As a recruiting captain for JP Morgan and
also just over the course of my life, I
probably reviewed over a thousand
resumes and today
I'm gonna give you some of my best tips
and tricks so that you can land your
dream job
What's up everyone my name is Ben and
welcome to rareliquid, a channel for
tech investing and career advice
Today's agenda looks like this. I'll
first provide you with some overall
guidance, then show you the evolution of
my resumes
I'll then go over the seven key tips I
have for you and lastly go over some
giveaways and shout outs
As a friendly reminder I'll be posting
career related videos on the weekends
and
stock and crypto related videos on the
weekdays and if you'd like some more
personal career advice from me, feel free
to check out my rareliquid careers
patreon in the description below
Okay so first up let me give you some
overall guidance from
a recruiter's perspective. As you may
have seen from my previous video I was
the JP Morgan recruiting captain for
summer analyst recruiting for two years
and a lot of what I'm about to really
share today
stems from that experience. My recruiting
team and I usually would review
about 150 to 200 resumes in usually one
to two hours
and so if you think about that it's
usually around 30 to 60 seconds
max. Usually if the resume just has some
glaring errors or
had a really really low GPA I would
probably not even spend more than five
seconds
and if it was a pretty solid resume, then
I might spend something like 30 seconds
maybe a little bit more if I needed to
but basically the point is that your
resume
is your first impression to get an
interview or maybe if you're doing a
coffee chat it's the first thing someone
knows about you and so
the most important thing about a resume
you have to understand is that you have
to make a
really strong first impression with it
This really boils down to two things
which
is first that your resume needs to be
pretty aesthetically pleasing and really
well formatted
and second of all, all of your individual
lines have to be really really well
crafted
and I'll basically walk you through how
to do that throughout this video
With that said, let me share with you the
evolution of my resumes
I'm gonna be sharing with you my resumes
just because I think it's the best way
for you to really learn
by using an example and I'm gonna be
sharing three- one that I use for
consulting recruiting, one for banking
recruiting, and one
for when I left banking and so it's kind
of more one of my more recent resumes
starting with consulting this resume got
me interviews with Deloitte, Bain, and BCG
during my junior year
What I really want to focus on here is
my professional and leadership sections
For the professional section you can see
that I have four consulting experiences
in a row
and so if a recruiter saw this resume
they wouldn't have to spend much time to
see that I'm really interested in
consulting
In the leadership and activities section,
my second and third
experiences are also consulting related
and I also included my volunteer
experience at Tanzania
because it was a really big part of my
story when I was recruiting
Let's now compare this to my senior year
resume that I used for banking
as you can see I completely changed my
professional and leadership sections to
focus on finance experiences
and also changed a lot of the individual
lines as well to focus on finance work
streams
I also changed my titles a bit from
consultant to analyst for Social Sector
Solutions and Cisco
and this was just because I was applying
for an investment banking analyst
position and you can have a little bit
of flexibility with your titles
In the professional section, I took out
one of my consulting projects with
Andreessen Horowitz because that project
didn't involve any finance work and I
also added an older internship from
Merrill Lynch
in the leadership and activity section I
added a Goldman Sachs case competition I
participated in just to show a little
bit more of my interest in finance and I
also took out my volunteer work
Now I'm not going to go too much in
detail into everything that changed here
so here are the resumes again, side by
side, and you can pause the video and
compare them if you'd like
basically with these resumes what I
really just wanted to show you is that
for the industry that you're applying
for you should really cater your resume
to it
as much as you can. Next up, let me show
you one of my more recent resumes which
looks way different
First of all I changed up my formatting
because I needed a lot more space to
write about my experiences
I also have my education section at the
bottom because once you are in the
workforce your professional experience
is the main priority
but if you're an undergraduate student
you'll want education to be at the top
but anyway, I'm going to be using this
resume to go through my seven resume
tips for you
so let's move on to that. First up let me
tell you about the only four sections
you need
In my opinion for the vast majority of
industries I think the only four
sections you really need
are Education, Professional, Leadership
and Activities, and Skills and Interests
This means you do not need an objective
statement and most recruiters find it to
be pretty outdated to add this
Also of course if you're in a
specialized industry- I don't know like
medicine or
engineering or something and your
resumes look really really different
then I think that's totally fair and
there may be some sections that I just
don't know about that's important for
those industries
it's just that this is mainly for
business and I do think that the
tips that I have for you will still
probably be relevant no matter what
industry you're in
Before I go into each of these sections
also remember to put your name at the
very top and I put it on the left hand
side and contact information and
