Investment Banking Resume Template

Free resume template to help you break into Investment Banking (IB)

Author: Adin Lykken
Adin Lykken
Adin Lykken
Consulting | Private Equity

Currently, Adin is an associate at Berkshire Partners, an $16B middle-market private equity fund. Prior to joining Berkshire Partners, Adin worked for just over three years at The Boston Consulting Group as an associate and consultant and previously interned for the Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Senate.

Adin graduated from Yale University, Magna Cum Claude, with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics.

Reviewed By: Josh Pupkin
Josh Pupkin
Josh Pupkin
Private Equity | Investment Banking

Josh has extensive experience private equity, business development, and investment banking. Josh started his career working as an investment banking analyst for Barclays before transitioning to a private equity role Neuberger Berman. Currently, Josh is an Associate in the Strategic Finance Group of Accordion Partners, a management consulting firm which advises on, executes, and implements value creation initiatives and 100 day plans for Private Equity-backed companies and their financial sponsors.

Josh graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Maryland, College Park with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and is currently an MBA candidate at Duke University Fuqua School of Business with a concentration in Corporate Strategy.

Last Updated:October 2, 2023

Attached to the bottom of this post, you will find the free Wall Street Oasis Investment Banking Resume Template for undergraduate students, used by the WSO paid service and thousands of candidates to successfully land a job in investment banking.

This template helps make sure that your CV format is clean and your investment banking resume is polished, all for free!

After seeing members consistently reference other resume templates in the public resume review forum (which are good but inferior in our opinion), we have decided to release the WSO resume template for free to the public.

This is the same CV template we use in our paid WSO resume reviews with experienced finance professionals.

However, we know how competitive internship applications and summer analyst positions are nowadays, so we're hoping this gives you an even bigger edge in recruiting.

This particular banking resume sample is for undergraduates and is not intended for experienced hires.

Go to the bottom of this post (2 attached files) if you are looking for a resume for experienced hires (with deal experience).

Investment Banking Resume Bullets

Across the many resumes, we review, we find that many make the mistake of not using bullets to list their achievements.

In our opinion, this is a big no-no.

Remember that the interviewers have hundreds, if not thousands of resumes on their desk, and you can be very sure they will not read a long block of text.

If not you, someone else would have presented better, and eventually, it is they who will get the call.

To avoid these common and easy-to-fix mistakes, please check out the tips below.

General Formatting Rules

  • Keep bullet points at a max of 2 lines; the ideal would be 1.5 lines
  • Make sure that spacing is solid and your bullet points hit the how/why/what/result

Sub-Bullets

Another thing to consider is sub-bullets.

Including sub-bullets in your resume is something you have to be 100% confident in.

If it's just something you're doing for the sake of having a "different" resume, then avoid it.

Here's one good scenario for the use of sub-bullets: if you are describing transaction experience in an internship.

Essentially, if you have to go into more detail to discuss something that is highly relevant to investment banking, then it's worth considering using sub-bullets. Be wary, however, because going into too much detail can cause clutter and get you dinged.

Investment Banker Resume Content

Now it's time to talk about what goes into those bullet points. Fret not! While the content of your bullet points matter, the most important thing is that you don't fudge anything up in terms of formatting and grammar.

  1. Professional Experience:
    I want to see professional experience, i.e., roles where you've worked in a paid and professional discipline, and had to pass through an interview process to get there. Having made it successfully through interview processes for earlier internships or jobs is important, as interviewing you is what we plan to do.
  2. Case study competitions:
    Some people list these. These are not professional experiences. Including them just looks like you don't have enough professional experience to fill in this area enough. Don't do it.
  3. Volunteer Positions:
    Not professional. Send it to extracurricular.
  4. Strong Names:
    I like to see names in the PE/banking/HR universe that I recognize because it tells me you could get through their interview process and you've done an internship in something that has reinforced your academic finance skills.
  5. Keywords that Stand Out:
    Usually, reviewers skim the bullet points. Below are keywords that catch their eye (which reflect a particular teams' focus, might be different for another team):
  • Comparables analysis
  • Competition or industry analysis/research
  • Due diligence
  • Modeling
  • DCF valuation
  • Presented
  • Leveraged buy out
  • Distressed debt

Resume Tense - Past or Present?

The main thing to focus on here is consistency. There are two options:

  1. Use past tense throughout the entire resume. The reasoning here is that your resume is a summary of everything you've done.
  2. Use past tense to describe past experiences and present tense to describe what you're currently doing. The reasoning here is self-explanatory; past experiences use past tense while current experiences use present.

Both options are totally acceptable, which is why it's up to you to choose which you prefer.

Investment Banker Resume Format

A poorly formatted resume will get thrown out.

Think about it.

A good amount of your time as an investment banker will be spent formatting, so what does it say about you if you can't properly format your own resume?

Lucky for you, you don't have to worry about formatting half as much as other candidates because our template does that for you.

Here's a download link to the resume template included below:

FREE WSO Resume Template

"Additional Information" Resume Section

This is a section that you need to edit to best fit what you have to include.

Don't have any modeling experience? Delete that line.

No computer skills to show off? The same thing applies.

Tailor this area of the resume to highlight your strengths beyond finance.

Here is one example of how you can structure your "Additional Information" section to be more meaningful and provide a few skills that may be impressive to the resume reviewer:

Final Resume Tips

Miscellaneous tidbits of wisdom from @blackice:

  • Do: Be Ready to Defend Everything on Your Resume.
    This should be a given, but people seem to screw this up every day. If you write hang-gliding in your interests' section and then I ask you about it, you better damn well be able to speak about hang-gliding. Otherwise, it undermines everything else on the page.
  • Do: Start Your Resume Early!
    These things take hours and hours to perfect. Many people think you can just sit down in an hour and bang out a perfect resume, but that is simply not the case. It takes time to get right. Do not wait to start until the day before the job posting.
  • Don't: Put "Founded Investment Banking Club" on Your Resume.
    Just Don't Do It.

A couple of quick notes:

  • Please feel free to share this post and pass it along to friends.
  • If you're looking for our resume for experienced Investment Banking professionals click here.
  • Remember, if you are looking for real finance professionals to help you structure and word your resume bullets and experiences, please consider our industry-leading resume editing service, specifically targeted towards investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, trading, management consulting and other finance resumes.
  • Our testimonials speak for themselves: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/career-services/resume-review-edits :-)

Read More About Getting An Investment Banking Job On WSO

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More Resources:

We hope these templates help you land that dream IB job! Please check out the following additional resources to help you advance your career: