Resume and cover letter - a reviewers perspective
I just read through a stack of cover letters and resumes to prepare for a summer intern interview day. Here's some comments from the perspective of a late 30s banker on the interviewer side of the table.
- Every cover page and resume looks the same. I skim read the cover letter looking for anything that jumps out at me - which is usually grammar or punctuation errors or ridiculous claims like my bank is an "outstanding market leader" in some area that it's not. I ignore outrageous claims about how willing to learn you are, how much money you raised for charity (likely just to build your resume) etc.
- Average time spent reading each letter and resume - about 45 seconds.
- On the resume section, I mainly look at coursework (how closely does it relate to technical skills) and interests. If there is something highly relevant in the work experience section, I'll spend 5 seconds thinking about that. For example, one resume had experience packing at a UPS store as the oldest work experience. That interested me far more than an internship at some private wealth firm, as (a) logistics is an interesting industry, (b) working in customer service teaches you a lot about human nature and (c) I have contempt for the private wealth business.
- President of some finance club or finalist in some competition? Eh, whatever. I don't give a crap about that sort of resume-padding activity. I assume when you start as an intern or grad, you know nothing but have an aptitute to learn and do grunt work. If you start thinking you actually know something, you're a liability to yourself and others.
- Second to the education section, "Interests" is what interests me most. I want to get a flavour for what sort of person you are - someone I'd actually like to have a conversation with? Partly this is about what you are actually interested in, partly (and more so) this is about what interests you choose to present as your interests
- I saw "Pokemon" and "Tetris" listed in some people's interests. I was incredulous. What would motivate someone to think that was worth listing?
- "Magic: The Gathering" listed by one - why not just list "Dressing up in a Fur Suit"? Listing this indicates you have no sense of how the mainstream population who is aware of that game perceives those who play it.
- People who put "Managing my portfolio" or "Finance" as an interest - I assume either you're a psycho or you're trying too hard to please me.
- Languages - some applicants listed "Chinese", but no dialect, which suggests they don't know Chinese language as well as they think they do. I've worked in China and speak a functional level of Cantonese and Mandarin. I'm looking forward to testing these ones. Don't list it if you aren't ready for that, or at least attach an adjective like "basic".
More please
This is excellent.
Be aware that these things are pre-screened by our HR people. What appeals to their criteria may be things I don't like.
I'm doing a day of interviews in the near future. I'll follow up with my observations from that experience.
A good mindset to have is, "Under promise, over deliver" when it comes to your cover letter, resume, and the actual interview. My .02, at least.
These types of threads usually end up being the best. More?
Here is the flavour of some of the cover letter statements I paid attention to:
Awesome
Great contribution, thanks so much for posting.
What say you to those who advocate that the cover letter can do more harm than good—either due to tone, grammatical errors, or they just aren’t read—and thus it is better off not to include one? This is of course for jobs that do not require sending one, although they might have an area to submit additional documents, such as a cover letter or transcript.
What's your opinion of people working a full time job and and having side hustles? I'm a sucker for a fast buck or jumping on some startup bandwagon but I don't know if it's a good idea to stick that stuff on a resume. Yay or nay?
Blueapple - Short cover letter is my preference. Hit the 3 key messages and skip the flattery.
UFOInsider - As a future employer, I want to know you will give me your 100% attention. If you are doing side hustles, that shows initiative but also suggests you won't be 100% dedicated to doing the job I pay you for.
Caveat again - my view may not be representative of other resume reviewers.
Another point - no one wants to do summer intern interviews. Everyone has better things to do with their time. Those interviewing you are those who couldn't get out of it or those (like me) who haven't done it before and perhaps stupidly volunteered to do it. I plan to treat it as a human experiment.
Thinking some more about the cover letter - why not have bullet points?
I recall being taught 3 is the magic number for bullet points, whether it's a powerpoint slide or anything else. Apparently triads hit something in the brain which works best for psychology.
So why not do that in your cover letter? Three bullet points which cover the key selling points on why you think you are the right guy for the job.
Apologies if this is too off course for Americans. I know you guys love sticking to your precedents, as demonstrated by your 19th century legal drafting and DISCLAIMERS IN ALL CAPS on documents.