linkedin link
on the right hand side to save some
space. Most resumes have their names in
the middle and contact information below
but as you get older you actually start
to run out of room so this is why I do
it like that
Moving on to the sections for education
you should have your standard things
like your university,
GPA, major GPA if it's higher,
standardized test scores if you have
decent scores,
awards, and you can also add relevant
coursework if you need to fill up your
resume
The professional and leadership and
activity sections should include the
company or
organization name, your title, location
and dates
One thing I also like to do is add the
industry for each company or
organization because some people may not
know the companies you've worked at, but
this of course is optional
And for my Skills and Interest section, I
do go
a bit overboard but I'll explain this a
little bit later and
for most resumes, just the skills and
interest should suffice if that's all
you really want to add
Second, let me share some tips on overall
formatting
Personally I really liked my college
format because I thought it was pretty
unique
but later on as I just had more and more
experiences I realized that
I needed to switch over to kind of more
standard template like my post
banking resume just because it allowed
more space for me to write
Of course, you can choose whatever
formatting you like and prefer but just
remember that the most important thing
is that you just need to make sure
your resume makes a killer first
impression and is aesthetically pleasing
The first tip I have for formatting is
to make sure that each line reaches the
right hand side margin of the page
If you look at my resume there's very
little white space on the right hand
side
and this is purposefully done and I made
sure that all the words that I use
reached that right hand side of the page
and I know it's going to be difficult to
perfectly get it there but
Trust me when I say that it's worth it
if your resume bullets are one line each
and it doesn't reach the full page and
it only reaches half then
I'm gonna look at it and think you know
is this work stream even important and
if it is then how come this person could
not even fill up an entire line
on a page if your resume bullet is two
lines then I do think that it may be
okay for the first one to be the full
length and then the second one to be
half or two-thirds but generally
speaking, and maybe just I just have
too much attention to detail or
something, I just like having everything
reach the right-hand side, I think when
you look at the overall resume
things just look a lot more symmetrical
and aesthetic. The second thing that I
like to do is bold the company
name and location and italicize the
position title and date and I think this
is relatively standard stuff
Third I like to use square bullets
because it just looks nicer in my
opinion but
again totally up to you. Fourth the font
I'm using right now is Goudy Old Style
which I personally think
looks the nicest but there are others
like Garamond or Times New Roman which
are pretty popular as well
And lastly, probably the most important
formatting tip is consistency
All the formatting in your resume should
be consistent from where you are bolding
things to the amount of space
in between each experience and this is
super super important
Overall when a recruiter looks at your
resume, they should be able to tell that
you put a ton of time and effort into it
and all the details like formatting
really come into play for that really
killer first impression
so make sure you're spending that extra
time, that upfront energy to make sure
your resume formatting is all perfect
so that you can make that really really
good first impression
and get that interview. My third tip is
to add sub sections
if possible. What I'm referring to here
are the sections highlighted in red here
from my most recent resume
If you are recruiting for investment
banking and have transaction experience
from previous banking or private equity
internships,
then you should 100% have these sub
sections. For you future bankers out
there here is a more fleshed out section
that I used to have in my resume when
J.P. Morgan was my only professional
experience
These sub sections are really standard
for bankers once they have left
undergraduate and are full-time working
in banking and
you know laying out the transactions
like that really help call out what you
worked on when you're recruiting for
things like private equity or hedge
funds so
if you are a candidate for banking and
if I was reviewing your resume you had a
pretty solid GPA
and you had these subsections where you
worked on transactions for
different boutique investment banking
internships or private equity firms that
you worked at, then
most likely I would lean towards giving
you an interview. But regardless of the
industry you're in I do think it's
helpful to break down your professional
experiences especially if it's a really
long section into different subsections
and you probably saw that in my
Asthetic Studio section. My fourth tip
is in regards to the
importance of the first words and lines
in your resume
The first words should always be in the
past tense even if it's a job you're
currently in just so that everything in
the resume is consistent
The biggest tip I have for you in
choosing the first words to use in the
lines of your resume is to look at the
job description that you're applying for
and see what kind of words that they use
so if they use words like "analyze"
"construct" or "build"
then you probably want to use those
words as well so that when a recruiter
looks at your resume they see that okay
this person
is kind of doing similar things in
previous jobs and so maybe he or she can
you know just apply the skills that
they've already built to this current
