Private Equity Resume Template - Official WSO CV Example

most professional resume reviewers will tell you to include an objective statement at the top of the resume. finance industry based on my experience is one of the few places where it's expected for you to go without one...so my guess is for engineering internships, probably best to include one. good luck!

dionysian:

Is skipping the objectives section advisable when looking for internships?

Edit: never mind, just saw the link to the undergrad one. I wonder if it's advisable for engineering internships.

When you're applying for a job your objective is to get the job. What purpose is there to state "my objective is to get a job in blah" when you're literally applying for a job as that?

I wouldn't include unless you're in need to fill space. I never had an objective statement and landed many interviews and internships. By sending the resume it shows what your objective is... to get the internship. Lose the objective and fill that space with more relevant or interesting information that can separate you from the rest. good luck!

really depends on the person. If you feel there are 1-2 bullets being left out to make room for that relevant experience, then yes, you can remove it, but I still think only a few years out of school it can show that you were focused and studied relevant courses (this can especially be useful if the position you are applying to is more related to a course you took vs. your actual professional experience).

I'd still argue that less is more, and unless you can quantify the action and results from your prior experiences, another boring bullet about how you "helped coordinate meetings" is less value-add. These bullets are placeholders and should not be used as good examples since they are just "ok"...ideally you can quantify and show your impact more.

Hope that helps,
Patrick

what are you asking for exactly?

Not easy, but I think having something like generic responsibilities under your Work Experience is fine...once you have a few pitches or one live deal, it does become much easier.

Until then, the only major difference from your college resume is to flip order of Education with Work Experience and maybe remove ~1-2 internships if needed for space.

If you only have ~3-4 bullets for the new job and no transactions to list (yet), then I'd assume recruiters would understand why :-)

My banking stint is now 2 short bullets. My firstPEgig is also significantly shortened. It kind of just depends what you want to emphasize...my current role takes up the most space as there's more interesting stuff to talk about

that's a good post, although i feel it's applicable for any job. the more detail you can provide, the more legitimate your accomplishments look. along with quantifying your experience, you also want to make sure that you can speak about why any certain deal worked for buyer x or seller y.

in my opinion, your resume is less than half the battle if you're trying to get intope. i know this goes without saying, but networking is essential.

Yeah, I definitely think networking is key and something I should have done more of when I was recruiting. I relied on headhunters way too much rather than being proactive.

Am I correct in assuming that only the "unique" parts of the deal are worth writing about? That's the guideline I've used in the past, but not sure how others view this.

kinda goes hand-in-hand with citing specifics. if you can talk intelligently about a deal and how/why it worked (i.e. unique situations, creative financing, etc.) it sounds a ton better than simply stating "i worked with associate to develop354manbetx and investment memorandum for deal X"

I'm tempted to do aPEinterviewing/networking guidenow, too bad I'm not really an expert on networking forPEas I used headhunters way too much.

Think there's anything different about networking intoPEjobs vs. banking jobs?

Dosk, just read your resume guide. I think what you have is good, but out of the whole thing, you only really give two or three pieces of advice! You may want to expand it to cover more of the resume or dig in deeper as to what kind of tasks are impressive to a private equity interviewer.

Also, on a side note, I read your "Boutique Investment Bank" blurb. Must admit, I was rather offended by the comment: "The only situation where you might want to pick a boutique instead is if you have offers from multiple banks, are reasonably confident the boutique will give you good work, and just like the people or work environment a lot more after thorough investigation." This is a very poor piece of advice which is, I'm guessing, heavily biased ...

And to clarify, when I say "boutique" I mean a true regional boutique, not the likes ofEvercore/Lazardetc.

I have friends who have gone to these places and on the whole they have not had good experiences, though some have.

I would be dishonest if I told people to pick a regional boutique because they thought it would give them better work experience, a higher salary, or better "exit opportunities."

As I said in the post, the bottom line is that it is very random, much more so than going to a larger place.

Sorry if I offended you, but I stand by my advice that it is generally a safer bet to go to abulge bracket, top boutique, or even middle-market vs. going to a regional boutique for most people.

PM me if you want to discuss further and I can explain a bit more behind my thinking here.

Thanks for the thoughts on thePEresumepiece. It's hard to generalize what specific tasks the recruiters like; generally they want to see lots of modeling experience and really strong analytical abilities. I'll see if I can add anymore detail, but again based on my own experiences and friends' experiences recruiting, I do think it's highly dependent on someone's own experiences.

Without trying to hijack the original purpose of this thread, I will say that I agree with Dosk from the perspective that a lot of people choose boutiques for the wrong reasons (that also happen to be theBSpeople tend to feed interviewers duringMMboutique interviews). Things like "smaller deal teams" or "more hands on experience" or "tighter knit culture" or "more client interaction." I mean, to be honest, I have friends at places likeWilliam Blair, Piper,HLHZ,BMO, Sagent,Cowen, etc. and their experience is no qualitatively better than what I got at aBB.

The biggest misconception about BB's (for some people, I mean) is that you become just a face in the crowd and nobody cares about you. Well, it's true, as an analyst you are a replacable commodity, but that holds true whether it be Goldman or Goldsmith Agio. In terms of smaller deal teams, the biggest deal team I was ever on was 6 people. I was never on a team with more than one analyst, and only once was I on a team with two associates (but for a $19 billion dollar sellside, understandable). Was I face in the crowd? Maybe, but D's and MD's from Sponsors, Lev Fin,ECM, and converts all knew my name. As a group associates and analysts routinely went out, sometimes with VP's. Directors took analysts out to lunch and on gambling excursions. Client interaction? As a second year, I traveled half of the East Coast leg of anIPOroadshow with management by myself.

Even if you got all this at a regional boutique (and not many I've spoken to have - instead my friends at Piper are stuck doing co-managed equity follow-ons), you wouldn't get the name recognition and the recruiting advantages of theBB. That's why I would always advise a kid with two offers to take theBB.

I'll never forget interviewing at a regional boutique, feeding my interviewer the usual about why this boutique over the other BB's. I think I mentioned something about how I wanted to be at a place where you weren't put into the grinder for two years and spit out, and that I wanted to actually get something out of my experience. The MD interviewing me replied "well, to be honest, we'll grind you up and spit you out in two years here, so what then?" All I could do was babble on about the other intangibles to working in smaller organization, but in my head I was thinking "he's right. Why would I ever choose this over a bulge?"

Well, I must say, myself and those working alongside me are having a drastically different experience than you have described. I do work at a very reputableMMfirm, but I don't think that matters consideringMMs和精品店总是在一起。我不会get into the details, but all of the "smaller shop" reasons have proved true in addition to things I would never have thought of. Maybe we're the exception to the rule, but my first deal is set to close by the end of the month, and I'm currently engaged on another live deal (not to mention I'm slated to take over an addition one when our 2nd years leave). Oh, and, one of our third years has closed nine deals so far (and we put one analyst per deal team). I promise you his experience has far exceeded anything he could have obtained at aBB.

Anyways, just some food for thought, not attempting to strike up an argument, especially on a topic discussed as heavily already as this one. I understand your points, I just don't think that is the correct message to be sending all of the starry-eyed college students out there.

I definitely see your point, and here's not to say a well knownMMor regional boutique can't be just as good as an experience or better than aBB. For a kid who hasn't summered at either bank he has offers from (1 beingBB, 1 beingMMor boutique) I compare theBBexperience to a pretty expensive chain restaurant - no matter where you go, you know the food will be pretty good and you'll have a good dining experience (and once in a while, the chef will hit the ball out of the park - for example, my friend in aBBsatellite office has closed 4 multi-billion dollar deals, including one of the largestLBO's of 2006). Alot of boutiques (especially regional ones) I compare to the random restaurant you walked by on 53rd - you have no idea how good it might be, it could be the next hidden gem, or it could be completely terrible. At aBB, you know the experience may not be the best, but you know it will be good, and you'll have good opportunities.

One of my bset friends is atHLHZin New York. He is having a great experience and he's always excited to go into work every morning. I'd argue thatHLHZis one of the bestMMbanks out there. If he wanted to go toKKRnext year, could he? A possibility. As a top ranked analyst fromHLHZ, is it possible that he'd get passed over in the recruiting process by a somewhat mediocre analyst from say,Morgan Stanley? Quite possible. But regardless, I don't think he cares because he has no interest inPEand I think he'd be just as happy being promoted to associate. So for him, great choice. For Joe CollegeSenior who has no idea, it's much more objective.

