How to Write an Investment Banking Resume When You Have No Real Work Experience
“Ok, I’ve followed your resume templates, but I don’t have any real work experience and I’m applying to internships… what do I do?
How do I compete with the guy who already has finance internships on his resume?“
This one is very common if you’re still in school and you’re going for internships or even full-time offers.
And it applies even if you’re more experienced – but you don’t have much in the way of finance experience.
So here’s how you spin your resume to win investment banking interviews – even if you don’t have much “real” work experience.
Wait, Resumes Still Matter?
You might be wondering why this matters at all: doesn’t networking trump polishing your resume?
Yes, any day of the week. And spending dozens of hours “perfecting” your resume is still a waste of time.
But you still need a solid – if not perfect – resume. That’s especially true if you’re not coming from a well-known school and you don’t have brand-name internships.
And if you use cold-calling or cold-emailing to contact banks, they will judge you heavily based on your resume – so it needs to be good.
The Tutorial
To make all of this more concrete, we’re going to do a “resume makeover” and show you exactly how to change this university student’s resume to make it far more effective.
You can watch the video tutorial and review the Before and After files below:
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The resume itself:
And here’s the text version:
Key Mistakes
This resume is certainly not “terrible” – but there is one big problem:
Nothing on here indicates any interest in finance or desire to do a finance internship.
What’s wrong specifically?
- He lists too much experience, and most of it isn’t relevant. 2-3 solid entries is far better than 6 thin experiences.
- He does not highlight what’s most relevant to finance here, and instead treats everything as equal.
- He fails to list a highly relevant entry that should be counted as “work experience” rather than an “activity” at the bottom.
- He’s not specific enough with the finance-related experience.
So how do we fix all that?
Magnify Tiny But Relevant Experiences
Repeat after me: relevance trumps time when it comes to work experience.
If you’ve spent 2-3 years working at the doctor’s office or student center part-time, that’s nice – but it’s also useless for investment banking.
This student should focus on just 2 experiences:
- JP Morgan Investment Banking Case Competition
- Investment Fund
And then he can briefly write about his retail job over the summer and the student newspaper.
Unlike the others, the retail job is “real” work experience, in an actual workplace – which shows banks that you’re capable of functioning in the real world.
Right now this student barely mentions #1 and #2 above, but he should expand on both and pretend they’re work experience.
Even if the case competition only lasted a week, you need to draw attention to it because of the brand-name and because it’s more relevant than anything else on there.
Turn Your Hobbies and Clubs Into “Work Experience”
Examples of hobbies, clubs, and activities you could turn into “work experience”:
- Day Trading / Your Personal Portfolio (works better for Sales & Trading)
- Professional Organizations (e.g. Society of Securities Analysts)
- Finance Website You Started
- Case or Investment Competitions
- Student-Run Investment Funds or Finance / Consulting Clubs
What if you’ve racked your brain and you really can’t think of anything that seems remotely related to finance?
Your best bet is to re-position some of your experience as “consulting,” emphasizing the recommendations you made and the results rather than the technical details.
Remember, anything could be called “consulting” – and if you never had a formal title, all the better. More on that one here.
Cut Out “Work Experience” If It Won’t Impress
Forget about telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: there’s no “law” that you have to list every last detail on your resume, and most of the time you shouldn’t.
What should you cut?
- Part-time experience at the library, student center, etc.
- Retail/restaurant work.
- Anything you’re listing just to make a “laundry list” of activities – move this to the bottom instead.
- Anything over a year old that’s not relevant.
One exception: you may want to leave on retail/restaurant-type work experience if that’s all you have aside from activities – don’t focus on it, but it’s good to keep at least 1 entry on there to show banks that you have some real world exposure.
Forget Chronological Order
While you should usually use reverse chronological order for your resume, there’s no “rule” that says you have to strictly follow it.
So if you have “JP Morgan Investment Banking Case Competition” please put that at the top of your Work Experience no matter what the date was.
If you’re no longer in school this gets harder to justify and you should stick more closely to chronological order.
Move Your School to the Bottom
In the case where you have brand-name companies on your resume and a non-brand-name school, you could move Work Experience to the top and put Education below it instead.
That may raise some questions if you’re still in school – but it is an option if you’ve recently graduated and you feel that your work experience looks more impressive than your school, GPA, or major.
We’re not using this strategy here because this student is applying for summer internships and because his university – while not a “target school” – is also far from unknown.
The End Result
You can see for yourself right here.
We’ve using the exact same experience, but we’re presenting it differently, focusing on different points, and excluding what doesn’t matter.
