WSO Podcast | E220: BRUTAL Resume Review - Too mean? | Weekly Intern Meetup #16
Another fun chat with our interns including another brutal resume review someone that needs a lot of help! Check this out on Youtube to be able to see the resumes. To apply for the WSO Finance Research internship, go here: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/off-topic/wall-street-oasis-finan…
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WSO Podcast Episode 220 Transcript:
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and chief Monkey. And this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. Another interesting chat with the interns. If you're interested in applying to the internship, please check out the show notes. There's a link right there. Enjoy. Welcome, everybody, to the weekly Internet chat. See some new names here. Emma. Hi. Hi, Adrienne. Rahul. Kara If I'm saying it right, and an iPhone. I didn't know an iPhone would join an iPhone. That's the second time that's happened. It says iPhone doesn't even tell me their name. So I don't know who's who's on the iPhone. Welcome. We are here this week. We call. Typically, the way it works for those of you that are new is we spend a few minutes answering any questions, if there are any, around the internship itself, the finance research internship. And then from there, we like to either open it up to questions about specific interviews, recruiting issues, career paths that answer questions about career paths and what you're trying to do. And then I try to answer them as best as I can. And then we typically also do a screen share where I share my screen and I do like a resume or view one or two, depending how much time we have.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:38] So I have one resume here from from a member or from a user that really posted on Wall Street. Oasis on the forums wanted to do this here because it was a really it was, I think, a really viral thread because the person was really frustrated that they weren't able to get get a job or get an internship or anything like that. The bill why why are there two pages? Is there something on the second page? Was their name on there or something?
Nabil: [00:02:09] Yeah, the name was on the second page. I guess this two pages for some reason. With a name. I think that's a header or something. Maybe on word that I just got paid or what to do.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:29] Well, that's like stake number one. Yeah. So this person was like really upset, really breaking down. And I think what we're going to end up doing is with the permission, we'll post this there or we'll just share the video with them so that they can in this thread to give them kind of a perspective of maybe why they're having trouble breaking in. So we're going to go through that resume because it may maybe it'll resonate with some of you in terms of.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:53] What you have to do. I don't even see any education experience, any education in here. It doesn't look like it, right? There's no school on here. Nope. This is literally the resume. She or he is a he or she. It's a sheet. This is literally the resume she's sending out. I mean, it answers all the questions we need to know. I mean, this is going to be like I'm going to go on a rant in that thread. I mean, we'll go over her bullets, too, but. Oh, gosh. Skippy going here. Sorry, I'm just doing my camera because I get blurry sometimes. It's kind of a piece of shit camera. But anyways, so does anybody have questions on the finance research internship? So I know a lot of your new. Any questions kind of getting started. Some of you may have start dates in a few days, but we kind of welcome all of you to this. Any questions?
Intern 1: [00:03:47] Yeah, I start on the 21st. Yeah. I wasn't sure where to start or if I was going to get any instructions on it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:57] Yeah, you'll send once you go into the Slack group, there's all these sticky, like, detailed instructions, like step by step on, like how to actually get started.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:10] One, two, three, four, five through ten steps. So you just follow that those guidelines. And then, of course, you can join us every Friday. And if you have additional additional questions, you can. Income on their Where are you located? What's your background? You don't have to share if you want to, but oh,
Intern 1: [00:04:28] I live 40 minutes north in New York City. I just graduated from the University of Buffalo and actually, yeah, I just actually got a job offer at Bloomberg. Nice. Congrats. Thank you. Yeah. So I just wanted to say I'm like at the start of my financial career
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:45] And what do you what do you think of to doing there?
Intern 1: [00:04:52] I'm going to be a financial data analyst.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:58] Okay, awesome. In the long run, you just kind of want to be in the finance.
Intern 1: [00:05:02] Yeah. I want to kind of switch to like, I need like the financial analyst experience first, but I want to kind of transition into. Like I wanted to finish my CPA and then kind of I mean CFA sorry, and then kind of a transfer into like investing and like portfolio management.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:26] Very cool. Love it. Love it. So we'll welcome anybody else have questions that has started or thoughts? Hi, Sarah.
Intern 2: [00:05:32] I have a I have a quick question. So I started doing my first article. So do we just basically, like update the Excel spreadsheet as we go through? Yeah, exactly. I just wanted to I didn't know if I was on the right path or anything. And then we do the hours through the clock of my website.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:53] Correct.Yeah.