I'll also add (as a random afterthought) that while nine closed deals is truly impressive, and one disadvantage to doing large, "elephant" deals is their volatility, when it comes toPErecruiting oftentimes one good announced transaction is all you really need. And sometimes, one excellent transaction can provide you with better experience than doing multiple transactions of relatively the same nature (i.e. all sellside M&A). One of the guys in my group worked on what I like to call the group's "landmark" deal for the year (you know, the one's the senior guys always point totombstone在某方面在音高)。无需多言ail, it involved a sell-side opportunity that we passed on to pursue the buyside. The seller elected to go private (with financing provided by 2 major competitors), resulting in a massive break-up fee and a 60 day go-shop. We took our client (a strategic) in a semi-friendly unsolicited bid past the break-up fee (and taking the financing along the way). So in one transaction this guy was able to get experience with a proxy battle, a large strategic merger, syndicated term loan, and a bond offering. Arguably the best experience I've ever seen an analyst get out of one deal - and it landed him at a top-tierPE.

GameTheory, that was a great analogy with the restaurants. That has been my argument all along - going to a small boutique is completely random, whereas even a goodMMand definitelyBBfirms are much more of a "sure thing."

Also, you don't even really need any closed deals to get aPEjob. I've closed quite a few so far, but I've actually gotten better experience from some deals that have not closed or deals that have fallen apart!

That deal you wrote above sounds like a great experience. I don't have anything that impressive, but I would add that some of my smaller deals are actually better to speak to in interviews rather than larger deals just because I contributed more personally or the deal was out of the ordinary (distressed asset sales, for example), etc.

Definitely, personal involvement is a huge factor in your learning process and interviews (kind of a "Captain Obvious" statement on my part). This particular deal involved an M&A team (they dropped off after the merger closed), and aLevFinteam (associate and analyst, but analyst dropped off or left the bank, can't remember). On top of that, the analyst from my group (the industry group) was a top performer and took on alot of of the responsibility himself. It only cost him a few years off of his life and his (ex) girlfriend.

Me personally, I only had two announced deals when I interviewed, and only spoke to 1 of them - a fairly largeLBOthat probably would have been one of the biggest if it had been done in 2005, but nothing like 2006 and 2007.

I combine both methods

well then it doesn't fit on one page

I used #2 when I went through recruiting, but I've seen both. When I review banker resumes, I don't really read the bullets -- I know what the job entails.

A little more than half of my resume talks about my current banking experience, about 1/4 is my school / personal stuff, and the rest is left for myinternships. The page is full but I have bullets at the top and deals listed.

thanks for the replies, anyone else?

it depends. have you had a lot of transaction experience and closed deals? if so i would list each deal separately and list the specifics of each deal. interviews would flow better that way as the interviewer would likely ask you to speak in more detail on one/two of the deals. maybe im biased but if i see bullets that just list transactions, i'm not able to assume that you've taken on a lot of responsibility.

It depends. If you work on M&A deals, go with option 2; if you worked on mostly financing/underwriting deals, go with option 1.

i have closed a number of deals, mostly M&A, and although I see the reasoning on just listing all the deals, I think option #1 looks better, especially if you have good specific talking points.

5 classes and 50 hr/week job? 4.0 gpa?

Do you sleep?

.

..gpa is very important at the early stages as are SAT scores so yes you should put your gpa on your resume otherwise it may seem like you are covering something up

these factors become less important once you're 5 or so years out.

that said, sub-3.5 gpas can be easily overcome with a good brand name, relevant and solid deal experience, and a strong network. along with the proper sales pitch in interviews.

thanks. helpful.

The SAT is still relevant after college?!?

Can I put myGMATscore instead? They're about similar percentiles, I just think it'd be "too much" to have both on the resume, and theGMATis so much more recent.

Gmat on the resume only if above 700 right?

Yes definitely. You should also be borrowing a friend's template or, less ideally, a headhunter's.

butt_tighthole:

Hey monkeys first post longtime lurker. I'm having some difficulty formulating a concise description of my duties for apeinternship I'm currently completing. I've worked on one deal where i analyzed the pro-forma projections of this project and created a due diligence outlook of potential problems. another where i created a model for a potential acquisition and another where I've been researching an specific sector of an industry by doingcompsetc. I know i probably sound like a halfwit for asking for help with this but I'm really struggling with creating a short concrete description of what I'm doing.

What are you having trouble with?

You can try writing something like "Analyzed pro-forma projections of XXX in order to determine accuracy of financial statements"

Send it to me, I'll have a look when I have time.

use search function onwso, there are some good tips