And this student now has a much better chance of getting interviews and landing offers.
What to Do When You’re Out of School
If you’ve already graduated or you’ve been working for a few years, you can still apply some of these strategies.
The main difference is that you can’t get away with turning all your activities into “work experience” as a student might be able to.
You can still list them on your resume, but you need to focus on “bankifying” your real work experience by focusing on the business results and the big picture.
Wait, Is All of This Legal?
You might also be wondering if everything I’ve suggested here is “legal.” Will you be flagged during background checks? Get your offer rescinded because you omitted something?
No.
While you shouldn’t omit major summer internships, leaving out part-time, unpaid, or informal experience is fine.
And spinning experience into sounding bigger than it really was is not lying – it’s just spinning.
All of This Helps, But…
Also note that while the strategies here will help you get interviews and will make your resume look more substantial, you’re still not going to “beat” the guy or girl with a Goldman Sachs internship and an Ivy League school on his/her resume.
So you won’t be able to level the playing field completely, but you can give yourself a boost and reduce the gap between yourself and everyone else applying.
What Now?
If you’re applying for internships or full-time positions and you don’t have much real work experience think about what you could spin into sounding relevant: Clubs? Activities? Your Own Portfolio?
What are the 2-3 most relevant experiences to focus on? What could be omitted to make room for more relevant entries?
Think about all that, and then re-write your resume and spin your way to success.
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Hi, just a quick question on a minor detail, is there a standard on which verb tense to use for resumes? I’ve always used present tense for things I am continuing (build DCF model) and past tense for things that I have completed (analyzed FCF). Or should I not be worrying about this small thing?
Thanks lots.
It doesn’t really matter – I prefer using past tense for everything but doesn’t matter either way.
Brian,
As always, thanks for the post. Why don’t you state the names of the mining and natural gas companies? Because they’re assumed to be not well known? Would you state the names if they were well known?
Because I couldn’t think of anything clever on-the-spot. :) But yes, if you have names and could disclose them you should mention them here.
How do I list my own portfolio as work experience as a last resort? (when I have nothing else to list? no previous employment or student activities…?)
Truth be told, my bank manager tightly controls my money, so I don’t know anything about my own portfolio, but unfortunately that’s the only item that I could put on my resume.
In my case, I believe I should only focus on networking and forget about my resume, as I go to a target. But my resume looks very shallow… please advise.
Similar to what’s on here for the student investment fund experience – just write about a few stocks you invested in, or a few stocks you followed and were interested in. Very similar to the language on here. While focusing on networking is good, you still need *a* resume to apply in the first place.
If I get an internship at Morgan Stanley M&A or something like that the year before freshman year, do I have a shot at getting into PE at Carlyle/Blackstone by the time I graduate?
Sure
I am a college student who recently got an internship from a local PE firm.
I will be doing some finance related works, but when I told my interviewer that I have some visual basic experiences (working for school IT), he seemed really impressed.
As I reviewed necessary documents (employment paper, school papers, etc) regarding the hiring, I realized that my supervisor wants me to do tasks involving “intranet development”, along with other finance stuffs (he did not specify, just wrote stuffs like scope of blah blah blah and financial blah blah blah stuffs).
I am afraid that I won’t be doing much, or at least relatively less finance related work once I start working.
How should I tell my supervisor I am more interested in finance-side of the business, and will I able to transit eventually?
What are your suggestions?
Make a good first impression the first few weeks, and then ask for more finance-related work once everyone likes you and views you as reliable.
Any plans on coming out with PE interview guides? case studies?
Thinking about it but the PE interview guide would have a lot of overlap with the modeling program and IB interview guide so not sure if it would be a completely separate product.
For SA recruiting if I’m a sophomore but I’m graduating in 3 years is it okay to apply as a Junior?
Yes
How much will a Rhodes scholar help for IBD?
It helps but less than a solid internship.
Quick question,
I am a freshman at a top target and I am looking at middle market and smaller firms (mainly real estate investment banking and private equity) in my local area for this summer just to get some kind of finance experience. I have found about 20 firms with alumni from my school and was wondering when I email them should I include my resume in that initial email.
I have about a 3.7-3.8 gpa based on my first semester. I know it’s a good GPA, but if I include my resume, they will know right away I am a freshman and will probably disregard me without talking to me first. What should I do or go about talking to them?
Thanks so much
If you’re contacting alumni I would not include your resume – just email them to set up a time to speak on the phone or meet in-person first rather than asking directly for an internship.
