms of anything…
Hi I,
I’m currently just finishing an IBD internship at a leading european bank. The office I’m working in only just opened, and our team is very small. Hence most of the work was been origination i.e. pitchbooks.
Therefore I’ve only worked on one live transaction, but have done endless numbers of p books/industry research – Is there someway I can go into more detail on the work I did for these p books, as some of it was quite complex and for reputable companies – I’m sure if I was here for longer many of them would turn into mandates. How exactly would I word this experience without sounding like I’m just making p books?
Cheers,
S
just say each one was for a “Potential Sell-Side / Buy-Side M&A Transaction” or say each one was a “Valuation” and then go into more detail on what you did. In the description, focus on the valuation work and/or anything industry-research-related that sounds good.
I have an offer to work at a boutique I interned with and don’t know if I should take it.
Its three senior guys pretty much running deals that usually fall under $50MM/$100MM so they don’t have any junior guys.
I would be the only analyst and during my internship got to write the offering memorandum and management presentations.
I don’t know if I should take it since there would be absolutely no modeling experience involved, the deals are small so they let the market decide, i.e. determine best price from bids.
I would pretty much write the CIM, management presentation, teasers, time lines, interact with executives of client companies, develop a pitch or two very rarely, but not modeling.
If I want to ultimately lateral into a larger firm would they be receptive to someone who developed only qualitative, soft skills as an analyst with not modeling experience?
They have some solid dealflow, there just really small transactions.
If that’s your best option then I would definitely take it.
Yes, working in Morgan Stanley M&A would be better, but this is far better than being unemployed / working outside banking.
You can still lateral elsewhere if you don’t have great modeling experience, though it certainly helps.
Hi Brian,
I have 2 questions for you:
- Should you put your GPA of 3.3 on your Resume if you are looking an internship at bulge brackets?
- If you have had a summer internship at a Boutique during the summer 2008 where actually few deals were going on and you were only there to have an overview of the M&A’s world…how should you turn it in your Resume?
Could they ask you during an interview technical questions whereas you haven’t done anything technical during your internship (only drafted company’s profiles, research, plugging numbers into Excel)?
Thx
1) Yes.
2) They will still ask technical questions because it was an i-banking internship. Instead of writing about deals, I would just write a few summary sentences and make each one about a different project that you were working on.
Hi,
I’m having difficulty deciding whether to keep my CV to one page or 2. I’ll be applying to banks in London and my career service at Uni (UK) always said the norm was 2 pages – However after reading this and a lot of posts on other US forums it seems that 1 page is the way to go (especially considering how little time bankers have to read CVs).
Of course the problem is if I send a 1 pager and everyone else sends 2 pages I’m at a disadvantage by having less content.
Do you have any experience with how I banks in the UK view CVs, and should it be 1 or 2 pages?
I would keep it to 1 page, “more content” does not equal “better CV.”
People tend to have a lot of fluff that doesn’t make a difference one way or another when it gets to be 2 pages…
Hi Brian,
Thanks for answering our questions. I was wondering if you could tell me something. If I have already interviewed and been rejected at a BB, what do I say when other firms ask me if I am ‘interviewing’ with anyone else?
Thanks.
Just say you’re interviewing with several other bulge bracket firms but don’t know the results yet
Hi,
I’m currently working in financial due diligence at a big 4 accounting firm, and have worked on a major debt refinancing and several buy and sell side deals, mostly from a qualitative DD perspective. However I have also done some very detailed forecast (but not valuation) modelling. I’m looking to break into an IB M&A role – what aspects of my narrative above do you think I should emphasise, and what are the weak points I should be aware of and try to address?
Thanks for your help – great site !
I would focus on the modeling work and maybe write about 2 modeling-type experiences and 1 DD experience. Both are important but ultimately bankers will care more about modeling skills – the #1 question they have will be “Can you handle the hours?” so be prepared to answer that one.
Thanks for your response! In your experience, do many people from big 4 corporate finance/financial DD service groups make the transition to IBanking? The hours we work are typically around 60-80/week during deal execution (but I’m yet to pull an ‘all-nighter’!)
It’s possible but to be honest, it’s not very common – banks recruit primarily from business schools and undergraduate… you can do it, but someone still in school will always have a better shot at getting in.
I recently worked for a company that was acquired by a large private equity firm. The company’s name didn’t change, but it is now owned by this PE firm. Is it appropriate to write the name of the company on my resume as:
Company X (acquired by Private Equity firm Y)
or just as Company X ?
It’s fine to go with the first one
Thanks for the reply. Amazing website by the way.
