Hi friends,
I'm seeking help to improve my resume. I want you to know that I am not outstanding, I'm not an Ivy graduate, I'm not working in an advanced market, and I don't have amazing experiences to show like most of you do. I'm just a very disappointing banker/investment assistant in China, doing what you guys do a hundred year's ago in US, Hong Kong or Europe.
I work in asset management division of a top investment bank in China. My major responsibilities include esoteric asset securitization (sell side) and alternative credit asset investment (buy side).
I know I started very low. And I'm currently exploring opportunities to jump to an international bank or fund. I want to work in Hong Kong or Singapore to learn from the real financial elites. I'm also considering applying to MBA in two years if getting no luckl in job hunting. So here I am, putting up a resume, ready to be smashed.
Please, throw everything you have at me, I won't be upset. If you find something bad in my resume, point it out with no reservation. If you have a better idea, please let me learn from you.
I would really appreciate your help.
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| cv_for_smash.pdf 242.42 KB | 242.42 KB |
It looks pretty good to me. The formatting and content are good and your background makes it clear you are hardworking and intelligent. Sounds like you went to BeiDa or Tsinghua. Nice.
I hope you have more than one 8 in your real phone number...
I guess the only thing I might consider changing is the amount of formatting you have on the text. This is a personal preference, so up to you. Possibly just bold + cap the titles instead of bold + cap + underline. Also, you might consider dropping the italics.
I'm pretty harsh on resumes so was surprised. Nice job. Good luck.
Thank you for your advice and compliment! You made a very good point on the amount of formatting, I think I will follow your advice and make a change.
And yes, I got two 8s in my real phone number :) Seems like you know a great deal about the Chinese language!
There are some admittedly minor things I've found. I made no effort to organize them because of how minor they are.
When I say minor I mean I don't think most people will care about these things unless they were already looking for a reason to throw out your resume for whatever reason.
First bullet under "Selected Achievements" is not in the correct tense. (Reword it in a way that will let you say "alternative credit asset" instead.)
You've used two different ways of spelling "modeling/modelling". (I know it is petty to point this out. Just choose one though.)
I'm not sure about the first line under "Modeling". (I could be reading it wrong. What are you trying to say there? Either way "Break Into Wall Street" should be "Breaking Into Wall Street".)
If it was me I would put each bachelor degree on a separate line. (You never know how quick some person will inevitably skim your resume and miss something.)
"Awarded", try "Awards"? (I would also mention how selective the awards are. Ex. Awarded the award of the year award for outstanding work, only given to 1 out of 1,000 people annually.)
"Elected", consider "Leadership Positions".
"Head of public relations" is supposed to be a title; "Head of Public Relations".
"Full score on speaking test", don't assume anyone knows how the TOEFL is graded. (I don't even know what you mean by full score for example. Can you list it like; 110/110 instead?)
I don't know what a "National Level 3 Athlete of China" is or what sport you played. You didn't say what kind of music you play either. (I am going to assume there is nothing wrong here and you just redacted these for privacy online.)
One last note, didn't like that you used phrases like "Responsibilities include..." but I know this is a regional thing and common for international students. It just looks out of place compared to the bullets where you explained a situation, task, action, and result.
Thank you for your extremely helpful advice. I've made changes accordingly. Just a few follow up questions:
"Reword it in a way that will let you say "alternative credit asset" instead", do you mean that I should avoid using phrases like "alternative credit asset's analysis program", but to reword it to "the analysis program of alternative credit asset"?
I think you made a good point about words like "Responsibilities include..." , but what if most of the work really is just regular responsibilities and there wasn't really a special situation or story in it? Does the " situation, task, action, and result" method still apply?
I also found out that I lost the original copy of one of the awards. Luckily I made a digital copy a few years back, and I was wondering if there sorts of missing documents could hurt in background check some day? Will the digital copy be enough?
Thank you for your time!
Just simplify it.
Interviewer doesn't know this. Do whatever you think is appropriate.
Nobody cares, as long as you don't lie you'll be fine.
Resumes like these make me rethink my life choices. Good work.
