When applying for internships in investment banking and asset management, your CV is the impression you give recruiters. Investment banking internships receive thousands of candidates so recruiters are looking for a reason to reject your application. If your CV is not written and formatted perfectly, your chances of landing an internship in investment banking decrease dramatically.
In this guide, we’ll teach you the basic rules of building a CV. We will also cover some more advanced and unique techniques that you likely haven’t heard before, even if you consider yourself an advanced applicant.
If you finish reading this article and would like to have your resume reviewed by applicants who secured top investment banking and private equity internship offers, check out our CV Review service here. In this guide, we will cover the following crucial aspects of any investment banking CV, ensuring that you give yourself the best possible chance of making it through the initial screening stage!
Which CV template to use?
Formatting the CV header
Education Section
Work experience section
Extracurricular activities
Skills and interests section
Common mistakes
Which CV template to use?
The first step of writing an effective CV for investment banking is to select a suitable template. CV templates are great because they save you time and reduce the likelihood of making formatting mistakes.
There are hundreds of templates out there but most are not effective for investment banking. Here are some of the key criteria you should consider when selecting your investment banking CV template:
- Four key sections: Education, Work Experience, Extracurricular Activities, and Skills & Interests
- There should not be a “Personal Profile” section
- Black and white only
- No images
- Work experiences should include a company name, job title, location and dates
Although there are plenty of investment banking resume templates, we generally recommend two that we believe are the best:
Financial Edge: Free Investment Banking Resume Template
Mergers & Inquisitions: Investment Banking Resume Template
The CV Header
The header of the CV is simple. Include your full name, phone number, email address and LinkedIn URL. Some people include their personal address but we generally recommend against this unless there is a specific need for it (e.g. applying for a role in France and you have a French address).
You should ensure that your name is in larger font size than the rest of the CV to stand out. Formatting your CV header properly can be an important aspect of passing the CV screening stage for many top banks that we display on our internship/graduate scheme trackers.
Education Section
If you are still a student applying for investment banking internships, this section should appear before the Work Experience section. If you are an experienced professional applying for other investment banking full-time roles, this section should appear below the Work Experience section.
In this section, include your university and high school. There are numerous ways to format the date for your university – it doesn’t matter which way you choose but your expected graduation date should be clear e.g. “Expected Graduation: 2027” or “2024 – 2027” are both acceptable. An example of bad date formatting here is “2024 – Present”, as we need to know when you will graduate.
For your university, you should include a bullet point for your average grade/GPA. It is not sufficient to say “Expected Grade: First Class” unless you are a freshman with no summative marks yet. An example bullet point might be:
- Average Grade: 74% (First Class)
You should also include a bullet point for any extracurricular activities you are involved in that you haven’t written elsewhere on your CV. An example bullet point could be:
- Activities: Lacrosse Team (Women’s II), Kitesurfing Society, Junior College Representative
For your high school, you only need to include your latest grades e.g. A-Levels or IB. You may also include your GCSE results but these are generally not necessary. For readability, the best way to format this would be:
- A-Levels: Mathematics (A*), Economics (A), Physics (A), EPQ (A)
Students with ‘Study Abroad’ often include their year-long placement at another university. We generally advise against this as investment banking recruiters frankly will not care and it takes up too much space.
Work Experience Section
This is the section which investment banking recruiters will spend the most time reading, and it’s also the section in which students typically write most poorly.
This section should be reserved for real work experience (i.e. not student-led associations). This could include internships, spring weeks, insight programmes or full-time work. Relevant experience is best, but non-relevant experience (e.g. waiter) is still helpful if you have nothing better to include.
Your work experiences should be listed in reverse chronological order, so your most recent experience should be at the top. Ensure the job titles are clear so that the reader immediately knows what each experience was about. For example, ‘Intern’ is not a sufficient job title. Instead, consider job titles such as ‘Investment Banking Summer Analyst’ or ‘Business Development Intern’.
How to write bullet points:
This is where students let themselves down the most. The way in which you structure your bullet points is crucial in helping the recruiter understand how strong of a candidate you are. You should aim to have 3-4 bullet points for each relevant experience, and 2 bullet points for non-relevant experiences.
Here are some key pointers for writing effective bullet points:
- Every bullet point should talk about a specific task or achievement you personally made. Avoid writing context-providing bullet points or speaking about your broader team’s achievements instead of your personal contributions.
- Since you’re talking about things you have achieved, almost all bullet points should be in past tense, even if you are still completing the experience. The only exception to this is if you have only just started the role and have no achievements yet.
- Every bullet point should start with an action verb.
- You should aim for most bullet points to be structured like “Did X by doing Y, delivering Z result”. In this structure, Y is an opportunity for you to showcase technical knowledge, and Z allows you to demonstrate that you can deliver great results.
- Use concise language and keep your bullet points to 2-lines maximum. Do not use multiple sentences in the same bullet (like we have in this bullet point!)
Here are some common errors to avoid:
- Using subjective language such as ‘large’, ‘prestigious’, ‘complex’, ‘advanced’. If, for example, you want to demonstrate how large something is, you should quantify it – using subjective language and expecting the reader to believe you is futile since you are biased.