job and also I have heard that some
computers now
are analyzing the types of words that
resumes
use and that can make a difference in
recruiting
for that first resume screen- I don't
really know if this is true but you know
if it is then
another good reason to look at that job
description and use those words
You also need to pay attention to the
first few lines under each
company you worked at or whatever
experience and what you put there
because as I mentioned earlier,
recruiters and people don't really spend
that much time on your resume so
they might read the first one to two
lines under each experience and you want
to make sure that those
lines are the most hard-hitting and
impactful ones that you have
My fifth tip for you is to use the
template for your lines of
what you did plus the impact you made
and this
is what I mean by that if you look at
this line from my resume the "Analyzed
3,000 job descriptions" is what I did
and the rest of the line that you see
here is the impact that I made
I personally think that this template
structure is super super
valuable because as recruiters, you do
really just want to know from a
candidate
what they did and the impact that they
made, right? So if you're able to
structure your lines like this
then that is super super powerful and I
recommend doing it for
at least 75% of your lines if you can, now
I know that not every single line is
able to be structured in this way,
for example when I was back in
college I worked as an administrative
assistant at a school for about a
semester and
really all I did was like photocopy
papers and I can't really
say what kind of impactI made there
right? So I get it if you're young and
you
don't have the ability to structure all
your lines in that way then that's
totally fine just
if you can this is a really really good
structure to keep in mind and implement
You also get a lot of bonus points if
you're able to quantify the what you did
part and especially the impact you made
part
and this is really important because it
shows that you're really thoughtful
about the impact that you made to your
company or organization
and that's actually part of the next
part of the video so
let's move on to that. Like I said my
sixth tip is to quantify, quantify,
quantify.
Having a lot of numbers in your resume
makes for a really strong good first
impression because it kind of shows that
you're comfortable with numbers whether
you are
or not because it makes it seem like you
are focused on making a measurable
impact in your organizations or
companies that you work at
and what kind of employer would not want
to see that. Whenever I gave resume
feedback I would always ask for every
single line "can you quantify this" "can
you quantify this" whether it was the
number of people you're managing
or the number of companies that you
reached out to when you're doing some
outreach
You'd be surprised at the amount of
things that you you can actually
quantify if you really
put some time to think about it and I
really highly recommend at least
75% or more of your lines having at least
one number in them each
A question I get a lot is what if you
don't know exactly what the numbers are
and for that I say it's totally fine to
use an estimate as long as you're not
lying and
really stretching the truth and as long
as you're in the right ballpark
My last tip for you is to make your
skills and intersection a conversation
starter
The skills line is pretty
self-explanatory but that should include
anything like software or technical
skills like programming languages
For the interests line make sure to try
to choose ones that make you sound as
unique as possible and if you're going
to choose something more
quote unquote cookie cutter like
traveling, I highly recommend
adding a parenthesis afterwards and
making it sound more unique
like what I did with 8-ball pool here
Now I go a little bit overboard here
with my section with favorite books,
movies, and personal feats, but I have
personally found that this has led to a
lot of conversations during interviews
The reason that I think adding a bit
more than usual is beneficial and the
reason I did it beyond just liking books
and movies is just that
it gives you more chances for the
interviewer to have a similar interest
as you and kind of pinpoint that out
during
an interview and it could lead to a
conversation and maybe lead for
you guys to you know develop more of a
personal bond during that short
interview and so that's personally why I
recommend trying to add a little bit
more if you can, or at least making your
skills and interests section
as interesting as you can and if you
don't want to then you know of course
it's totally optional
Okay, lastly let me chat about giveaways
and announcements
First up, as I announced in my last video
I'm gonna be giving away ten dollars to
the first comment on each future video
and
a random comment so these are our two
winners today just dm me on instagram
and I'll tell you
how you can collect your winnings. Second,
if you'd like to win 10%
of my May 2021 Youtube earnings, then
look for this picture of Oprah on my
Instagram
and it'll be at least $300 but probably
more than that from what
everything is looking like so far. And
lastly, a brief shout out to yewwei soh
so for joining as a Terabyte Patron in
the community
thank you so much for joining I
appreciate it and for the rest of you if
you'd like to join the patreon check out
a link for it in the description below
Alright so this wraps up the video thank
you so much as always for watching you
can check out my different social media
platforms if you want-
I have links for it in the description
below as well and
let me know in the comments if you have
any questions I'll be happy to answer as
many as I can
Thanks so much for watching as always
and for tuning in, hope to catch you in
the next one,
peace out
[Music]