Investment Banking Resume

How to Tailor Your Investment Banking Resume?

The investment banking resume is unique. It’s important to tailor your resume to the industry standard to avoid being immediately deleted just because it doesn’t comply with the standard format.

Here are some critical points to be aware of:

• Your investment banking resume must be only one page (I cannot stress this enough).  It doesn’t matter how many internships you’ve done or clubs you’re a member of, you have to get your resume down to one page. Hiring managers are busy and often just automatically skip resumes that are more than a page long.

• Convey your academic achievements. Investment bankers love to hire people with a high GPA, who are on the Dean’s List and appear to be smart.

• Demonstrate relevant finance experience. It’s important to demonstrate that you’ve done some type of relevant work experience. If you’re able to get an internship somewhere, that is ideal. If not, then you can put in something such as a position as an officer in a student club. Either way, be sure to prove you have financial modeling and valuation skills.

• Prove you are a hard worker by listing and describing on your investment banking resume organizations that you’re a part of, on top of your full-time academic workload.  Bankers love to hire people who are varsity athletes, have special talents, and hold leadership positions.

• Use our cover letter template to explain why you’re a good fit with the bank.

Download the Free IB Resume Template

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Investment Banking Resume Checklist

Here are some more important tips and guidelines for your investment banking resume. Whether you’re applying for an analyst or an associate position, these are absolutely critical to follow:

1. Run spellcheck (or a more advanced software program such as Grammarly)
2. Get at least one other person to thoroughly proofread it
3. Use a safe font like Times New Roman, Arial, etc. (nothing crazy or too fancy)
4. Ensure it’s only one page long
5. Set a reasonable margin (you can maximize the space, but don’t make the margin so small it looks bad)
6. Optimize the line spacing to fit more information in, but as with the point above, don’t over do it
7. Highlight any transaction or investment banking related experience very prominently
8. If you don’t have relevant work experience, add extracurriculars that involve relevant skills like financial modeling, investing, trading, case competitions, etc.
9. Demonstrate your hard work ethic (via juggling school, internships, clubs, athletics, arts, etc., etc.)
10. Display your academic achievement clearly with GPA, major, and relevant courses.
11. Run spellcheck and proofread again!

Additional Resources to Learn More

Thank you for reading CFI’s guide and checklist for perfecting your investment banking resume. Please check out these additional relevant resources below to learn more:

• Investment Banking Interview Questions
• Investment Banking Cover Letter
• Equity Research Interviews
• Off Cycle Hiring at Banks
• See all career resources