Am with you on the silly signatures too. As the Economist says, they are legally unenforceable: http://www.economist.com/node/18529895
Also, if someone tries to tell you to write something that will stand out in the cover letter...
Nothing will stand out in your cover letter if you follow the usual prose-dense format which all you American IB applicants have been trained to use. Everyone just skims over that crap looking for spelling mistakes or grammatical errors.
Bullet points, bold formatting - presentation over content - I think that may work. At least for me. May not get past our HR screening team, though, if they are conservative f*ckers.
Also
(I appreciate that posting suggestions here mean that I may see this text in the next batch of cover letters I have to review)
Why not try demonstrating you know what is expected of you?
For example, try something like "Although I have a strong academic background in finance, I appreciate that an internship with [investment bank] will involve a steep learning curve. I believe that I have the right combination of willingness to work hard, willingness and ability to learn and humility to appreciate the opportunities to learn that an internship with [investment bank] would give me to [some statement about how everyone will get value]." (emphasis added, maybe don't include it in your cover letter, unless you use bullet points).
If I saw a cover letter that had "humility" in it, rather than "I'm the fucking goods" messages, that would jump out at me AND it would also tell me you had the most essential quality I'm looking for in an intern/grad.
I look forward to this sentence appearing in 50% of the intern applications I see next year. If I do, I'll be strutting like a man who thinks he has petty influence.
Great thread! How do you view college athletics on a resume? Would it be a considered a big plus? Also, I don't know what bank you are working at but if you were looking at international (US based) applicants, what would make an international candidate stand out based both on a resume and an interview? Coming from a non-target liberal arts college, I'm also wondering if you could give any advice for somebody in my situation on what to mention in a cover letter and a resume, and get past HR screening.
marktennis - I'd find athletics interesting, but that's mainly due to my interest in fitness. Our intern hiring approach assumes that willingness to learn & work hard is more important than everything else, and my view is athletics indicates willingness to train/suffer/work with a team, which indicates potential good fit. At the very least, it's likely to get a good share of interviewers interested and should give you something easy to talk about.
International candidates - hard for me to say. This is the first round of interviews I'm doing in the US, so I'm inexperienced in this game and likely a poor benchmark for how the average interviewer will look at your resume.; To complicate it further, the person screening you for the interview shortlist may differ from how the person interviewing you.
Cover letter - as mentioned above, I don't read much of the interview letters and I don't think interviewers do generally. However, screeners might. I suggest the humility/willingness to learn message that I posted above. Certainly my HR team emphasises those qualities and that reflects what we want to see from the business side. Make sure you put it in a separate paragraph - it needs to stand out, not be buried among other prose.
Thanks very much for these tips and personal perspectives. Really appreciated and looking forward to some more posts from you.
are you a wizard, sir?
Good points, however on the (9)-Language it is generally accepted that Chinese mean Mandarin Chinese even in Hong Kong.
So "managing my portfolio" is off the table. Then what are you supposed to put down if you actually do invest in a PA? I'd think listing that as an interest would be important for an buyside job.
Everybody has that on their resume - put something like "trying my hand at investing". Managing your portfolio comes out a bit as arrogant.
OP - I echo a lot of what you wrote. I used to go over resume when I was working for a larger bank. I wouldn't even read the cover letter, and we would get a book of resumes from HR that did not include the cover letter.
What's the verdict on putting the amount you manage under personal investing? Say a family member passed away and you inherited $20k and over the years grew it to $50k, is it arrogant to include this?
Great great post. Thanks
Thanks for sharing. I second looking at ppl's interests most/first, since I always hope to find something intriguing or at least something I can relate to (sports). Naturally, which university you attend(ed) is always a big one.
This is fantastic thread (just as most threads of this type) but I would really love to read something like this about screening CVs for higher-than-entry-level positions, i.e. senior analysts, junior associates...
Anyone seen it on WSO?
