Hi Guys,
I have been trying to get into ER for the last few months with no luck, I have not even got a phone call. I have sent in applications and cover letters to firms, groups and companies all over the US. I would like to start in buy-side if possible, but I would gladly take a position in sell-side to get my foot in the door.
I would appreciate a 'no holds barred' review. Don't sugar coat it, give it to me straight. Thanks in advance for all your help.
| +16 | Tear my resume to shreds | 5 | 2w | |
| +14 | Including Major Gpa and leaving off cumulative GPA off resume? | 6 | 1w | |
| +14 | Roast my resume | 2 | 2w | |
| +14 | Pick Apart My IB Resume Like a Hostile Takeover - No Mercy | 7 | 3w | |
| +12 | Personal Summary on Resume | 2 | 3w | |
| +9 | Working Two Internships at the Same Time (Part-time remote + full-time in-person) | 1 | 4w | |
| +9 | Resume Question | 1 | 2w | |
| +9 | Resume Advice | 1 | 4d | |
| +9 | idk how to delete this | 1 | 4d | |
| +7 | "Interests/Hobbies" Resume Section Tier List | 5 | 1w |
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Here it is straight:
Get rid of the objective - it's ridiculous Get rid of skills - you need to show this by what you have done. Just saying, I am good at this, that I am your perfect candidate means nothing Uni of florida - i am not from the states, is this a good school? Relevant coursework means nothing, if you want to write in detail about one thing you did, great. Lists are horrible to read. "Lead team to win case study senior year with teamwork and proper analysis of a financial models and data" - grammatically incorrect and fundamentally cringeworthy, get rid of it "Captain of several intramural and collegiate teams due to effective communication and interpersonal skills" You were captain of the sports team because of communication and interpersonal skills....did I mention I only had one leg?? You were the captain because you were good at sports. If you are natural leader, imply it, don't tell me!
Accountant, yet no accountancy qualification? Weird.
Your work CV seems like a bunch of businesses which you started. This is all great. You don't have to say founder, director, producer. You ran the business. We get that in a small bizo you have to do everything. Read what you have written with the blanked out company names, I haven't got a clue of what these companies are about. Furthermore, quantify your achievements,
" Effectively multitasked and prioritized multiple weekly projects in a deadline driven workplace" - what does this mean? Ridiculous
" Ability to problem solve and interpersonal skills lead to decreased costs from suppliers " - amateur. Come on mate!
all of your work based bullet points all sound the same. Only a few things have been quantified and the rest is dribble. EVERY POINT COUNTS. Makes sure every line is hit home with a wow factor that implies additional information.
If I was to pick this up, I would look at it and think. Okay bar all the shlt and nonsense this guy has spread over a whole half a page, it seems as it he went to a good school. What's he been doing? Ah well an entrepreneur, really courageous, we like those type of....hey, wait a second. Three bizo's in eight years. What happened to them? Did they go under? Did he sell them? I am going to assume that since he hasn't said, sold biz for $Xm or $Xk he has closed them as they didn't work.
Wow why is an entrpreneur after 8 years coming to us for a job? Has he literally had three failed businesses? Oh dear, he seems like a maverick and someone who is set in his ways and someone we couldn't possibly train.
Now on the deeper side of things? I thought you were like 31, now I see by your '87' that you are 25 and also the fact that all these bizo's were done prior to graduating uni. The first job you did when you were 16! The next 18! If these were small projects then keep them to one line.
I want to see your enthusiasm for what we bankers actually do! My adivce, can the whole thing. Check out a real CV and copy it, also ask for CV advice, costs like $150 but in your case, it is a bargain.
Hope this helps
Thank you for that critique, it was extremely helpful.
I graduated from the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida, it was ranked #37 in Bloomberg Businessweek’s Best Undergraduate Business Schools 2013. So not top 10, but up there.
Instead of an objective and skills, maybe I should have a summary giving a quick detail of my experience? This part is tough because companies now use the online hiring applications. I am afraid that if I do not use the keywords that they are looking for my application will get canned.
You are correct in that the resume is a bunch of businesses I started, the first was started when I was 15. None of the business went under and they were all pretty profitable. I closed the first one, the one from 2003-2005, because it was a niche market with a small window of opportunity I was able to capitalize on.
The second company was profitable at well, but as the latest company started to grow I decided to close it and sell off the pieces to better work on latest one. The business I am at right now is alive and kicking, but it is just not very challenging. I would be financially fine if I decided to quit the job search and continue with the company I am at right now. I would be able to pay the bills and throw the rest towards investments & retirement, but I would not be happy with the career.
I am very passionate about IB and asset management, but I am not quite sure how to put that on the resume with my lack of experience within those areas. I am not a bull-headed maverick, but someone who is very open to change and willing mold to whatever training a company needs to complete. I do not want my resume to exude me being obstinate and set in my wasy, so that is another thing that I need to fix.