If a bank sees “entrepreneurship” on your resume will they think you won’t be a good fit for the culture? I had a suspicion about this and just changed it to “part time”
On a related note, is there a best way to spin entrepreneurial experiences? In my case I got involved in a startup project that was research based and actually involved going through 10-K’s and financial statements but sometimes I feel like employers won’t take it seriously if I try to sell it hard.
Thanks!
It depends how you present it – in your case I would spin it to make it look finance-related and just write about your work with the financial statements. I would not use the word “entrepreneurship” because banks want docile people – saying it was “part-time” or down-playing it is the better bet.
Slight diversion from the topic, Is applying through the career section of websites of bulge brackets, a good idea if you have been working in an M&A boutique (for about 2 years). Does any one care to look at the resume submitted there?
In general no one will look at it. Sometimes you do get responses, but don’t spend much time submitting blind applications online – focus on talking with real people.
Hi,
I signed up for the Networking Ninja Toolkit but there seemed to have some technical problem so that I ordered and paid for Networking Ninja AND Financial Modeling program which I don’t need. I have send an email to you on this. Could you help to fix that and cancel the order for Financial Modeling program?
Thanks!
I found that I had the access to the courses immediately after I paid, which made my previous post inappropiate. Thus, I would like to keep the order. I am sorry about that.
Janet: Just emailed you about this.
Hey M&I,
Thanks for this post, it’s really relevant to my situation.
I have participated in 3 different competitions from bulge bracket banks (they are my only finance related experience other than a few courses and some consulting type extracurricular), would you recommend listing them separately (equity research comp, trading game, finance trivia game), or grouping them into a general category and then specifying what I did for each? The equity research competition entailed a lot more work than the other two, which is why I’m hesitant about listing them separately, but I didn’t want to leave the other two out since I’m scarce on experiences.
Thanks!
I would probably list the equity research competition as 1 entry, and then combine the other 2 into a separate entry.
Would you say that VB.Net and Excel VBA skills are quite plus for an entry level analyst? Or not so much? Or does it depend on the banks/firms (like size, specialty, etc)
Doesn’t matter much regardless
I don’t have “banking” experiences, but have other finance-related experiences (campus-budget office, insurance company, accounting firm).
You think it will be easy for me to spin these experiences and or will I be looked down as just an another non-banking guy, who tries to break into banking?
Well, what other choice do you have? I would definitely spin them as much as possible.
Thanks for a very insightful article!!
Coming from a non-target, I was thinking about attending a target school’s career fair. If I do this, should I contact the school asking permission to attend or should I just go? If I do ask permission and they say no but I go anyway and can easily get in (without the school’s I.D. card or any confirmation), should I do it? Would banks ask me or someone else if I was granted permission attend? I’m a currently a sophomore looking for summer internships and I want build up my contact list, would be attending these career fairs as a sophomore be a good idea? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for all of your help!
Just go, it’s always a good idea. No need for formalities.
Good evening from Wisconsin!
I have been a dedicated reader of yours for the past 6 months and have enjoyed every article so far!
I am a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Business and have a business analyst internship at Target Corp this upcoming summer. Do you think this will be good enough experience to capture the interest of investment banks when I am a junior? Or do you think I should keep this internship in reserve and seek out more investment-related internships?
Keep up the good work and happy new year!
-Brandon
That one is ok but I would try for something better.
Hey M&I,
I really need your advice…
I am a first-year MBA student. I landed a Fixed Income Sales summer internship with a BB’s Mumbai office, largely because I go to a target b-school.
What should I do to ace my internship? I am ready to read whatever books, etc, that will help me work in tandem with the full-timers.
I really need a full-time offer and needless to say, competition is stiff. I have zero finance experience and I am no great shakes in Excel-related stuff either.
I really wanted to break into IBD, but fate had other plans. Is there any chance to shift to IBD after starting out in Sales?
Thanks a ton
There are a bunch of articles on the site on how to exceed in your internships – the basic point is that you need to make everyone like you and come across as personable rather than trying to “act smart” or prove that you’re a genius. Be reliable and make people like you and you’ll get an offer. You can move into IBD after Sales esp. since it’s just an internship.
Hi, If I have been trading independently in the equity market for 2 or more years. ( I just graduated from a non-target with 3.2GPA and dont have a BBA degree ) should I put it on my resume?? and should I put down some stocks that I actually research and analyze on ?? thats by far the closest thing I can get, my other experiences is all non-related to finance. ( mostly sales ) what other things I can do to improve the chance of getting an interview from middle / boutique firm ??