I've done that - you get the CVs from the head hunters (forget letters of motivations in this case). Usually the formatting is all busted because the head hunters converts the pdf to add the name of their firm on it. You know what you are hiring the person for, and the head hunter should have screened the CV so that it fits. You almost always take the interview the head hunter give you, so the CV is not as relevant in this instance anymore. Also depending on the market, everyone knows each other, and you will have gotten some feedback already on the person from friends, or someone who has worked with them in the past who have already moved. Etc... I need to fill in for a particular role - so all I want is somebody who has the skills to do it. Then we look at the fit in the interview.
If you have interest in tap dancing, it probably won't matter and your University won't matter a great deal either unless it's my alma matter. Although if you went to my school and you are not qualified for the job you are quite useless to me.
OP,
I removed the course listing on my Resume after I had a couple of internship experiences. Do you think that's hurting me? I thought it was just a space filler since I am majoring in a relevant subject.
Thank you SSits for this post. I am wondering if you can give any advice on getting through the HR process for a entry-level position? I am also wondering if there is a way to actually by pass the HR system and ask for an imprompt interview? (This is mainly because my highest quailty skills are soft skills that do not translate well to paper)
I currently have no interest section on my resume. I've been on the fence about that for a while. My main reason for not including it is that I don't have any real standout unique interest that in my mind would be notable for a finance resume. My main interests include:
1) Getting fucked up: going out on weekends, former fraternity man 2) Strength training: Some decent accomplishments in this area 3) Following sports: primarily football and baseball, sports betting, attending games 4) Reading: Some books but moreso internet articles in the journal, bloomberg, deadspin, cnn, rotoworld, etc
So basically, I don't have a great resume interest list.
Agreed. Yeah, when I'm interviewing these interests don't sound strange but in black and white on the resume they would. Also, during an interview I can gauge how to answer the interests question based each interviewer's vibe.
There's nothing wrong with this interest list. Just phrase it tastefully...
IBankers aren't a college admissions office. It's a good feeling when you get the inkling that a candidate might actually be fun to hang out with.
While I agree with your general thinking here, it still creates some risk that might not be necessary. If I saw a guy's resume that had interests like these, yeah I'd want to hire him yesterday but I could picture MD's not feeling the same way.
A friend has sport outcome investing on their resume .... Yes or no?
Would you say your view of these atypical experiences to be common? Basically, do you think many other recruiters/hiring managers value these kinds of experiences?
I don't have any of those kinds of experiences, but I have simple office jobs that didn't involve much. They were merely to help get me some money while being "exposed" to the financial industry. Would this evoke any bit of curiosity or just come off as a weak resume/applicant?
Not sure everyone values atypical experience the way I do, my point was that some people don't always put this type of experience on their resume because it's not "finance related", when in fact it tells me a lot about your character, and ability to work long, stressful hours. So just because it's not directly related, doesn't mean you should just write it off. Just figure out a way to articulate the position/responsibilities you had and when you're speaking directly to me, figure out a way to link skills you learned in that position to what you'd be doing at my company.
Regarding your office job question, everyone has to start somewhere. Hopefully your GPA is high enough to get you on the phone with me, at which point you should be able to tell me why you want to work in my industry, what you know about my company, and how your prior "office job" experience can be leveraged into your day-to-day work at the job your interviewing for. Obviously the higher the position you're interviewing for, the more relevant/impressive the prior experience has to be. Assuming this is a summer analyst question, the main thing is to have a good GPA, interesting experience/interests etc, to get a phone screen and then impress me enough on the phone to get an in-person interview.
I never thought that would make a good section on my resume. Even though I haven't worked on a farm my whole life, I detasseled for a summer and worked 12-14 hours a day seven days a week. Yeah it was for two and a half months but do you think it is suffiicient enough to include on my resume?
It depends entirely on what other experience you have on your resume and to talk about. If you've had a couple of interesting finance internships already, are a college athlete, did some really interesting extra-curricular stuff, etc. then you may not need to put it on there. However, assuming we're talking about summer analyst positions, remember that all your "competitors" are likely the same age and so there's only so much experience they would have been able to accumulate during the past 2 and 1/2 years in college. Everyone has a PWM internship, volunteer work, etc. on their resumes, so the detasseling thing might be an interesting thing to make your resume stand out against all the others.