Intern 2: [00:05:54] Okay. So then, so as I'm working on the article, I just press start for the clock. Fi.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:00] You got it. Yeah, you can. You can put the article you're working on in there. It kind of saves a note. And then basically what happens is once you're done, you just change the status. And we have a much better balance right now than we did kind of at the beginning of the summer. We have a much better balance in terms of editors and uploaders and all that stuff. So ideally you're not going to be waiting too long to get like comments and feedback back from there, but it shouldn't stop you from moving on to the next one because otherwise you'll never finish something. It still takes us usually a few days to get. So yeah, feel free to move on to the next one. Once you kind of have kind of hit the hit those check marks and stuff like that.
Intern 2: [00:06:36] And then. And then. Sorry, I have another question.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:40] Yeah. No, go ahead.
Intern 2: [00:06:41] And then we basically just like choose any of the topics like on that spreadsheet, on the project.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:48] Anything you want that's not assigned. Correct?
Intern 2: [00:06:51] Okay, perfect. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't like taking someone else's article.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:56] Make sure it's not assigned already. The one thing the one thing I'd recommend is if you have a specific interest, like let's say you want to go to trading, then focus on trading topics and stuff like that and like economics. If you want to go into like banking or like, or like, let's see, you want to go on like venture then like focus on venture stuff, you know what I mean? Or startup stuff. There's, I think a little over 4000 topics in there and I think we've. Around 2000 have been assigned assigned Nabil around there. So there's about half that are still open. A lot still around like valuation, Excel modeling that we'd like on financial modeling that are really relevant and look good on a CV, if you like, on it.
Intern 2: [00:07:40] Okay, great.Thank you.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:40] Yeah, no worries. And then Yeah. Anything else, Nabil? I'm forgetting. No I think yeah that's about. Any other questions around the internship or any questions we can we can pivot now and just answer questions around like career interview like that. People are still kind of streaming in here 10 minutes late. It's not acceptable. No, just kidding. It's fine. This is more casual, just a weekly chat that we do. So it's fine if you're late. Don't you know it's not even required? This is really more for your benefit to answer questions and try to help. So sometimes we have 30 to 40 people join. Sometimes we have a smaller group like today, 15 or so. So yeah, if there's any questions around careers, if not, I can jump into this resume review. If anyone wants us to review their resume, we can also do that and we can black out the name and the the address and stuff. So it's not like because we are recording this, we're not we're not going to be like publicizing this everywhere. But it does go up on our this is released on our podcast and on our YouTube channel. So. And we do anonymize those. So it's not like your your resumes going everywhere.
Intern 3: [00:08:53] Our really quick question. Yeah, go ahead. It's just like a quick question, sort of like career wise. So I haven't started college yet. And for like a lot of the colleges that I'm looking at and considering attending, you know, there's sometimes like undergrad business programs and then just also just majoring in econ.
Intern 3: [00:09:14] And I was wondering like if, you know, like if majoring in econ sort of like makes it more difficult to get jobs in either like investment banking, private equity or just the finance world or if it's safer to go to like an undergrad business program to get like finance major.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:23] Yeah, it's a great question. I think it depends on like very much depends on the school. So like if you said to me, Hey, I'm going to like my alma mater, like Williams, but like, it's not really well known except in the Northeast, but it is a pretty good feeder into into Wall Street, if, you know, like based on like the number of people that are actually trying to get there from that school and the alumni is really strong. So. It's not considered a target school, but given the number of students, the student population, which is really small and the number of people they send there, that's an example of like it's not an undergraduate business school, it's a liberal arts college. But if you're an economics major there, you and you kind of know early on and you network properly with the alums and stuff like that, you can actually have a pretty good shot. So I'd look at like. You know, undergrad versus like liberal arts econ as more of a like the school itself. So like, are you deciding between several schools or like, did you start or thinking of transferring What's what's the question?