Thanks so much for answering my questions
Sure, I would list it if you’ve only graduated recently. Aside from that, it’s all about networking… sales experience is ok to list as well, but I would definitely put the trading entry at the top.
What would recruiters think about listing poker in the interest section of a resume? I’ve found it makes for interesting conversation when I’ve mentioned it in interviews for internships in the past. I would see it as pretty relevant, especially for a sales & trading job, but I’m worried I could be dismissed as reckless or a gambler.
It’s fine to list.
Do you have any relevant, small resume boosters that a Sophomore undergrad could get together in the coming months before summer?
I do all the Investopedia portfolio simulation type things, but I want something real that could make it onto a resume. Getting onto the student endowment management won’t happen until at least next fall, and I’m wondering if you can give some pointers on what to get involved in.
Just so you know, I realize that I won’t be getting an awesome internship relevant to investment banking this summer. I am just hoping for a decent finance one that may lead to something better the following summer.
Please post a response or send me an email if possible. Any help would be appreciated…
It’s pretty much student activities, seminars put on by banks, shadowing programs, or doing some trading of your own – I don’t have any great suggestions aside from those, but it doesn’t matter that much as long as you do get involved with something that looks relevant by internship recruiting next year.
What are your views on including a photo of yourself in your resume?
Don’t do it unless you’re in a region where it’s standard practice (e.g. parts of Asia) otherwise it looks very weird.
I wrote on my resume that I invested in XTO energy stocks based on acquisition potential..(,which I did) and just found out that JPM advised Exxon and BarCap and Jefferies advised XTO. Guess what? I have SA interviews with them next week!
I know about the deal ($41b in stock including $10 debt) from reading news, but what do you think they will ask me? What would you ask me if you were an interviewer? Please advise!
I wouldn’t worry too much over this, just read up on it in the WSJ Deal Blog and see what they had to say… just be able to describe the rationale and give an idea of the relevant deal multiples (revenue, EBITDA, etc.).
I’m a junior at a top 10 liberal arts school, pretty non-target I guess, and my gpa is ~3.6. I have no real work experience and all I’ve been able to land is a wealth management internship for this summer. Is this internship going to hurt me? Apart from networking to death, is there anything else can i do to break into iBanking? Will I have a shot at an iBanking job after graduation since I won’t have any IB internships?
Yes, you can still move in coming from a PWM internship. It is much better than having nothing finance-related. At this point you have to go through the networking grind, not much else will help in terms of IBD offers.
I am senior graduating Dec 2010, but I dont have much IB experience. How do I write about my portfolio as part of working experience? I have passed the CFA LVL 1 exam but where and how should I include it in my resume.
Just make each major investment you’ve made a separate bullet and write about why and how you made the investment. For CFA I would just list it at the bottom under Certifications
Hi. A very insightful article. I am working at one of the world’s biggest bank and is reputed in IB. However, I am not working in their IBD. I am working as a cash operations analyst in one of the other departments and im unhappy as it has nothing to do with IB or trading/investments. Internal Job postings do not have anything for the posts of IB Analyst’s/Associates. My ultimate career aim is IB and im worried that my current job might not help my resume if i want to get into IB. I am a Bachelors Degree Holder and I plan to do my MBA a few years from now. What would you suggest? Also, how important is CFA to get into IB?
The CFA is useless. You should try to get something more related to finance first, even if it’s not at a bank (corp. fin. at a large company, PWM, etc.) and then use that with the MBA to break in.
Hi, thanks you all for making such a helpful web. I am currently enrolled in the best program for our school and my school is pretty much the best school in this country, but the nature of our program is such that the faculty makes it really hard and about only 50% students can actually make to the second year and whoever left are really competitive . Within this program i dunt really have a good GPA. I am still looking forward to get in IB. Do you think i should switch program to get a better mark ? Our program has really high reputation within Canada.
I would switch programs if your grades are low (below, say, 3.5 or equivalent in the Canadian system). No program is worth it if your grades suffer.
Brian- Does the background check involve calling every single place on the work experience section on resume? I did some online work for pretty well-known organization, which I can spin to make it sound relevant finance. But it was just a volunteer experience conducted online, and I was no longer in contact with the person who assigned work to me. Really debating whether to put it on my resume or not because it really isn’t a real work experience (like one in an office setting, with contract etc), and it’s not gonna be really possible if the background check party wants to call the organization to verify. What do you think?
Depends on the bank – I avoid answering background check questions because it changes all the time, every place does it differently, etc. I would leave it off if you’re uncertain.
