KPMG interviewer thought I was doing this but when I was actually doing that?

Hi, I have solid experience in Project Finance, but my firm calls the dept as Structured Finance. About two weeks ago, I applied to a job at KPMG in the valuation group, and I got the interview. The interviewer started to look at my resume on the spot, and we started to chat. During the interivew process, I implicitly discovered that the interviewer thought my role in structured finance was about CDO, CLO, asset-backed securities, etc. But in reality, I've been doing project finance work, such as due dilligence, cash flow modeling, research, credit paper, etc. and my resume clearly described those responsibilities. Well, obviously, I didn't get the job. My questions are the followings:

1) Confusion about my role - whose fault is it? mine or KPMG? Wouldn't that be silly for KPMG to just scan for keywords and not read the resume before inviting the candidate for interview? And obviously, my resume doesn't have any words like CDO, CLO, and ABS, but it did have the word, valuation in my places.

2) What can I do moving forward to prevent such confusion?

3) Why does the industry call SF and PF interchangeably?

14 Comments
 
Best Response
doctorttYou're not so helpful.

The linked discussion covers what you asked in question #3. The simple answer is that some places include project finance in with structured finance (especially French and Japanese banks) since it's not vanilla lending but others don't. "Why" isn't really important, at the end of the day.

In general I would assume the Big 4 fucked up in most situations, and since you have descriptions of what you do on your resume beyond just the words structured finance, I'd say this is on them.

Assuming your bullet points make it clear that it's a project finance group not a CDO-related group, there's not a lot more you can do unless you want to refer to your group by something other than it's real name, which seems like it may cause more problems or confusion than it resolves.

There have been many great comebacks throughout history. Jesus was dead but then came back as an all-powerful God-Zombie.
 

I think it's their fault for half assing the process.

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 
CriesShould take a second to read before responding like an ass :(

Yeah, even I can tell that wasn't nice =(

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 

You did it wrong :(

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 

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