Hi WSO,
I have been in Corp Development for a year now and I am having a difficult time updating my deal experience on my resume. I have completed 3 deals and foresee 2-3 more that have high potential to close (fingers crossed!) in the next 2-4 months. I am very lucky that I got into a highly acquisitive tech firm at the right time and could end up with 5-6 deals (or more) closed in 1.5 years. The challenge here is that my firm has a history of not disclosing M&A acquisitions and I do not want to reveal any confidential deal related information on my resume. The reason for keeping quiet is a matter of competitive advantage - the longer it takes our competitors to find out what tech we are targeting or what space we are trying to break in/expand in, the bigger head start we have (welcome to the dog eat dog world of tech). Another difficulty with non-disclosure is that I can't put purchase price on my resume like you can in IB. There are great resume templates on WSO, but they are more or less catered to IB and PE folks who can list something like "Advised on a $500MM buy-side acquisition in the BioTech Science space". When my company does disclose an acquisition, they often do not reveal purchase price (another competitive advantage), which is often the approach for acquisitive & growing tech companies.
Would greatly appreciate any guidance or perspectives on how I can capture deal experience on my resume given my situation, especially guidance from those who have been in a similar situation (Corp Dev folks!). Thanks.
Is your goal to land a role at another similarly situated company? If so, don't worry about anything more than a generic statement with no specifics. They will probably understand.
If not, cobble together something from the publicly-available information available and clearly message that it is not all of your experience. Much of the work for my previous job is the sort of stuff which they'd like to keep closely held (deals not publicly disclosed, process improvement projects where they probably wouldn't want it to get out that they were done, etc.) and I had a very strongly worded non-disclosure agreement. I was still able to cobble something together from the publicly-available information which got me interviews as well as craft a professional bio on my firm's website. Hopefully you can too.
Well initially I did not plan on moving to another role anytime soon since deal flow is great and my team here is really strong, but due to the acquisitive nature of my firm and the fact that we are in a growing tech space, I have received quite a bit of emails from recruiters for roles in Corp Dev, Corp Strat, VC, and FP&A....all in the tech space. Therefore, I decided I should update and polish my resume, which I'm having trouble doing right now! To answer your question broadly, I am interested in Corp Dev, PE, VC, and Product Management. Not IB as I work with IB folks on a daily basis and their life just seems miserable since they are at the mercy of the client, which ironically is my firm in this case.
Thanks for the guidance regarding using public information! However, in M&A especially, it is tough to get your resume pass the screening stage because of vagueness and not being able to talk about the size of your deals. In the few recruiter calls I've accepted, the two questions they always ask, but that I am hesitant to share answer is:
1) What was the tech focus of the acquisitions have you done? (e.g. Cybersecruity, MachineLearning, Virtual reality, etc., SEO). The space my company plays in is very visible / Niche and everyone knows everyone. Given that, I often err on the side of caution and answer vaguely and broadly.
2) What was the size of the deal? This is especially difficult to answer for sizable deals where giving even a range would help our competitors narrow down the limited number of big players in this space. The smaller deals are much easier to answer by giving a range since there are so many small companies, which would make it nearly impossible (I hope) for our competitors to narrow down with a high degree of confidence.
Just wondering did you get into corporate development straight out of college?
I did not. I worked for a fortune 100 company in a 2 year analyst program prior to transitioning to Corp Dev.
Is this prevalent in the tech industry? I think if your goal is to lateral into another CD position, it may not be as important as to the volume but maybe more so your role. Maybe frame experience like:
I would literally put "Deal #1" then next bullet "Deal #2" and I think putting a range wouldn't hurt (you could probably get away with putting the actual Purchase Price, I'm not sure how the purchase price would give any insight as to what company was purchased but put whatever you are comfortable with. )
That way you can highlight your role in each deal still.
Just spit balling here, good luck!
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