Hey just discovered your site and I am blown away. You’ve done a great deal helping everyone great work! I also need some serious advice! Here’s my odd predicament. I got my bachelors of science in bio DEC 09 at ‘some school’ on the path to med school (did it for my family to be happy). I started trading when I was 19(3 yrs ago)when I raised and managed .25 M dollars which I day-traded daily on 4x margin but this was right before the apocalypse and it was the worst year for my partner and I. I still trade daily and am addicted to numbers/charts/graphs and its always been a dream for me to break into this sector. Now my question is I have been offered a BACK office job as a Personal Banker at a BRANCH of Wells Fargo, which is pitiful then again I have no finance experience. Would you recommend me beginning here to break in, wait and get an internship, or just apply with my current experience (investing, self-employed, and sales exp)?
If you are set on doing trading, then you could potentially get in from the middle or back office… but it’s probably better to go to something middle-office related like trade settlements instead. I’d say go for middle-office roles first and see if you can get those, then move into trading.
Hi,
Thanks for the post. This is a great site and has been really useful.
I’m expecting to graduate from Imperial College in July 2011 with a first degree but I have no relevant work experience. Not even any JP Morgan competitions. Just some engineering work experience and membership of finance societies at university. I was wondering what my chances of breaking into investment banking were?
Thanks for the advice!
It will be difficult if you have absolutely no work experience, but in Europe that situation is more common so maybe not the end of the world.
I am going to do a Masters in Management, but have no relevant work experience, as in nothing related to Finance. It seems like I have no chance.
Then create your own experience… start a finance or investment club, set up your own workshop, do something different and you will get noticed.
Just graduated and landed a job as a research analyst in PE. It’s not directly in PE but it’s working for a company who conducts research of PE funds performance. Would this enable to move directly into a more suitable role within IB or for a PE firm after a few years experience doing this?
Thanks in advance.
Maybe, though IB is more likely than PE… PE really wants former banking analysts most of the time
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the hard work you have laid down in developing this website. I currently work at a boutique corp. advisory firm which does transaction advisory as well as consulting. Irony is that I have hardly worked on any transaction deals since the last 8 months of my life at this firm. This is my first job and I am confused about my future in the firm. If I stay here for long and do not get much exposure to transaction advisory, it would be hard to me to switch to another firm later on. I am currently an associate here (I’m an MBA). If I try to switch to another firm right now, it would be a new start as due to less exposure to transaction advisory, i would have to start as an analyst again, and I am not even sure if other banks would look at my CV for the second time if i mention the exact details of work I have done at my current firm. Also another question, does networking ninja course work for banks in india as well? Thanks for your time.
I would try to switch firms as soon as you can – 8 months is enough time to assess how well it’s going and to make changes if necessary. Lack of deal experience is a common reason to switch – you can just position it as wanting to work on larger/more complex deals.
There is contact information for banks in India in the course but the strategies covered are not specific to regions, e.g. they work anywhere but may be more or less effective depending on where you are in the world.
Thanks Brian, Sorry for replying after so long. Had been really really busy. The thing is, that since its not been even a full year at this bank and most of the vacancies in the Indian market are for people with over two years of experience. Indian iBanking workforce is much smaller when compared to its US counterparts and hence a switch is possible only when there are vacancies. So cold calling is less effective here.
I wanted to know how feasible is the idea of working for a couple of years in India and then try to switch to a bank in US, and what would be the easiest way to do that. Is it a necessity that I need to take up a course in US and then try for placements? Or while working here in India there are chanced that I could be hired for a US based position. I really want to work at the heart of the Financial Hub..
I would try to work at a US or other international bank in India and then transfer elsewhere. All you can do is network, get your name out there, and wait for spots to open up. It is not a good idea to go to the US / other countries without having something lined up – your chances are low if you go in without a plan.
Hi, Jay Could u plz tell me which IB u are wrking at in India??
HI MAIB,
Sorry I cant disclose these details on a public forum. Email me for further queries.
Hi,
A few of quick questions, if you don’t mind, regarding what to include on my CV. I am a second year university student applying for a summer internship. I am not from a brand name university, but one that is well within the top 100 internationally, studying Economics.
1. Whether or not to include that I managed numerous sales teams and was personally one of the highest volume sellers for a gas & electricity company (door-to-door).
2. That I was an assistant manager of a restaurant.
3. That I am currently a professional sponsored poker player (I understand this is somewhat unconventional, but I think it has a great degree of similarity with IB).
4. I have started 2 of my own successful companies – one selling mobile broadband and the other dealing in used and new books.