Intern 3: [00:10:28] No, because because I just graduated high school. So I'm taking a gap year. So I'm going to be applying to colleges now. And so there's definitely some level liberal arts, which I'm considering some colleges which have undergrad business programs, but also econ programs that I'm interested in. So I'm saying,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:41] Yeah, so for the ones for the ones that have kind of an on an undergrad business program, I'd point you probably leaning more to the undergrad business because my guess is that it's going to be a little bit harder to land interviews if you're not in like that, that tighter network of the finance undergrads in the business undergrads, because that tends to be a little bit more feeder like if you go to a like a Penn is a good example like undergrad finance. I know there's like there's like these specialist like clubs within Penn that are like a really hard to get into and they help you get like the most prestigious buy side jobs right at undergrad and like there's so there's that's like at the high level then there's then there's places that are like a little bit further down the rankings in terms of target universities and how easy it is to get in.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:32] I'd recommend you go to our university statistics in the investment banking industry reports because you can see it's not adjusted by student population, but you can see like based if you were to adjust it based on like student population, you can quickly do that and see, hey, that's kind of a small school. Why is it ranked top 20? Right? You know what I mean? And be like, hey, that might be a good place to go. So are you thinking of staying northeast? Go west. South. Where are you?
Intern 3: [00:12:03] Yes. Yeah, I'm applying to primarily northeast. So considering schools like B.C, NYU, maybe a couple of liberal arts college, you know, sort of like schools. Definitely in that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:17] Yeah. So. I would take a look at those stats because I think I think it'll be pretty eye opening. Nyu is like near the top always, just because they have it's such a feeder and you're in the city, but it's very expensive and it's very cutthroat and competitive when you're there. So it's not like just because it's ranked number one in terms of number of interviews, grants and other stuff, It doesn't mean it's easy from there because because like half the student population is trying to do that. Right. Right. So. So just keep that in mind, too, and really try to think like what you want to do for those four years and like what place fits your personality best and.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:56] You know, I think if you know this early and you're already asking these questions, it's a pretty good sign. You're doing this internship. It's getting pretty strong internship for your resume right off the bat. I think that's probably going to put you in a good place and allow you to succeed in a pretty wide range of schools. Of course, as you start going further down the list, like A, B, C, for example, it's going to be a little bit it's going to be it's going to be a tough road to get into, like an investment banking job, like they do place kids every year. But it's not like a huge number of kids based on the size, the class size, especially, of course. Versus N.Y.U.. They place like probably like 1000 kids, like not 1000 like hundreds. You know what I mean? So, yeah, just keep that in mind. Yeah. And if you have like, as you get further along, you're admitted and stuff, you feel free to shoot me an email. I can kind of give you my thoughts. Absolutely. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Once you have kind of a the choice to make, I think it's good to just be like, okay, here are my options now. What do I want to do? And if you can visit, Visit. Absolutely. Absolutely. Cool. All right. Thank you for that. Good luck, Adrian. Any other questions?
Intern 4: [00:14:05] Thoughts? I have to leave in about, like, 5 minutes, but I could get, like, send you my resume to go over, and then I could just if I could, like, watch the podcast later on, I could do that and, like, make the critiques on my own.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:21] Why don't we do can we do it next week if you have more time next week? Because I like.
Intern 4: [00:14:24] Yeah, that's fine. I didn't know if it was like a weekly thing or.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:27] We do. We're here every Friday. Okay. All right. Almost every Friday. I missed last week because I was gone. But like, almost every Friday we're here, and then I like to have the person on because.
Intern 4: [00:14:37] Yeah, no. Worries.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:37] Sometimes I'm like, Why are you doing this? Or What is it? Explain this. This doesn't make sense to me. And so I think I think it's helpful to have you on. But yeah, I'd be happy to to look through it. Where are you? What year are you or.
Intern 4: [00:14:49] I just graduated. I go to Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:53] Yeah.
Intern 4: [00:14:54] It's a smaller college. Yeah, but I'm doing my getting my MBA, so it's called a plus one program. So you get your you just stay an extra year and you get your MBA an extra year. So it's a good deal.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:09] Awesome. Yeah, let's, let's definitely go through it. So you you had undergrad there and you're staying on a plus one to get your MBA which in one year.
Intern 4: [00:15:17] Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:18] So is it accelerated like really intense.
Intern 4: [00:15:20] Yeah. So it's called the three plus. So it's called the three plus one program. So you do your undergrad in three years and then your MBA in one year. So I started taking MBA classes when I told last year, I guess I took one in the fall, fall of last year and then one in the spring. But to finish my undergrad in three years, I had to take like summer classes and stuff. Yeah. So I didn't really have time necessarily to do an internship because I was just always in school. So this is like my first.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:50] Are you doing that Mostly because costs for tuition keep tuition low.
