Recruiting and Resume Advice from the Rockies

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Greetings fellow primates! My name is Robert Shaw I am an Executive Recruiter with a company called the Bradsby Group in Denver, Colorado working in the Investment Banking Division. The Investment Banking Division of the Bradsby Group serves the Investment Banking, Corporate Finance and Capital Markets hiring needs of some of the largest names on the street and the fortune 500 and fills those companies with top flight talent in order to serve them best. Our group is industry agnostic as a whole with relationships in every sector, my particular specialty lies within the Technology, Media and Telecom space and the Energy space, two industries that are a staple of the Bradsby Group.

I would like to thank Justin, Andy, Patrick and the rest of the team for inviting me to be a part of WSO’s contributing author team, it is a real honor to be able to be a part of this and hope that everyone will find something useful from these articles.

I got my start recruiting private wealth advisors for Barclays Wealth, Wells Fargo Advisors, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse just after the 2008/2009 fiasco with a small start-up company in New York. Once I jumped to Investment Banking with Bradsby Group this year, the most major change was the process involved with engaging candidates, one of the most important things being that I needed to get resumes.

So with the New Year approaching, and hopefully a big recruiting season, I thought it would be time well spent to just go over how to keep your resume from looking like a fluffed up “pitch” to a concrete background which asserts why you rock and the best way to use someone like myself after you have put it all together.

In the picture below I have fabricated a resume of a 2nd year TMT Analyst. There are a few things I would like to highlight about this resume. First, the top of the resume should always have what you are doing now. Don’t make someone search for it, school shouldn’t be at the top unless there is nothing else worth mentioning in the experience section. In the first section of experience there is a detailed, yet concise breakdown of 3 things – the company, group and what the group does, the role responsibilities (types of transactions worked on, etc) and any noteworthy accomplishments or accolades awarded for outstanding performance. Next is the most critical piece, transaction experience, if you are an analyst, don’t hesitate to put on “staffed/pending” transactions!

Don’t load your resume with useless past jobs, recruiters and employers would rather see that you were staffed on 10 deals than just throwing on experience from college jobs (college professor once told me JOB stood for Journey Of the Broke).

DO, however, make sure to include all of your quality internships, especially anything where you were able to enhance skills that translate directly into investment banking (modeling, research, Capital IQ,etc.). See the example resume here

When working with a recruiter many people misunderstand what the value of the recruiter is to them and how their process works so I want to provide some transparency here to make sure people aren’t turning their recruiters off and spending their own time wisely. As an outside agency, a company like Bradsby is brought in to often perform a narrow search for a specialized experienced professional who meets a prescribed set of qualifications outlined by the client.

I get a handful of resumes per day for people who are applying for Investment Banking positions at my recruiting firm, not realizing that we are not an Investment Bank since they didn’t do any research. What that tells me is that people aren’t doing their homework and it doesn’t make you look good! And you are not being productive with your time!

Especially recent graduates and people trying to jump from one industry to another, unfortunately a recruiter like myself is not going to be able to help you because that’s not what our clients are looking for, nor what they will pay us for. The more appropriate person to reach out to would be someone that who focuses on campus recruiting and does the staffing for the annual classes that many banks hire dozens of people for.

After a year or two of experience you may elect to work with a recruiter like myself to do a lateral move. Whether you are prospected or reach out to be considered for a current or future opportunity that may come up when you are looking to make a move, the recruiter can be a very valuable asset to you and I often suggest working with 2 or 3 because we all have different relationships and also cannot recruit away from our clients and our hands are tied. Here are a few tips to make sure that you are giving a recruiter everything they need to keep you on their radar.

First, make the right introduction. You already have the resume set up, now also include a quick overview of who you are so we get the basics. You don’t want us reading a cover letter – I will tell you why in a second – but you do want us to get an understanding of who you are and what you do right off the bat. When you send your resume over- include something like this below. This paired with your resume is all a good recruiter needs to get to work for you.
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Overview

• From New York - Graduated from University of Texas w/ a degree in finance in December 2007 (3.9 GPA) got my MBA from there in
  2010 (3.8GPA), 710 GMAT – I am 28yrs old
• Worked at BAML as an Analyst in a Generalist group from 2007-2010
• Began working as an Associate for Morgan Stanley’s Energy investment banking group in NYC in January of 2010 (we specialize in
  debt raises and restructurings / bankruptcy)
• I work anywhere between 70-110 hours a week, usually 6 days a week
• Our Associate program is a 3 year program and I just entered into my final year
• Have been promoted early 2x, maxed out bonus wise 2x (My base is $120K and got a $100K bonus)
• *** Please also include your current comp and desired comp moving forward at the bottom***

Work Experience

• Highest profile deal was a sell-side LBO of $1.4b E+P Company to Confidential buyer
• Since then have worked on 2 OFS deals (restructuring and debt raise), Midstream deal (debt raise), private Drilling company (restructuring)
• As an analyst worked on 2 telecom deals, restaurant deal (bankruptcy) ,distressed bank (hired to sell their portfolio), and a social media / marketing company restructuring
• Some of the models I have built are DCF, asset sales, M&A, 3 statement, 13 week cash flow, and debt raises ( I can provide more information about this as needed)
• My responsibilities include understanding the legal aspects of our clients credit agreements, building financial models, creating the investor presentations, managing the marketing and diligence process and running any other form of financial analysis our client needs
• I have also worked on a variety of other pitches / capital structure analyses / bankruptcy analyses

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Why don’t we want a cover letter? The answer to that also may answer a few other questions, but it’s simple, and it’s not personal. As a recruiter our value to you is always having new opportunities coming in for you to consider, especially the ones that are being done on the DL. If I am your recruiter, you want me out there finding those orders, not reading cover letters, returning extraneous phone calls or doing anything but pounding that pavement like a bully who needs milk money.

Thanks for taking the time to read this everyone, please feel free to ask questions below and next week I will pick a few to address. Next week I will be talking about interviews, interview prep and the process followed the next week by my favorite thing – dealing with offers and counter-offers. Thanks again to everyone at WSO and of course the readers for reading!