What does an experienced private equity associate resume look like?

Hey guys - I'm currently finishing up my first year as a PE associate and am thinking now would be a good time to update my resume (have closed two deals). While there are a billion examples of investment banking resumes out there, I haven't seen a single example of what an experienced private equity resume looks like.

From those of you in the industry, any tips? How much deal experience from your investment banking stint do you leave on your resume?

 
Best Response

I'll start with the obvious.

By now, 'Education' needs to be at the bottom of your resume (the whole thing is in reverse chronological order, after all). Streamline this to the absolute max. Ideally you should be giving away only three lines: one for the school (and your graduation year, aligned to the right), one for your degree and GPA), and maybe a third for a bullet point on an extenuating circumstance or really cool accomplishment you want to highlight.

In 'Professional Experience' you ought to have either eliminated your internship(s) or streamlined it/them to one line only (simply the name of the firm, title of the role, and dates spent there.

Your banking entry should eliminate all of the sub-sub-bullets. E.g. make it go no deeper than:

Goldman, Sachs & Co. | Analyst, Investment Banking

> Prepared various valuation and strategic analyses .....
>> $XXXm acquisition of leading Type of Company by multibillion-dollar Private Equity Fund >> $Y,XXX sale of Business Unit by leading global multinational Corporation in Sector

That was hard to get through the forum formatting, but the point is don't go into descriptive bullet points beneath each deal. Just state what the deals were.

In total this should leave you ample and adequate room to be very granular in describing your Associate responsibilities. Highlight these with the same level of self-puffery you used describing your summer analyst responsibilities when doing full-time recruiting and your analyst responsibilities during private equity recruiting.

I say this with humor: make yourself look good where it matters most. Your analyst years are behind you. Someone reading this resume is assessing you as a private equity investment professional. While banking deals were formative to your foundational skill-set as a finance professional, they don't speak to your ability to both think and act like an investor.

I am permanently behind on PMs, it's not personal.
 

JPMortgage, pure crickets, that's where I come in. Any of these useful?

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Any pros willing to rescue this discussion? throed yung playa Dr Van Nostrand AndyDufresne

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