Intern 4: [00:15:54] Yeah, and it's it was fixed tuition all four years. So whatever tuition was in 2019, I still have that tuition right now, which is really nice. Yeah. And it includes like 18 credits per semester, plus six credits over the summer and six credits over the winter term. So it's a pretty good deal for what you get.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:19] What are you trying to break into? What school, what careers?
Intern 4: [00:16:23] I I'm not exactly sure I want to do like something along the lines of financial analyst, but I. I don't think I want to do advising. I just don't think that's for me. But I think like the analyst route is something I want to go into.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:39] Financial analyst Like a Fortune 500 or something like that.
Intern 4: [00:16:42] Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:43] Okay, cool. Yeah, we can talk about it, I think. I think I could probably help your resume a lot.
Intern 4: [00:16:48] Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:48] I'm guessing just based on your background, I would have told you, Don't go get the MBA.
Intern 4: [00:16:52] Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:54] To be honest, I would. I would have said go get go work a couple of years and then go back. But I get it. But I mean, it's fine. You have it. You're doing it now, right? Yeah. Yeah, but totally fine. I see the MBA is like a reset. It really reset if, like, you're not where you want to be. So it's almost like an option card rather than like a real or a place where you're really learning that much additional. So but like, it's fine, like let's look at what where you're at and then try to like. Try to like hone in a little bit more on like what you want to target because it's now it's September. You're basically out in like nine months, right?
Intern 4: [00:17:31] Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:31] So it's like it's go time.
Intern 4: [00:17:33] Yeah, it's coming up quick. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:36] It's go time. You got to like, you know. If we're heading into recession, we'll see. I mean, labor market is still tight, so you may have an easier time getting interviews and stuff like that. But if we had into a deeper recession, it might be a tough time to be graduating.
Intern 4: [00:17:50] Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:51] So, yeah, we'll figure all that out. Well, we'll look through it and yeah, happy to do it next. Next Friday.
Intern 4: [00:17:57] Awesome.Thank you.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:58] Thank you. Spencer has his hand raised. What's up, Spencer?
Intern 5: [00:18:06] If I could just have a quick question. So I'm currently a junior student at a non-target school, but I have I know this internship is really valuable in terms of breaking the investment banking. However, down the road I have been noticing a lot of, I think, search for internships. So I'm just curious if you have any insights in on that relevance to break into sell side jobs.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:27] It's a great it's a great question. So you're saying like you're seeing a lot of internships for. For search funds?
Intern 5: [00:18:30] Yes. Yes. Basically, I'm just staring down the road. If it's going to be, like worth it to take it or.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:37] You're so you're a junior right now. Right. Or you're starting your junior year. Yeah. Just so you're trying to break into sell side like eBay rules. Yeah, right. In my fourth year. Fourth year. What did you do over the summer or did you.
Intern 5: [00:18:51] I did intern at a private golf management at the Big five, so.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:54] And what about the previous year?
Intern 5: [00:18:57] Previous year was just an office assistant job.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:01] So you're kind of uphill battle already in the sense of like non target. I'd say average internships. Right. You don't have a boutique internship on your resume yet. Right. This will help. Get you in the map, but I think. Rather than focusing on stacking another internship search fund is like not that relevant to IAB.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:32] Rather than focusing on that, I get this on your resume, this interest on your resume. But then I'd really focus on like trying to get something for Junior. Summer is like the key, right? Until, like, almost all those seats have been filled. So. But not all the seats have been filled. So like you can get into his lower middle market investment bank Small and even even if it's a 3 to 10 person shop somehow network your way into that, that's going to give you a much better shot is your GPA decent is around a minus area A minus like a 3.563.7. It's fine. So. So I think yeah, I think it'd be great to do a resume review with you as well on here at some point, maybe next Friday as well. To kind of go through it and. We can blank out your name and everything like that, your contact info. But it'd be great to to do that because I get a sense that. Your resume is going to be like, It's good, it's probably going to be good, but is it enough to kind of get you over the hump? And are you looking at the right firms and attacking the right firms and approaching networking the right way to give yourself the best odds to having a really important internship coming your junior summer?
Intern 5: [00:20:46] So basically, like I think I should aim towards like investment banking, like advising.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:54] When would you be doing. Yeah, like, I mean, what would you even be doing this this search fund internship next time.
