Financial Resume Writing

The goal is to help the interviewer assess who you are as quickly as possible in terms of “qualifications” for the job. “Qualifications” are either hard (achievements, grades) or soft (work/life experience, thought process, approach). Both together are important for the reader to assess whether the person behind the resume would excel at the job. If they think so, you get an interview.

Here are the key “qualifications” for any job in finance:

1)        Dedication to finance

2)        Numerical / technical competence

3)        “Fit” (team work, hard working, easy to work with, low stress)

On your resume, strip away anything that does not add to your “qualifications” for the job. This adds to the chance that the reader will take away a more worthwhile point. Having too many points that speak to the same qualifications to the detriment of others lowers the chance the reader will take away a whole picture.

On a single page with ample margins and whitespace, give your best shot at conveying the above 3 qualifications using the ingredients of your life so far.

Do not fill in experience for the sake of filling up the page, this is true even if you are not “qualified” for the job: because then you can quickly learn what additional experience would make you “qualified” (something solid you can work towards). The worst would be “qualified” but not even get an interview because the resume did not convey your “qualifiedness”.

A great resume does both of these together:

- each point is concise, relevant content that speaks to one of the qualifications

- the layout helps deliver the content that effectively conveys the story of the person behind the resume

Most decent resumes are missing the second point, using the layout to help highlight and emphasize.

Layout (less is more, plan the page visually)

- leave whitespace at the page margins

- do not fill each line completely (more words doesn’t mean more content)

- standback a couple of feet and view: which entry / experience stands out? do you want that one to stand out? if not, adjust

- spend more time to make the resume SHORTER, not longer

- use no more than 4 bullets per entry

- if need more than 4 bullets for a job (e.g. most relevant one) break out into types of work (e.g. “Valuation”, “Client interaction”)

Content

- for each experience, use bullet points to describe different aspects of job

- each bullet point must contain:

- role: what did u do?

- process: how did u do it?

- result: how well did it come out?

- if a bullet point lacks one of 3 above, it can be reduced and/or combined with others

- repeat above until each line in resume adds something new

- repeating similar experiences takes away time for the interviewer to receive new information

The resume is a game:

-  you must fill one page with ingredients from your life to capture what you think are the soft and hard qualifications for the job

-  the reader must interpret what’s on the page and how the page is laid out to decide if the person behind the resume has the qualifications for the job

Accept the game for what it is and use the chance to either:

-  learn how to improve your game (see what pieces are missing from the reader’s point of view)

-  or, if you are lucky and the reader is competent, land an interview

-   to do this best is to take the reader’s perspective, what kind of qualifications will the reader tease out of the resume to fit the specific job they are asked to fill?

Good luck!