- Using vague statements e.g. “Did financial analysis”. You must be specific about your tasks so the reader knows exactly what you did. If you leave ambiguity about your involvement in a project, the reader will assume the worst.
- Spilling text onto a second line. If your bullet point spans two lines but only uses a few words on the second line, you should either write more concisely to keep it on a single line or elaborate on your achievement so that you fill the second line. A safe rule is that a bullet point should always fill at least half of the second line (if you choose to use two lines).
- Stating that you “developed xyz skills”. This is entirely subjective and generally isn’t even true. If you write your bullet points effectively, the reader should be able to infer which skills you developed.
Here are some examples of poorly- and well-written bullet points:
Example 1 – Private Equity Internship:
- Due diligence for potential companies to buy
- Does not start with a verb, ‘due diligence’ is too vague, no quantifying or results
- Conducted due diligence on 70 prospective buyout targets, analysing revenue growth, operational inefficiencies and cap tables, leading to 10 signed NDA’s and 2 NBO’s”
- Begins with a verb, quantifies the task and the result, uses some technical language
Example 2 – Warehouse Job:
- Rearranged inventory to increase restocking efficiency
- Vague accomplishment and unquantified result
- Implemented storage layout prioritising common items near unloading bays, decreasing restock time by 20%”
- Specific achievement that the reader fully understands, quantifies the result so we know how effective it was.
Example 3 – Student Investment Fund:
- Gave stock pitches using valuation methods such as the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF)
- Not enough details about the pitches and too many words spent on the valuation
- Presented BUY recommendation on Peloton with $7.40 target price following management restructuring, early business model pivot and fading secondaries market; valued using DCF and achieved 1st place in competition
- Includes the rationale, target price and outcome of the competition
Extracurricular Activities
All of the advice surrounding bullet points also applies to this section. Although the experiences are different, the structuring and formatting for extracurricular activities should be the same as for your work experience.
This section should include any finance clubs, volunteering, student-led organisations or leadership positions you hold. Although you should still prioritise finance-related activities, this is also a great place to include non-financial experiences such as committee positions in university societies.
If you lack any work experience and are looking for ways to fill in your CV, you may also put online courses in this section to demonstrate an interest in the industry.
These experiences can be kept more brief, ideally 2-3 lines each.
Skills & Interests
This section is used for miscellaneous information that has not appeared elsewhere in your resume but you want to include. Here are some bullet points you should include if applicable:
- Languages: only include this bullet point if you speak a second language. You should list all languages you speak and describe your proficiency e.g. “English (Native), French (Fluent), Portuguese (Working Proficiency)”
- Skills: do not make the common mistake of listing soft skills here like ‘teamwork’ or ‘communication’. This line is reserved for hard skills (usually IT) such as computer programming or specific relevant software e.g. “Python, C++, Bloomberg Terminal”. You can include Microsoft Office Suite, but we’d recommend to not include this line if Microsoft Office is your only technical skill
- Courses/Certifications: This is a good bullet point to include if you have some notable courses or qualifications. List out the names of these courses but keep them brief as you don’t want this to use two lines
- Volunteering: If you have some remarkable volunteering experience that will make you stand out but you don’t have space to include it somewhere else on your resume, you can briefly describe in this bullet point
- Interests: This is a must-have bullet point and is the most underrated line on any CV. Here, you should list unique and non-academic interests. We recommend choosing interests that will make an interviewer curious – when you get to speak about your interests in an interview, you are given the opportunity to demonstrate how likeable you are as a person and differentiate yourself significantly. Avoid generic interests such as ‘Football’ or ‘Travelling’ and academic interests such as ‘Economic History’ or ‘Trading’. You should aim to have at least 1-2 interests designed to capture their attention e.g. ‘Hippos’ or ‘Omelettes’. This is the advice no one else will tell you, but we’ve seen several candidates receive offers on the back of conversations that started with these topics.
Common Mistakes
Here are some common mistakes that we see while reviewing resumes:
- Over-reducing margins to make space for more content. This can cause the resume to look cramped and lead to issues when printing the CV.
- Including “References available upon request” at the bottom. This statement is not necessary on a resume for investment banking internships and wastes spaces.
- Inconsistently using dashes and hyphens in the experience dates
- Inconsistently shortening months in the dates e.g. “Sep 2024 – October 2024”. We generally recommend shortening all months to 3 letters long for conciseness; you can choose not to but you should be consistent through the CV.
- Submitting a .docx file instead of .pdf.
- Font too small (aim for 11pts)
- Including a blank second page. This often occurs by accident with Microsoft Word – reduce your bottom margin to prevent this.
- Listing experiences from over 5 years ago – even if slightly relevant, an experience from when you were 14 years old will not be considered with much value.
Conclusion
In summary, your resume is the most important part of your investment banking application and there is no excuse for any mistakes. We’ve seen countless resumes with great internship experience but terrible formatting – why waste 10 weeks completing an investment banking internship if you make it look bad on your CV?
We recommend spending a few hours on perfecting your resume – this may be the difference between receiving an offer or being rejected for your dream investment banking internship!
If you’ve taken this advice and would like a full review from one of our team, please check out CV review service here.