Intern 5: [00:20:56] Next summer. Yeah. Like Junior Summer because I failed the IB recruiting process this past summer. So just want something else like that can pivot me there.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:10] Well, you failed the recruiting process for, like, all the bulge brackets, middle markets and all the ,
Intern 5: [00:21:17] Unfilled middle markets I didn't apply for. I applied for middle markets mainly.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:20] What about lower middle markets and boutiques? Tiny pharm.
Intern 5: [00:21:23] I did a few, but they got me in the interview process. They said my experience was not enough, and so I just wanted to do one more experience. So that's the primary reason I took this internship.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:30] Yeah, this will help. I bet you if you re approached them with this on the resume, they may be willing to give you a shot next summer. And then once you have that on your summer, then you're potentially. Try to get a return offer and then if not, at least leverage that experience into getting into a lower middle market or middle market post-graduation. But I think that's going to be your best path. And definitely like, look, boutique, you should be looking boutiques and networking with boutiques anywhere around you. You're in Canada, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Are you near Toronto? Yeah, in Toronto area.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:02] So. It's still relatively small, so it's not like would you be able to get into the US? Yeah, look, in transition, they're looking in transition. If I have the ability to, of course it's like Visa and then it's harder with the boutiques. This is, this is like the catch. Catch 22, right? Like, really hard. The places like that are most likely to need or want. You are the tiny boutiques in. They're the ones that aren't going to be willing to sponsor you.
Intern 5: [00:22:21] But thank you, Patrick, for your insight.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:25] Oh, yeah. Let's let's try to figure it out. I think there's there's other ways to potentially get yourself there and not as direct method. Like look at places that do valuation type work. Like a big like what about going back to the big five or big four or whatever?
Intern 5: [00:22:42] I have thought about it, but then they only offer like for my big five, they only offer like 5 to 10 spots, like five spots in Toronto area. So and it's already pretty much all filled by people who go to targets and summit targets. So in my school, it doesn't typically happen.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:05] Yeah. I mean, it's still try, but. Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, I still try though, because like, if you can get into transaction advisory services there, that's like a nice springboard into investment banking. Yeah. Good luck.
Intern 5: [00:23:16] Thank you.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:16] Yeah. Let's say hopefully you'll join next Friday, and we can. We can potentially go through your resume, too. Happy to just. Do it here. So, yeah, we had a host. Sorry. Anybody else have questions? Career oriented stuff, school stuff, interview stuff. Um. Now. If not, I think now we can kind of spend a few minutes. So we had this post on the site in the forums. I think it was called what, a non targets failure. Is that what it's called? Somebody who had been really frustrated saying they've been trying for three years to break in from a non target, all this stuff and. Here's somebody else. I'm hopeful. Did you say that? Did you said. Yeah. Did you send?
Nabil: [00:24:17] I did. I did send the e mail.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:20] Everything? Yeah. Okay. This is joyous. Iphone. My joyous. This person was really frustrated. She or he has been she said, yeah, she'd been trying for three years, I think, to get in. And so she did send her resume through. I figured we could kind of. Take a look through. She'd been trying for investment banking right in the bill. Yeah. So let's let's share the screen here. See if I can. Pull this over. There you go. So what we have is on the left is we have. The resume that was sent in on the right is kind of our traditional templated resume. I'm going to zoom this in a little bit.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:20] You 100% zoom. 120. Let's look at that. 120. Um, so. A couple of things in the left that stand out to me if they're trying to get an investment banking. Number one, it's a PDF notes, two pages. That's like huge mistake number one. Why is it is it drifting on the second page? It's really weird that she sent it that way. So that's like just sloppy. Big mistake number one. Big mistake number two, having a big space dedicated to executive summary. A lot of people from non targets here, from the career center people to do this. And by the way, can you guys see my screen be Can you see it? Yeah. So a lot of people are told to do this. What's my what's your objective? What's your summary? You've got to you have to have this now. You really don't have to have this for investment banking job. Really, as an undergrad, you should lead with your education. This résumé, I don't even see any education. I just see work experience. So like two huge errors, two pages meaning sloppy. The PDF wasn't PDF properly, it's throwing something onto the second page. Number one. Number two executive summary up there, which is indeed it's a waste of space. Number three, there's no education. I mean no education. I've never even seen that on a resume. I don't know if this is like partial partially sent.