You are correct in that I am 25 years old, and all my businesses were founded while I was in high school. I am using the resume template I got by doing a mash-up of both my college classes and the Vault resume guide. After hearing what you have to say I should shell out the dough and get my resume professional critiqued. Would you recommend using the WSO service?
any reason why you start college so late? Also I would be wary as to give equal weight to your two small business and your one main business. Where have you actually made money. They will look at you and say, what did this guy do between 18 and 22. This is prime time and you didn't go to college you ran a business. This is your work experience, the bizo you started at 16 and made $5k on is more of a side project or hobby.
Get rid of the top half of your CV.....At the moment you should begin with work experience which is simply your one business. Make it thick and give me interesting points. Second go on with schooling, also put your A -Level equivalents there (not sure what you call them across the pond). In hobbies, you can say you are really interested in bizo and did a few little things at a young age.
Failing that, highly recommend you paying someone to sit down with you and write a juicy resume based on the area you want into. Haven't used the WSO so can't comment, email them and maybe they can give you some example CV's they've worked on.
Good luck
I started college in 2006 when I was 18 and graduated four years later, so everything is inline there with no gaps in my education. I have made the majority of my money from my current business so I will take your advice and not put as much weight on the other two.
The top half of the resume is will be deleted. When you are talking about A -Level equivalents, do you mean Relevant Coursework?
I will change up the resume a bit and possibly put the work experience first. I wasn't really sure if I should put work or education first because I do not have any experience in financials, and I am looking for an entry level position.
Ok, I have made a lot of changes to my resume since this morning, and I think it looks better. The latest one is 'Newest Resume'. I know it still needs a lot of work.
I am getting stuck because I am not really sure what type of lingo I need to be incorporating. I know what I want to say, but I don't know how to say it in IB or IM terms that would catch the readers attention.
Would any of you be able to help me out and take a few lines on my resume and re-do them in more asset management worthy terms? I just want to have a starting point to keep going. I have been doing research and working on my resume for over 8 hours today and any help would be greatly appreciated.
Dude -- real big improvement from old to new. good job, very impressive advances. The one thing that looks strange is that your current job isn't on top. It took me by surprise because I always expect the second job to be in past tense. If it were me, I'd place by current job first, even though you started it before your case competition.
Thank you Blueapple. I worked a lot trying to improve it and I'm glad it advanced from the last one. I agree that the current job not being on top looks strange. I'll swap the current job and case competition.
Maybe we ran into each other and didn't even know it, I lived in Gainesville from 2006-2012.
I'm glad you think so as well. When I finished up my resume last night I had been staring at my computer screen for the better part of 12 hours doing resume work & research, with a little bit of my current job mixed in. At that point I just wanted to post what I had done so far to see if I was on the right track.
The coin doctoring isn't illegal, but I can definitely see what you mean there about it looking fishy. I will have to remove that and replace it with something that sounds more kosher and clever.
As far as my grammar and anything else for that matter, you won't be doing me any favors by being 'nice', I appreciate you being hypocritical. Let me have it! :-) My next step will be to go through each sentence and make sure each hits with a wow factor that implies additional information.
Saying controlling interest probably isn't the best way to put it. I was 50% owner, then I bought out the other founder and now own 100% of the company. I wasn't really sure how to use IB and IM terms to make it sound like I wanted. As far as selling the company goes, I will change it to include some actual numbers.
I will also take a microscopic look at all my tenses to make sure they are all in the appropriate past or present tense. The titles will also be removed, I will just put Founder or Co-Founder.
I see what you are saying about managing my own portfolio, and how it would not look so great. Unfortunately I have yet to work on a $700m deal, but I was thinking about using something like long/short equity research, equity investments or financial markets. The underwater hockey has also been removed for sounding ridiculous. I have changed it with another hobby of mine. How do these sound?: Interests: long/short equity research, snowboarding, zip-lining around the world
I'm glad that you like the Capstone part, I worked on that one for a while trying to make it sound like something a banker would like. I understand the A levels, but I think I am just going to leave those off. My SAT score of 1270/1600 is not very impressive, and I think my GPA by itself looks ok.
Thanks again for all your help. Without you I would be still applying for jobs blissfully unaware of how awful my resume truly was.
Well congrats bro, you have really made some serious improvements there - now we are looking at a proper resume but there is still some way to go...
Coin Doctoring - had no clue about what this was. Googled it and read that it is more or less forgery to make coins look older than they are. I would be very wary about this as it seems borderline illegal and people may see you as a charlatan. Don't know where to help as you need to make this sound as kosher and as clever as possible.
Agree with above, put your achievements in chronological order. Also your grammar sucks still (sorry! I know this post is hypocritical but Im not sending this msg to a prospective employer :D) I advise going through literally sentence by sentence.
You say that you purchased a controlling interest in company 1 and then say you are the co-founder. This makes no sense. How much did you sell the company for? Give me a ratio rather than the price. For example, sold it for 30x annual earnings.
