hey everyone my name is kenji and in this video i want to share my resume that got me
an internship at goldman sachs specifically in their investment banking division in new york city
so hopefully this will serve as a bit of a tips and tricks and i'll show you why i did what i did
and it's basically all the way leading up to the internship so obviously the internship's not going
to be in the resume and here's some proof that i actually worked there in case you're suspicious
i'll also be attaching a resume template in the description in case you want to use it for
yourself as a bit of a disclaimer if you will this is a resume that's worked for me but that
being said there's obviously many other resumes out there that are probably equally as efficient
if not better but this one's gotten me interviews with jp morgan morgan stanley bank of america and
many others so hopefully this is gonna be useful for you guys so here's the resume and generally
speaking it should be one page long i've never seen two page resumes in investment banking
and within that one page you want to try to make it as full as possible you really don't want too
many white spaces that just looks a bit empty so let's look into the categories generally speaking
i have four main ones and they're basically in order of whatever takes up the most time of my day
because i was a student education was my number one and then i followed by a professional
experience but if you're a full-time worker then your professional experience is going to go on top
and education below that right and then after that you have skills and additional education
that's the way i used it i know some other friends of mine a goldman for instance used a bit
of a different structure where they also have a leadership experience section and that might make
sense if you want to include things like you did volunteering that you were present of a certain
club in school other things along those lines in my case i didn't have any leadership experience
so i just didn't put it there and that's a bit of a recurring theme that in a resume you really
just put whatever you're good at and you can omit whatever you're not good at right so you
try to make yourself as attractive of a candidate as possible so let's delve into each category and
i'll explain why i wrote the things that i did and hopefully there's some takeaways there for you as
well so the first category would be the contact details this is fairly self-explanatory really
typically you have the address you have your mobile number and you have your email
i will say though that sometimes i changed my address to my nationality and the reason
being that i want i want to emphasize that i'm a native speaker in a certain language so for
instance i don't look very spanish but i'm native in the language so i might put it up there just
to demonstrate that if the job requires spanish i'm perfectly confident in the language right
so next up we have education because i was a full-time student that's basically what
i have on top like i mentioned if you're a full-time worker then you probably have your
work experience at the very top that being said within education there's typically two main parts
first one is your high school and next is your university that being said in my case for instance
because i transferred universities i decided not to put high school and instead i just have the two
universities that i went to right also another reason that i don't have my high school is that
i personally didn't have very good grades in high school so i decided to omit that
and you can really play around with these things and whatever makes your candidacy look stronger
also sometimes you might feel like you don't have enough work experience
then you might add your high school there and have a couple bullets for that as well right so let's
look into cornell university for instance and look into their bullets korean doesn't actually have
a finance major so i try to make my resume and the studies more related to finance as possible
so that included saying i'm in the business program it included showing off my concentration
and other things that like that make it seem like you're keen on investment banking right and as
for the grades i had pretty good grades so i made sure to show that off if you don't have very good
grades then you might consider omitting it right also because i don't have a leadership experience
section i put that i was a teaching assistant in there in a subject in statistics essentially so
basically that shows that i'm good with numbers right which is good for an investment bank
and then you can see here in the relevant course work that's something fairly unique to my resume
and i like to have that there basically to demonstrate that i understand the subject and i'm
i'm comfortable with the finance terminology right especially if you're say a history major
or something that's really not related to finance it's very good to use that to demonstrate that
you are keen on the topic you're not just there for money or something and that you understand
it right that being said if you actually include say corporate finance and your relevant coursework
odds are if you get to an interview stage they'll ask you about corporate finance
so keep that in mind and make sure that you're actually comfortable with the topic
next up we have professional experience and this should really be the bulk of your resume it should
really occupy the most out of the page that being said i realized that a lot of you probably don't
have too much work experience i personally didn't at the time but i even put things like working
as a bellman which sure isn't finance related but it's still better than say sitting around parting
all day or something right so it shows that you're active and you're trying to do something
so typically the way i structured it you have the name of the company followed below that is your
title followed by the department name then on the other side you have the date as well as wherever
the location was and for the bullets i typically try to keep it consistent i have four each as you
can see there sometimes you can also have them in ascending order where your newest job is along
with the most bullets obviously don't have your oldest job with the most bullets because that just
wouldn't really make much sense right within each bullet you'll notice that i actually in just get
right right to the point it's not really a full sentence ideally you should try to use action
verbs i use something like evaluated i conducted i analyzed things like that and then you try to
quantify wherever possible so you might want to say how much of a budget you had what number of
clients you worked with other things like that that are just going to help give context to
the reader right also you may have noticed that throughout my resume i try to have big brands in
there i think i have mary bloomberg pwc these are fairly well known brands and the reason i
have that is i think that a good brand just gives you a lot more credibility right if a big company
is willing to trust you with your work then that means that you're probably good you probably have
something of value right or else they wouldn't hire you whilst on the other hand if you say you
have your dad's restaurant fair enough you might actually learn more from your dad's restaurant
but that being said it's it's not as credible of a source as a big company might be right
and that's just my opinion right i think that big companies give you good credentials other