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:41] So already within 30 seconds, I can see exactly why she's not having any success. And if she had had a resume review or a good resume review, somebody who has worked in the industry or somebody from our resume review team actually looked through this. Somebody could have told her that. But real quick, I kind of want to be able to send some of the. So this would be gone. You need education up there. You need some some some sort of GPA, something in there. Let me know when you're graduating. Work experience. Let's start at the bottom and move up. So this was like a summer internship. Enterprise Risk Management support, organized change management, the training content development to support the change in the underwriting process at CMB. As a rising senior in college with various professionals across the organization to gather necessary information to create effective training materials with underwriters in mind. It really improved the presentation of training materials by collecting feedback and approval from various internal groups for feedback and approval. Feedback and approval. Feedback and approval is kind of a weird, awkward thing to say before submitting to HR. This is the most important document in your job search and you have really weird like duplicative things. Have you not reread your bullets? Once. And I'm being really mean. Have you not reread your bullets once and realize that that sounds awkward? Are you speaking to somebody that's native in English? Is this person not native in English? Are they bad writers? This is what's going through my head as a reviewer.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:06] So even starting here, I can tell you immediately I'm just glancing up at all these bullets. I don't think I see one number. Quantification is crucial. I don't see one number. I don't see one impact that she made. I don't see any quantification. So it's really hard for me as a reviewer. It just looks like she did. She goes like this. I did this. Her bullets weren't bad. So let me give you an example of how one of these bullets could change to make it stronger. Coordinated with various professionals who. With the VP of X coordinated with the VP of X and x, y, Z across the organization is vague. To gather the necessary information vague to create effective training materials vague. So with underwriters in mind. So how about just to create effective underwriting training materials? How about how about, say, including a 37 page underwriting training pitch deck, Pitch deck. You just got pitch deck in there. You just got pitch book in there. That's a keyword for making recruiting. Guess what? Now the automated screeners looking through your resume might actually flag yours with relevant experience. So that's one example. But I'd even quantify I said X number of pages.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:27] That's something. But how about this next one supported organizational change management with training, content, support the underwriting process at CMB. That sounds like it's the same as the second bullet. Something else. So like she's trying to fit in a lot of bullets or three to 3 to 5 or six bullets each. She would be much better off in between the main sections, getting a lot more space above here and then in between each of the experience sections, she's jamming this together. So my visually, my eye is going to be much harder for me to actually stop and read this stuff because. It's everything is compacted and jammed. And then, look, she's getting like these bullets wrapping into three lines. You're telling me you can't get this bullet into two lines? So I know it sounds silly. But this attention to detail is basically your job in investment banking. It's basically your job. You're telling me these bullets need to have two words? Two words on one line? You can't you can't consolidate this onto one row or expand on it so it has more quantification and is a stronger bullet. Identified cases of check fraud. How many? An invalid check posting, strategizing, strategizing, ways to minimize these issues from an enterprise. What was the impact? Reducing or helping to reduce fraud. 2% over my ex or my six month period. I don't know those numbers.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:44] Go ask your manager what's reasonable. Go ask the person you work with what's reasonable assist in providing operational support to clients. How many clients, both internally and externally, by reviewing and analyzing data reports and manuals. What type of data reports and manuals? What kind of data did you use? Excel That'd be great to get in here to use another program. Let's get that in here. Where are your skills? Where is your model? Where is your modeling? Where is your interest section? There's no interest on here. I think you're just like a machine or a robot. Give me some flavor. So. I don't know. This is mean, mean spirited the way I'm doing it. But it's just frustrating to me that somebody can come on there, create a huge rant. About not breaking in. Not even use our free resume template that's available right in the header of the of the site. Anyone can download investment making resume template. Use it. It works. You know anybody. The problem is I think people trust. People trust people who've never actually worked in the industry. They go into the career office. And they're told what they want to hear of. Yeah, this looks great. This looks great. And so then they pat themselves on the back. They go over to the online applications. They drop their resume into 200 applications thinking, Oh, I did so much work. And then when they get three interviews, they're kind of like shocked, like how could somebody not want to interview me? And then when they get no offers, it's like double shock.