Your tenses are all completely incorrect. Stuff you are doing now is present, stuff you've stopped doing is past,
Get rid of your ridiculous titles Founder, producer, dreamweaver, visionary. If you started the business, Founder is enough.
Managing your $100k personal portfolio. This is a a complete ding! Separate personal wealth and company earned wealth. If I say I worked on a $700m deal great. If I say my fund returned X% on $Xm also fine. When you say effecitvely my hobby is to manage my obscene riches, what do you think people will think. Your hobby should be Long/Short equity investment or something like that.
Underwater hockey? Really??? Stop trying to be so different you sound ridiculous. Football is a normal hobby, ballroom dancing is a dare to be different hobby, amateur dramatics is similar. Underwater hockey is laughable.
All that aside, this is vastly improved and your Capstone part reads magically. When I said A levels I mean your senior exams or 18 years old
Alright, I made some changes and the newest version is 'Latest Resume'.
Here's what I did: I moved the case study. Removed anything that didn't sound kosher. Changed the purchased controlling interest. Included numbers for how much I sold company 2 for. Removed my portfolio information and changed it with investing. Removed underwater hockey and replaced it with skiing. (I was going to put snowboarding, but I'm sure a lot of people who read this might actually ski and skiiers don't like snowboarders much.) I also removed all my extra titles and just put founder. I tried to make sure each line had a wow factor, or something that made you want to go to the next line. I also tried to make sure my past and present tenses were correct, but I may have mixed something up there.
Any help to make this better would be greatly appreciated as I am hoping to use and hopefully finally get an interview! Thanks for all of your help guys.
Company 1- Can you give me a revenue number, I'd like to get a hold on how big this actually is and can't derive it from percentages alone, are we talking $1 or $10k plus? This will differentiate you from other people who list non revenue (hobby) websites.
Consulting- change 4 to four (stylistic choice but whatever) - You could describe this a lot better and give it some meat, you're being lazy
Company 2/3- Yeah umm unless you qualify in dollar amounts above I don't know whether to believe this stuff and doesn't seem congruent to me. For example if Company 1 is a $1k business than this section might be worthless/ stretch and could be deleted. - Are you then implying you starting Company 1 before 15 then? - top-down analysis really? Maybe split test ideas and see what worked? Were you that methodical at 15/16? - Delete 'Disassembled and'
Technical skills- Include the words Microsoft Excel for people who scan resumes
Interests- ziping around the world? NO (grumpycat.jpg)
Overall getting better and better, still needs some decent work
Hi wilder,
Company 1- The yearly revenue for the company I am currently running is $375K and growing. I didn't put that on there because it's not a terribly large amount, but it's certainly more than $1K.
Consulting- I will change the numbers and try to give it some more meat. The problem I have here is I can describe everything I did, but I do not know what would be relevant to IMers and I also don't have a IM lingo down to be able to make it sound a lot better.
Company 2/3- I was thinking about removing these two companies. What do you think?
Technical skills- I will include MS Excel on this. I know many people say not to put it on there, but I agree that it would be good for scanners.
Interests- So no to the zip-lining? How about I replace it with scuba diving?
Thanks for all the help.
Yeah my question was a teaser I thought it might be this successful. Firstly that is very impressive. Second just doing some back of the envelope math I'm guessing you're not running it at razor thin margins so 15% return 56k profit a year and this is growing YOY.
Be prepared to answer any question to validate above, like expenses, logistical details, staff, growth area, risks, tax structures basic stuff really.
Next you better prepared for the question well why do you need/ want the job? For example this is a side adventure that is bringing in fairly passive income but it's not what I want to building my future, the plan for when I leave is my partner will be taking over. (People don't want to hire people who aren't committed and potentially have something better or something that might divert their attention). I'm proud of what I've done I'm made some money to put to my future and also do my pursuits but this a short term thing, whatever really but have this cold.
Change zip-lining to something more mundane or specifically exotic, like travelling, rock climbing, scuba diving (hopefully you have a cert as most people into this are passionate).
I'd cut company number two and three, you could mention them in the interview but it just clutters more unknowns. Maybe add a line to company one saying you have acquired a company etc
Delete 'launched and maintained'
Developed rapport with over 32K clients and frequently receive outstanding customer feedback- Ran the customer relationship management (32k+) and growing client base.
Independent Investor- now you have more room, mention what pricing methods you use to find undervalued assets. Be prepared to be grilled in this section especially for ER, go through your portfolio and explaining your decisions. A lot of people include this in the SAI section as to not over represent their undertakings.
You still need to work on the grammar and structure think: Task- Action - Result/s
Since this is a non standard pedigree you will need to do some networking and be able to frame your experience really well, good luck.
I just posted the latest version of the resume, I think this one is the best version yet. I think I incorporated some nice IM and IB lingo.
I added an 'Independent Investor' section. I'm not sure how I feel about this one, but I saw it on a few resumes and wondered what you guys thought. If you think I should remove it I will.
As always don't hold anything back. Thanks!
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