Full CV Finance Guide: ATS and Human Proof
Format: No colours, no picture, Word Doc to PDF formats only. Maximum one-sided A4 page. Name in the middle on the very first row, under which you should have your LinkedIn, your email address, and your phone number. I prefer adding by employment date availability at the very beginning, so it’s easy for HR to see exactly when I’m applying.
Order: Order should be reverse chronological.
Language: Use “action” verbs (e.g. led, built, analyzed, created etc.)
General advice: Don’t try to “fill the void” with useless experiences. Finance is brutal (literally gets worse every year), so you have to be laser-focused. Recruiters' attention spans are getting worse by the day. At the same time, you need to keep a balance between not going overboard and having the “key” words needed to also pass an ATS.
Disclaimer: The CVs used here have passed both most ATSs for big banks, and human HRs.
Each section should feature dates, years, and the location of the job/activity/school. You can strategically “omit”, or not to say certain things, depending on your audience.
Avoid having fewer than 2 bullets or more than 4 per experience/idea. If you experienced deal flow and believe you had a lot of ownership over specific deals as an intern (or it was a full-time position), you may go over, especially if the job you’re now applying to would find that experience relevant.
Education
At this level in time, you should list only your bachelor’s and master’s degrees. If, during your high school years, you achieved outstanding results (e.g., a 45 IB grade) and/or went to a well-rated school, you can mention it. Otherwise, you’re losing space on the page for nothing.
If you had a good academic ranking, mention it (absolute grades are not as relevant, especially if your school is less well-known). The same goes for any awards or any scholarships received.
When applying to finance with little to no experience, the more you can make the recruiter see you’re interested in learning and discovering, the better. Therefore, within Education, you should have a Relevant coursework section of a maximum of 2 lines, where you put the financial coursework you had. Under that section, you should also have the Activities and Societies section, where you can put the relevant and non-relevant experiences (so there is also some personality to your profile).
The Graduation date does not appear on my CV anymore, but should be added on yours as to ensure that the HR does not need to reach out to you for this type of information.
Professional experience
Here, you can have actual jobs (e.g. Citibank, BNP Paribas), but also professional projects (e.g. Emerald Consulting, GlideApps) that you have done with real companies in a structured manner, even if it wasn’t actual on-site working with them or under an employment contract.
The structure most of us have used and saw work well is the following: Company – Very brief explanation about the company and what industry they’re in – Official position you held – Bullets.