Hi Brian,
I follow you on twitter and really like this portal. I have been wondering over last few weeks with finding a good audience to sound off my doubts. I guess I have it now!
To begin with, I am working full time with a boutique IB. I graduated last year from one of the IIMs and an undergrad degree from IITs. I also have pre-mba full-time work-ex.
High points – I am the only one among my batchmates who has actually closed a deal, only deal for my firm in last 8 months.
I am looking to move into buy-side, I know its little tough given the environment. I have been lucky also to get few interview situations in last 4-5 months. Though none of them actually worked out!
The issue is I fret little too much about technical knowledge of sectors I have worked on and the real problem is the feeling that I lack a story or seeing myself not able to chitchat, say getting friendlier with the interviewee.
I have also tried networking, easier said than done – last fall I exhausted all on my lists and now it looks embarrassing to write back to them.
Also, it looks with these kind of interview experiences – I think its best to save networking when I will be confident of my technical knowledge and soft skills.
Do you think you will have some ideas/advise which can be of help here?
Thanks,
MJ
Those are very broad questions but I would try to talk to some friends in the industry and see what you might be doing wrong with networking / telling your story… it’s really hard to tell you how to “be more friendly” online via comments, but you need to practice getting to know new people, meeting strangers, etc. and finding common interests. It’s not that hard with practice, but you need to do it consistently and then run it by other friends in finance to see what they say.
Hey Brian,
There is a start-up networking event happening in my city on Saturday which will be well attended by a lot of VCs.
I think it will be a great opportunity to network, however, I haven’t really been to such conferences and have no idea if you can really network their for potential opportunities.
So, two questions: First, will it be a suitable place to schmooze for figuring out potential opportunity/build network.
Second, any suggestion on how do I steer the conversation to finally make my objectives clear. Obviously, I will be introducing myself through my existing firm and hence it can be little dicey.
Thanks – MJ
Eh it’s probably not the best place to find a job, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
I would try to speak to as many people as you can for a few minutes, get business cards, and then follow-up with everyone and set up 10-15 minute calls or in-person meetings… toward the end of those conversations you can ask about recruiting.
Thanks Brian – I was suspecting so!
Thanks Brian – Guess ‘meeting stranger’ piece should be put in to practice and hopefully I’ll learn something out of it.
Meanwhile if you get to learn something from your industry friends do let me know.
hii… im now a sophomore year student in imperial college in london… i did have a working experience in china this summer in an investment company. but all i did was learning basics in trading equities, like analyzing trends nd reading newspapers to think about what policies affected what, it wasn reli much on contacting clients nd working on deals. However there was a signal of bear market back in this augusts nd many investors were scared nd many funds faced pressure, so i did participate in persuading clients to rearrange portfolio instead of quit on the market..
so my point is that how can i write my experiences into the CV.. it seems quite far away from those u mentioned in the article. firstly my experience was much more like trading … secondly i wudn call it an intern, its more like work experience..but i did learn alot basics from it… like Dow’s theories..etc… cos im a non finance major….
Just write a few summary sentences instead and write each task in a separate bullet. Try to write about specific trends/policies you analyzed.
Brian,
Thank you for the guide. I got my undergraduate degree in May 2009 and since July I have been working at a boutique. Things have gone sour company-wise and it is time to seek other opportunities. I am using the Investment Banker resume template.
My question concerns my title. My given title was “Associate”, but my duties and tasks were more as that of an “analyst/intern”. As I was not a true “Associate” (in terms of experience and responsibility) if I state “Associate” on the resume would the “mismatch” between title and stated experience harm my chances? Would I be held to the Associate standard?
How important is this a factor, or is it just a trivial concern? I am sure the boutique wouldn’t care what I put down.
Thank you.
Honestly I would probably put Analyst in this case if the boutique will back up your claim.
Thank you for your response.
I know I said that the boutique wouldn’t care, but if they did, then I would have no choice but to put down “Associate” as my title on my resume. In this case, do you have any advice when speaking to recruiters/interviewers? What is the best way to present the situation?
Thank you.
I would just explain that you were treated like an intern but that your official title was Associate – but you weren’t a “real” Associate, so it was misleading. I would also not even mention your title to recruiters at first, just present it like an internship.
This is great. I am a 2nd year analyst thinking of getting into the private investments arm of a pension fund.
I was wondering, when I label my current employement on the resume, do I specify my employer? or do I keep my current employer anonymous until I receive an interview? similarly, for transaction experience, do I list specific companies or is it sufficient to list “worked on $500 million IPO” etc. until I receive an interview?
Thanks
Specify the employer name, but do not list actual company names unless it’s a closed deal, public knowledge, and everyone knows about it.