5. I have worked as a club promoter, including putting on my own regular nights.
6. Chairman of the Student Union of my college (I’m from the UK, so I’m referring to when I was between 17 and 18).
I would of course ‘bankify’ whatever was going to be included.
Thank you very much for your help, I’m sure it is needless to say that you’re running a great site.
List the sales team manager, 1 of your companies, and the club promoter role. Only list poker when applying for S&T.
Thank you for your reply. Do you think I could list the poker in the interests/activities section?
Sure.
I spare the obvious thanks for your website. It’s great. (oops, I didn’t spare it, did I – but seriously, it’s great)
Well, I got a problem. And I would really appreciate your help.
First off, economics master at German #1 faculty according to ranking and still where no company hires from, however.
Namely, I don’t have any work experience – I disliked investing time into something I would not like and working at a local low profile company has already cost me time and seemed to prove that people rather play soccer and talk about soccer than work, very annoying)
I don’t have student activity either, since I stopped being interested in extracurricular acitivies. Mostly, becaue at my university it was either blatantly ignorant women who were in charge of management and entirely incapable of rational thought – no offense, you hear the sarcasm of the defeated – , or all you found were some unwilling, incompetent, arrogant pricks that that seemed to enjoy having the activity on their resume and apart from that prefered drinking beer rather than working. (I was an idealist when younger, and as such you can’t handle this actually)
I also have not engaged in a competition. I actually have, but I spent more time reverse engineering the software and asking about how to model my opponents with game theory rather than play the game and got bored ( that was some case studies on logistics). In other cases I was mostly shocked by the limitedness of hte models and did not even start to participate.
On the other side, I never enjoyed investing virtual money and I did not have any money to invest, so I did not do anything like that either.
So all I did was basically socialize the old-fashioned way, by going out and meeting up with people of interest. Doing pickup just for the sake of learning to game people. And studied about every discipline in my spare time there is to be found in academic institutions.
I also failed with finding investors for 3 startups during the seed phase.
And I turned down a lot of actually good jobs for my resume because I thought my studies where more important than serving coffee to
Well, my perspectives have changed, of course, I got older and more mature.
At the same time, however, I feel like sending an empty resume. I don’t know how to spin anything here. I mean, I don’t think that I am in any way challenged compared to my peers with more orthodox CVs, but when it comes down to the hard facts of what I could write into resume, I think I am lost.
Should I become a ski bum? Or buy a surf-shop in hawaii? (I actually considered that as an alternative years before reading this here. And I actually hate skiing. )
I would really appreciate your opinion on this. And in any way, I guess other readers will have a good laugh at my pitiful fate.
( I am actually currently progressing my BA in mathematics, but reading about “not working for toys r us” statement I would almost think it would be better to start an entrepreneurs loung student club than wasting my time solving exercise sheets on problems totally irrelevant for anything but quantum computation or alien-weapon re-engineering ;) )
Cheers!
Honestly I don’t know what to tell you there if you have no work experience and no activities. Maybe start doing some volunteer work? Otherwise you don’t really have a shot with a blank resume.
Mmh, ok. I tried anyways.
Thanks for the quick response. And keep up with the site.
BR
Hi Brian
I have two questions regarding what to include in my resume. Thanks a lot.
I want to apply for trading or market division. Should I emphasize an international mathematic modeling contest experience, in which I only won 3rd prize? If yes, I wanted to list it in the “work and leadership experience” section. But the contest lasted only 3 days so it just seems a little odd to put it in the section.
Another question is that my undergraduate major is math, which I think helps demostrate my quatitative skills. Should I list some of my courseworks in the resume to show that I have taken very hard courses?
Thanks a lot!
List a few courses but keep it to 1-2 lines. If you have no better real work experience then yes, list that international competition, it’s fine even it was only 3 days
Hi there, I have a question about putting sport activities into the CV. I have no real work experience, I have done volunteering, but still my biggest accomplishment is Sailing as I have done both world and European results, I am an official “1st category” athlete. But do the banks and financial world care about it? how strong is it on my CV and should it even be there. Unfortunately I have no better things to fill my CV with.
thank you
If you have nothing better, yes, leave it on. And banks certainly like people with athletic backgrounds – sailing is less popular than skiing or popular televised sports but it’s still good to have.