Important note, I have no idea what "detasseling" is, so you need to make sure you articulate what it is on your resume and definitely mention the 12-14 hours a day for 7 days a week. Your summer internship is also only going to be 10 weeks, so if you've worked manual labor with the same sort of hours for the same period of time, I'm going to assume you'll have no issues with the hours/stress/workload when you come here. So yes, 10 weeks of experience is totally fine to put on the resume just label it "Summer 2013"
Again, it's a case by case thing. My point is that most summer analyst resumes are identical, with a decent GPA, some sort of finance internship (PWM, research, etc.) and some resume padding volunteer work. The main purpose of a good resume is to get a phone interview, so put yourself in my shoes. If I suddenly get some resume that doesn't look like all the others, it's going to make you stand out and may just get you a phone screen because I want to hear something different than how your PWM internship led you to pursue a career in M&A.
this is a very solid interest/about-me section:
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/simonjamesmorgan
Apologizes if everyone has seen this before.
Interesting. Every career center visit, resume review and recruiter that I've asked, have said that interests generally dont go on your resume. Is this considered the norm? Or are people actually looking for them? I feel that if the person conducting the interview was actually curious, then they would ask about your interests but you wouldnt need to put it on your resume. Any insight would be appreciated.
What type of resume centers have you been at? Always put a one liner of your interests; but ONLY a one liner! No need to go into details. "traveling, enjoying food, etc..." are not interesting interest... So skip those. Fencing, Tap Dancing, etc... are quirky and interesting, that might spark your interviewers interest and he might as you about those.
Enjoying food.. I hope I never have to encounter that on a CV in my lifetime.
Traveling though, what if you genuinely do like to travel? I have spent the last six months on a personal mission to fill out my passport on weekends away, I know it can be seen as a cop out interest but is it that bad?
I lived in Kenya for 15 years. How do I add that to a cover letter where it grabs the reader's attention but doesn't seem unrelated or just random?
Put down a few bizarre interests that are strictly Kenyan/African related
Love this! Frank, to the point insights. Good for job seekers to step outside themselves. Very valuable post, thank you.
Thanks all for the SB love. I'll post the follow up thread about my perspective as an interviewer of SA's some time next week.
I've received more than a few PM's for resume reviews and advice. I'd love to have the time to respond to each, but I'm time poor at work and need to limit myself to posting on the boards only.
Thank you!
Thank you so much, kind sir!
What is detasselling? Is it something like cutting the testicles out of bulls? If it is, definitely include it (but don't explain what it is - let them ask!). If not, probably still include it.
All my comments come with the caveat that I'm recommending that you become the sort of candidate I'd offer a job to, not necessarily the candidate that anyone else would offer a job to.
Now I'm going to wikipedia detasselling.
I wikipedia'd detasseling and unfortunately it doesn't involve bull neutering.
However, if you spent 2.5 months doing this 7 days a week, definitely include it. It shows that you're will to grind grind grind for the money, even if the work is not stimulating. That's pretty much a description of what an intern/grad does at an IB shop for the first 2 years of their life.
Great post! You focus on what you don't like to see on resumes. What I really don't understand is that you don't attach any value to "being president of an investment club". All the companies I applied for, want you to show "interest in the financial industry" and are looking for "relevant extracurricular activities".
What you actually want to make clear (if I do understand it well): - financial background not important; - technical courses are a pre; - some uncommon, but interesting, interests; - just something which make you stand out of the croud.
Of course, these are things which make people intersting. But I really wonder whether people you select on these criteria will be succesfull in IB.
This is petrifying but an excellent contribution. Many thanks.
I logged in for you in order to say thank you for sharing. I am glad there's someone in this industry who got experience in East Asia.
I have experimented quite a lot with my applications to stand out of the cookie cutter resumes and cover letter "tips" my school and seniors dole out...
But my biggest coup I pulled....replace the whole cover letter+resume shenanigan with a cool prezi document!! I used it for a profile where I knew I needed a miracle to get across...needless to say I didnt but It felt fuckn nice after spending 3 hours on that thing....felt like da vinci after he finished mona lisa!@
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