people might think differently and they might say that it's better to prioritize learning and
fair enough you know both arguments work and this is just my opinion so let's go through each job
chronologically so my first one was like bellman obviously it doesn't really have much to do with
finance but that being said i tried to link it wherever possible to an investment banking role
so we know that investment bankers typically work in teams right so i try to mention that in my
bellman role they typically act with clients i try to mention that again with my bellman role through
guests right and they're comfortable dealing with other people so i try to mention that as well
so you really want to touch on the strong points and try to create a bit of a link between
the role that you were at and the role that you want to be at next up i have bloomberg and
you can see that it was really only a one-week program but i thought it was worth mentioning
it's finance related so it's better than a bellman rule say so that's a big plus also it demonstrates
that i'm keen on the industry i understand how it works if you look at my bullets i clearly state
that i've done research that i've worked with the bloomberg terminal which is a tool that they
use fairly often in investment banks and that i overall understand how the markets function right
so lastly i have pwc and i worked as a financial auditor there so i used a lot of the skills that
investment bankers use like good knowledge of accounting good knowledge of finance and working
on excel a lot right so i try to emphasize that i mentioned that i've worked on financial models
that i've worked on excel in particular and also that i've worked as a team
and interacted with different clients right in my case it was departments at specific companies
and you can see i also mentioned that clients that i worked with that's mainly because they were high
profile or big name clients like the volkswagen group say and so if pwc trusts me to go work at
volkswagen and see their financial statements that probably means that i wasn't incompetent
right i was fairly decent and so they were able to trust me with my work so moving on to the skill
section here i have computer skills as well as languages i have languages on top mainly
because that's what i'm fairly good at i'm fluent in five languages so i think that's something that
makes me a fairly attractive candidate so i try to emphasize it that being said if you only speak one
language say english for instance then there's no need to have a language section right don't put it
if you feel like it's going to be to the detriment of your resume right if you want to say that you
speak more than one language really be honest about this stuff try not to lie wherever possible
i personally had an interview with one person in three different languages spanish french
and english so just make sure you really don't want to be in that embarrassing scenario where
they speak to you in french and you don't have a clue what to respond right now for computers
pretty much everyone says that they know word powerpoint and excel so if you want to try to
stand out above that you might actually get into the details of what you know in excel for instance
like in my case i put some formulas in there that i'm comfortable with to kind of show off
and make yourself just that slightly better than the other guy right you might also have some other
computer skills that aren't necessarily related to investment banking like say python or javascript
but those are actually fairly impressive if you will as in people will will respect that so
maybe that's the reason to put it as well right the last part i have is additional information
honestly this part is fairly loose everyone has it a bit differently and that's fair enough
i will say though that a lot of people don't really think about it too much but i really think
it's a super important part mainly because this is how you you actually say befriend the recruiter or
an interviewer in that if you both went to the same gym club say or if you want if you
both support the same football team these are all things that actually connect with each other on a
personal level that can really make the difference between say two very good candidates two ivy
league candidates you might be that just won't be better because the person liked you more right
so here i actually started off with competitive sports in my case i played a lot of sports
throughout high school i played for img academy and then i played for a pro teams youth academy so
those are things that i thought were fairly unique to me and investment bankers actually on the whole
they do like the the athlete mentality if you will they also like military veterans quite a
lot so those are things that if you do have them do emphasize and they might not be sports right
it might be something like music or dancing that you've done competitively these are all things
that will add to your resume and it's also a good conversation starter now for interests um be
honest about your interest don't put like i i love financial modeling or anything like that because
that's just pushing it recruiters won't think that's genuine and fair enough i wouldn't either
right so put things like i don't know if you like surfing you put surfing running whatever
some people put books a lot and that's fair enough i will say that i have books as well
and fairly often in interviews they would ask me what book i read most recently so make sure you
have one in mind right then for certificates and achievements i really just have some credentials
that prove my fluency in the languages i claim to be fluent at so in this case it's french and
english i have some certificates for those and i also have some scholarships that i've
earned along the way right for you it might be sat scores it might be a championship that you've won
other things like that basically if you don't feel like you have any good ones then just take
them out and these don't have to be finance related at all right and then lastly i have an
additional education part and some of you might say like hey that should be at the very top and
fair enough maybe it should it actually i actually had it at the very top back in the day but as my
resume got longer and longer and it wasn't it was past one page i decided to put it back down
and make it a lot shorter right so it's really depending on how how you feel about your resume
if you feel like you don't have enough space and put it at the very top and try to expand on it
i will say that when you put it at the top sometimes it just looks like it's as important
as your degree when really it was only a say a two-week short course so try to keep that
in mind and if you're enjoying the video feel free to like and subscribe it really helps out
the channel a lot lastly if you want to break into investment banking i also made an external course
that i'll link down below which basically outlines the whole process is essentially the class that i
wish i had while i was going into the process so it goes all the way from what kind of a degree you
should have what kind of measure you should be in all the way to the application prep the networking
the interviews what kind of questions they might ask so it's really a complete package
and if you're keen on that feel free to check it out so yeah if you have some questions about any
particular part of the cv feel free to comment them and i'll make sure to get back to you and
that's all for this video thank you for watching and i'll hopefully catch you in the next one