I was competing in skiing when I was younger, but I don’t I achieved the results which are worth putting on a CV. Should I put it as an activity since I still do ski quite a lot?
thank you
Hey Brian,
I have a question about spinning an S&T resume. Now I have no internships but I am doing pretty well on the Investopedia simulator. Not asking for you to write my resume for me, but how would you spin it into relevant work experience? It’s not like I’m trading real money, it’s just virtual, I’d hate to say something like “Independent Trading: Monitored and analyzed underlying stock market, selected and traded options, managing a $100,000 portfolio, generated X return in Y months” and the interviewer digs deeper and finds out it’s just an online account. I’d feel a little deceived if I was in the interviwer’s shoes. Should I just go ahead and mention it is a virtual one on the resume?
Yes just say it’s a virtual account on Investopedia and frame it in terms of returns rather than dollars so he doesn’t feel tricked.
I have no real finance work experience either.
But I have a real money account in an online forex brokerage. I have been trading foreign currency since a year ago.
Besides, I also have a brokerage account back in my country (I’m an international student), with real money and real stock.
I’ve been trading stocks since 3 years ago (right after I graduated from high school)
I’m a junior majoring in maths with concentration in finance. Currently work as a part-time server in a restaurant while taking full-time course in the college.
The two trading experience I mentionaed above are the only relevant ‘Working Experience’ I have in finance area.
Should I put these two in my resume?
How would you spin it to make it more sense?
Thanks
Just list the restaurant work and the 2 trading experiences and write about your returns or rationale for investing
Hi Brian,
I have a somewhat similar dilemma. I got 2nd place in a bulge bracket’s investment banking M&A case competition just a few weeks ago. I’m a junior at a target school so I am just about to send in my resume for summer analyst programs. Anyways, I do have finance experience (two summers at a hedge fund in NYC) and I’m a finance major, but I’m struggling with how to put the case competition on my resume. Should I put it above my hedge fund experience (since it is the most recent) under my work experience, or in my leadership section? Also, my top two entries in each section (work and leadership) is pretty substantial, since I spent 6 months at the hedge fund and I am president of a prominent finance club at my school – so if I put the case competition above them (again, chronologically) would I need to devote multiple bullets to keep the structure of the resume (most bullets at top entries, less as it goes down)?
Your advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Sam
List it under Leadership as the 2nd activity there and don’t stick to chronological order.
Hi,
If I don’t have much to put on my resume, is it okay to 1.5 or double space ever?
Thanks.
1.5 should be fine
Hi,
I am from an engineering background with several internships and work experience, but my key strength lies in my academic results (being in the Dean’s List for several years and topping my level in my university).
Where would I insert this in my resume to really highlight my academic strength?
Also, two of my prior work experience is pretty much being a salesman, both of which I have done very successfully. Is there a “banking” way to write this in my resume to break into investment banking?
Thanks
Under Education. Sales is very applicable, just write about how much in sales you brought in / how much you boosted the company’s overall sales.
Is it just a myth that investment banks hire engineers? Or do we really stand a chance if we’re good academically, with decent work experience.
Not a myth at all. http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/getting-a-finance-job-from-engineering/
Thanks again M & I, I’m currently touching up my resume according to your tips.
Just one more question, how would you relate a previous job of mine where I worked in a laboratory performing research to investment banking?
That’s tough unless you have numbers or results… maybe highlight your attention to detail and how much depended on you.
Hey,
I’m working on putting my resume together right now and I am considering what I should/can include on my resume “bankify” it. I have work experience but nothing necessarily finance related. Two things I am considering putting on there are 4 cases I did in my business statistics class and the group project I did for my marketing class. In the cases we had to evaluate and analyze specific business situations and decide on the best set of circumstances to satisfy that situation, so I thought maybe that would look decent since it has to do with business, evaluation, calculating, statistics, etc. The group project was a semester long project in which we had to create a business plan. I was the clear leader of the group, put the final project and presentation together.
I was wondering if I could include those on my resume, if so, under what category I should/could and how I should go about wording them.
Thank you for your time and help.
That sounds good, include them under Work & Leadership Experience
Thank you for your quick reply I really appreciate it! How should I go about wording these two experiences so seem better related to finance/make me a stronger candidate for banking? Thanks again!
Also just to be thorough and clear, the cases I did in the managerial statistics class were based on hypothetical companies and situations, that is still fine?
yes.
Use a lot of numbers and focus on the specific results you achieved
Hi:
I have a SA offer lined up at BB in New York for this upcoming summer, but have a lit hole in my resume. I have listed a mentorship that I did while in high school at a large Fortune 100 company, but I was never officially registered with the HR. I have the contact that I mentored under, and am on good terms. These leaves me with three questions: (sorry :))
1. Is her word good enough as a form of verification?
2. If I have my title down as “intern”, is this a big deal?
3. Who should I contact (if anyone) to speak about this potential issue before the background check?
Thanks!