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:19] And sometimes for some of these people who've been told how great they are since they were really little, it's a it's a big shock. It might be the first time they failed or failed significantly. Maybe they are at a school that's kind of easy with grade inflation. And so they've been told they're getting A's and a minuses their entire way through. But reality is the competition's much harder out there for these jobs. And so. You know, I'm being harsh in the sense because. You don't know what you don't know. And clearly this person just doesn't know. Just looking at it clearly, the person doesn't know what it takes to actually get a role. So to me, it makes me want to go into that thread and just literally list out all. Like the huge flaws in her résumé. This is why she's not even getting on the phone. She's not even getting phone interviews. She's not even getting screened at first. Don't you think after three years, if you haven't been out getting given one interview or one phone screen, you get some help or you get somebody to look through it. That's actually in the industry. And guess what? She hasn't done it because she's not resourceful.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:20] You need to be resourceful. You need to be willing to get on the phone. You'd be willing to humble yourself and be like, Hey, I just want to know how you did it. Do you mind taking a look at my resume? Guess what? Anyone who's worked in banking or anything would say the exact same thing that I've said are almost identical in terms of how to strengthen it. So nothing new. I feel like I'm a broken record to deal with all this stuff. Um. But it's like it's over and over and over and over again. And even the people here in the internship, like we've done, how many of these reviews And like, I think we've had one really strong resume. We had one really strong resume. It is a guy, guess what is a guy from NYU who's literally in the most cutthroat competition to get a job and his resume was super strong. But then the vast majority of everybody else, it's very they're very weak. And so. Don't overestimate kind of how strong your resume. This happened to people like Williams when I was an undergrad. People thought like even I thought, Oh, I'm going to be getting a job. It took me. I got a lot of interviews, my resume, I had a high GPA. I was economics major. I had some good leadership sport, well rounded, whatever. I got a lot of interviews.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:31] But even then, like I was it was 2002. We were in a going into recession right after 911 and people were canceling left and right. People were fake interviewing me and there was really no positions. They were just coming on campus to keep the relationship. And so. I ended up getting an offer from Rothschild, New York. It was like one of the few places that extended some offers to people from Williams, but it was like my 30th interview meeting. Like I had gone to final rounds at Goldman, got blown out of the water there. I got a final round in a bunch of places and I couldn't quite close it, couldn't quite close it out, wasn't quite strong enough. And part of that's because of the liberal arts background. You're up against UPenn, Wharton undergrad business majors that know a lot more about valuation and DCFS. And back then there was no Wall Street oasis to help guide me. So, yeah, you just don't know what you don't know. And just because you're a strong student doesn't mean you're going to do well. And just because you fill up your resume with with internship experience doesn't mean you're they owe you an interview, especially when there's nowadays there's so many stronger, so many strong candidates that understand the game and do the research and do the homework to to know kind of how to present themselves.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:45] So that's all I'll say. My rant for the day. Any questions on that? On that resume specifically or anybody else want me to dive through there. Otherwise we can keep it a short. We can keep it short this week. Maybe. I swear I'm going to go on that post and just go off on a rant. You could. Yeah. Or you can you can you for that email to me where she sent the email. I'm going to, I'm going to literally write back to her.
Nabil: [00:36:11] I said maybe I just do it now. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:14] Okay. Like depressing. It's depressing. How somebody with that can think they've like put in all this effort and not like stop themselves like if your guys if you're trying to if you're trying to do anything sell anything whether it's selling yourself for a job, selling a product or service, like you have to see where it's breaking down. If you're not even getting any calls, there's something wrong with the product market fit right? There's something wrong. They're not resonating on like your pitch decks, your materials. You're the way you're angling. You have to stop. You have to start from the beginning. You have to start it with your resume. And then if you're getting on pitches and you're not closing, it's probably your pitch. It's probably your your tone, your communication, your confidence, something. So just like it's the most important skill throughout your career is to practice that stuff.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:09] So a lot of people will get really honed in on like the resume and they'll get lots of interviews and then they get an interview and they're really nervous and they kind of just fall on their face over and over and over again, and they fail to practice that part. Um. Or other people, like just can't even get through that through the initial door. So. Anyways, we'll call it here unless anybody has any other questions. Going once, going twice, three times. Okay. Well, we'll see you next. Next Friday again, if you want to join. We'll probably do another resume review or a couple. It sounds like a couple of people won't want their resumes torn apart. I'll be I promise I'll be nicer if you're on here. I'm just trying to help. I just want to make sure that all of you kind of put your best foot forward and give yourself the best shot. Okay. That's all for now. And thanks for all your help with the with the writing and the content. We're seeing some great progress on the on the traffic to these new articles is its finance research internship is really helping the business and the community. So thank you and thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis. And till next time
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