Strong resume - I agree that there are no major issues. A few thoughts:
1.Your current role description is very, very heavy. You've been in this role for under 2 years, yet you need half a page to summarize it? I would condense a general description of your role into 1 bullet point instead of the 3 that you currently have, then outline 3, or maybe 4 key achievements that demonstrate proficiency across complementary verticals. Better 3 achievements that are easy to read, than 5 that I might refuse to bother with on a tiring day.
With the extra space available from condensing the above, I would space out the education more. For the master's, perhaps list the projects in bullet form, as in your work experience section. I'd also try to maintain better parallelism across your education. One degree includes a GPA, Relevant Coursework, and Projects, but the other has 'Elected' and 'Awarded'?
Some of the wording anomalies were already pointed out; I didn't see 'Volunteer' mentioned though - this should be 'Volunteering'. Since there is only one position in this section, and since you only have 2 roles in your work experience section, I'd probably combine the two, and list my role as Credit Analyst (Volunteer Position).
Perhaps you're a prodigy, but from a hiring perspective, if someone studied Math and Economics then worked in banking for ~2 years, I'm suspicious when they claim to be an expert in 6 programming languages. Despite being a current quant and having a CS master's, I'm far from an expert in even one language, so your phrasing sounds very arrogant. I would take off the 'Expert in', and just list the languages that you're familiar with. One method I often see is candidates listing their years of experience with each language, so you could try that as well.
Thank you so much! Let me follow up a little bit.
1.The reason that I listed into three bullets is because the nature of my job is little weird in the eyes of overseas bankers. Securitization is categorized as asset management business in China, which should be a banking/sell side work. It may seems odd for someone who works in asset management division to have so many securitization and structured finance deals. So I listed [sell side] and [buy side]. But you made a very good point, maybe I should have two bullets instead of three? One for sell side and one for buy side?
2.I didn't put undergraduate GPA on it because it wasn't pretty and my college actually doesn't have official GPA on transcript (the GPA was just a reference number calculated in a very different way from US standard GPA, and I can't look it up on the school website after graduation). Moreover, I was trying to show some extracurricular and leadership for undergrad and intensive academic training for Master's. Any suggestions on how to phrase it?
3.Very good point! I've been thinking about it too. I will make that change.
4.Thank you for pointing it out, this is extremely helpful, I never looked at it that way. Honestly, I didn't exaggerate on this one. The School of Mathematical Sciences at my college has "produced" tons of people like me, it was really hard, many of our undergrad courses were PhD level stuff at Princeton. Proficient skills of C, matlab, and R were required in my undergrad curriculum. Python was pretty much the same as R for statistical use. And I took up VBA to code some of the cash flow projecting programs at work. IMO, if you are proficient with C and python, you can pretty much learn any language very quickly.
And, thank you again for the very helpful advice!
Someone more familiar with that area of work might be more apt to help you restructure this; personally I find the delineation unnecessary. If you feel the 'Asset Management' component will cause confusion, remove that from the CV, and just say Associate - Alternative Credit Group. Your projects will make clear what you have experience in.
Do you know your approximate percentile rank in the class? You could list that instead of the GPA. In terms of showing the extracurricular vs academic focus - I think it's understood that grad school has an academic focus. If you want to highlight your positions in undergrad, I would retract my previous advice on combining volunteering with work experience, and instead swap the 'volunteering' section for an 'extracurriculars' one that includes your credit analyst position and your two leadership roles held during your undergrad. I would still break up the main grad school projects into their own lines - one bullet point each, containing a brief description, ideally with quantifiable results.
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I think you're misunderstanding the word 'expert'. Proficient, absolutely believable. But nobody comes out of school being an expert in any language - this only comes with years and years of practice. I work with quant PhDs from top schools, and none of them are experts in any languages. I suppose it's still possible that you're just a CS prodigy, but if you're saying that many of your classmates are the same, then this is extremely unlikely.
Although I am not a Resume specialist, I have to say if I was looking for employees, I would hire you without even interviewing you. Good Job
That's very nice of you. Thank you my friend. But I doubt any employer outside China would think this background is sufficient.
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