1. Yes. 2. No. 3. No one at the bank. Talk to your contact at that company and list her as the person you worked under on your forms.
Thanks!
Hii,
Good work with the website. I am working towards my resume right now and want to incline it towards I-Banking. I have a 5 year part time sales associate which I did when I was in my bachelors of engineering in electronics. I did good for the company. I can spin it as full time considering the fact that I worked in my family business (consumer electronics stores).
1>Its the only real world job experience I have.
Then I started my Masters in Electrical (target-school), had a full teaching assistant scholarship, – my second work experience.
2> Is it good? I can spin it off as mentoring, but not bankify.
But I got disoriented in 2 years and left for another masters/phd program in another school (non target) for computer engineering.
Now after another year and a half I left it because I do not want to do it. My roommate is in portfolio management in a BB firm in NY and kept talking about I-bankers which got me interested in I-Banking.
3>Can I write those years in MS as “extensive graduate coursework in engg”? (i didnt complete the degrees though)
How would you as an interviewer judge? how should I spin it?
I was also the VP of the student body organization in public relations.
I am self studying a corporate finance webcast course of a business school in NY, and I will start a good project and would finish it in a week. I will also look at online case competitions, pick a topic and do it.
4>Can I list these (self-done) projects and cases in work and leadership section along with the sales associate job and teaching assistant job…..
5>Plus I have run a marathon and several half marathons? should I list it in activities, and would it help?
Thanks for your time and help..
2. It’s OK but won’t help as much as real work experience.
3. Yes you can right coursework but make it clear that you didn’t get the degrees.
4. Yes.
5. Don’t list it under Experience, just at the bottom.
What are your thoughts on offering to wire-transfer funds within a cover letter in return for an interview?
Um horrible idea (assuming you’re serious, can’t detect jokes over the Internet), your CL would be forwarded around everywhere and your life would be destroyed.
Hi,
I’m working on my resume right now and I have a dilemma. I have work experience but nothing necessarily finance related, I have spent 3 years in an international airline working as a flight attendat while I got masters of investment banking (graduated June2009). How can I apply for a finance-related job now? Should I even list this kind of work experience on my resume?
Thank you for your time and help!
You can apply but your chances aren’t spectacular unless you go strictly for boutiques and spend a ton of time cold-calling… you have to list it, otherwise you have a big gap on your resume.
I am a college student. I have taken a verifiable, professionally administered IQ test, and I am a member of MENSA. Would my IQ or MENSA membership be worth including on a resume? I’ve been told not to include my IQ as it invites efforts to challenge it, but I feel it is no different than SAT scores. I’ve also been told not to include it on my resume but to offer it up in the interview, but that seems rather pretentious to mention uninvited. Thoughts?
Thanks.
No do not list that or bring it up in an interview as it sounds pretentious and is like saying, “I’m a genius” – just invites a lot of skepticism.
Hi there
First of all, thank you so much for the website, it is, to quote one of the most used English word worldwide, awesome!
Anyway, I have a short question, currently I am working in a software vendor company as a client service help-desk position
My company sells software to investment banks (such as Goldman Sachs) in which we provide a back office system for them to handle and reconcile trades (focusing on Futures and Options)
My job is to mainly assist client to reconcile their trade.
Much similar to what a back office IT guy would do.
I am also exposed to business analysis as well, such example would be an exchange wanting to launch a new set of derivatives and I am part of the team to go through the formulas and how the trades actually work and how the exchange wants to charge etc.
Anyway, my question here is very simple. I really want to get into an investment bank (like everyone else on here!). But my problem is, I have been struggling to find the best way to spin this work experience in terms of job title. While what I do is very specific, calling myself helpdesk just does not sound right!
It would be grateful if you could provide some ideas or suggestion for me?
Many thanks for your help, and please let me know if you need more details
Say that you are a trading reconciliation assistant and that your main task is working with traders to ensure that new products are launched effectively and that their trades go through
this is a great site and thank you so much
I am having a little trouble and not knowing what to do
I did not do so well in uni, even I grad from a “target school”. My GPA is around 2.8 which i know is very bad
I have 1 year and a half working in financial media sector however. But not a bulge bracket nor a boutique investment bank, even though from time to time i work with people in there
When I write my CV, should I bother putting my GPA down or can I totally skip that and just mentioned where I graduated (like a one liner?)
I know you said not to ask much about CFA, but I am doing CFA in hopes to cover up my bad grades. I am not taking my first exam until this coming Dec, but is it worth mentioning in my CV?
Thanks a lot, and keep up the great site