Please Critique my Resume - 25 yo accountant that completed CFA

Hi guys,

I am a 26 year old chartered accountant and have also completed the CFA program.

I have over 4 years professional experience in auditing and transactions advisory across two of the top 6 accounting firms.

My goal is to break into M&A or equity research.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated

7 Comments
 

Thanks for the feedback. Does anyone else share this view that my experience should come before my education?

Any other comments regarding content would be appreciated.

 

Definitely put your work experience before your education since your not fresh out of college. I don't know about Europe, but thats how its structured in North America.

Wally!
 
Best Response

Great content, but I would change a couple of things just to make it look a little sexier:

  • Change font to times new roman (it appears more professional and is a rather powerful font which will illustrate confidence)
  • On the lines where your position title is italicized, I would italicize the dates as well so the entire line matches; I would also bold both
  • No periods at the end of your bullet points; these are highlighted statements, not structural or functional sentences
  • I would get rid of that approximately symbol for your GPA and present it to 2 decimal places ie: x.xx/4.00
  • remove MS Office from skills if you plan on applying to banking or trading; all applicants are assumed to have a fundamental understanding of this, and you should only include this if you are a true expert. Otherwise, it could become a risk in an interview if you interviewer decides to grill you on logical tests, formatting shortcuts, or IFISERROR formulas
  • under big 6: "acquired...industries" it should be understanding rather than experience. Also, your list should be "construction, engineering, and hedge fund industries" the random comma you have in there is grammatically incorrect *** Most importantly, many of your bullet points seem vary vague. You should consider going back and rewriting them to illustrate what you key skill or takeaway from each point is relevant to the job you are applying to. You should include what you did, what you used to do that, and what goals or achievements you achieved as a result of your bullet point.

I know these points may seem overly picky or trivial, but they do matter. The advice I am passing on comes straight out of a book titled "Polished"; which was written by a previous MD at Goldman Sachs on writing cover letters and composing your resume'. I would highly advise looking for it on amazon. It has been a great resource to me through the recruiting process and helped me with formatting my resume to attain my FT IB offer.

Best of luck to you!

 

You've got a good resume. Just curious if you're looking at a particular region (i noticed you mentioned a US work visa for 12 mths). I think Europe is a better bet for advisory and research jobs as they value the CA a lot there. Whereas in US it's not as respected (well the CPA isn't - the CA is harder to get, but I don't think a lot of Americans know much about it).

Besides flipping the education and work experience order (as others have said, once you're already experienced, work exp comes first), I'd take out 'English (native)' in languages - unless you're applying to countries where the first language isn't English. And under interests you have "macroeconomics" - unless you know that shit cold, you don't want to get called upon it if you happen to interview with someone with a good econ background, I'd take that out unless you're confident.

 

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