Arguably, improving your CV is the most important thing you can do to ensure a higher application success rate. For a lot of people, the issue isn't necessarily their experiences, but the formatting of the CV itself. 75% of qualified job applications are rejected by online recruitment software due to this.
Your CV needs to show 2 things:
- That you've solved similar (enough) problems before → relevant experience
- That you quickly learn to solve new problems → strong track record
The following content advice is applicable to all roles and industries. However, some of the examples and details are related to banking and consulting, and particularly for earlier opportunities such as spring weeks, summer internships and graduate roles. Moreover, if you are applying to a more creative industry, such as marketing or design, then your CV should indicate your design skills rather than a standard layout.
Layout
Consistency and clarity are key. A lot of people try to reinvent the wheel with their CV layout. The design of your CV is NOT about standing out. It's about communicating as much information as possible as quickly as possible. The average recruiter spends 8 seconds per CV. If every CV had the same layout, it would be far easier for them to scan and find the information they needed. If they come across a CV that doesn't follow this standard pattern it's likely that they'll get frustrated trying to find key information and dismiss it.
Your ability to be professional and display attention to detail comes across in your CV. While it may seem ridiculous that a recruiter will immediately dismiss your CV if they see a typo, inconsistent fonts, or poor alignment, remember that a client would do the same with your pitch book. Your CV should be checked by multiple people, so there is no excuse.
Your CV should usually only be one page. Be selective: if you have enough to fit 2 pages, then you can ensure that the things you include are the most impressive. The only real exception to this is if you're writing an academic CV, for which you would include all previous research positions and publications. If you've had 10+ years of work experience, this may also call for 2 pages. Banks are pretty strict on 1 page; some consulting firms are happy with 2 pages, e.g. McKinsey, and there are more details on their requirements within this guide. Be concise but not incomplete.
- Use bullet points.
- Each bullet point shouldn't be longer than 1–2 sentences/lines.
- Use bold, italics, and underlining to make it easy to find information.
- Use one/two fonts across the CV. I would suggest Arial or Avenir.
- Put the position on the left, and dates on the right.
- Separate out your CV into sections including education, work experience and leadership/extracurriculars.
- Choose to either end bullet points with full stops, or not. Either way, be consistent.
- No pictures.
- Include your mobile number, email address (personal not academic so they can contact you in the future), address and LinkedIn (if it's been updated).
- Use a font size minimum 10.5.
- Ensure it's clear, well-spaced, and not too cramped. There's no point in putting tonnes of great stuff on your CV if they find it too difficult to read.
Generally, don't include a description or blurb at the top. It is unlikely to add any significant value or to not be generic. There are some exceptions such as if you're changing industry, or you have a lot of experience and want to tie them together, but don't include generic buzzwords and take some time to write this well.
Education
Put your university, degree choice, and predict yourself a first or a 2:1.
If you have done well, put your average score to date, and any awards that you've received. If you have received an award try and quantify this, i.e. what ranking does this award put you in? If you just say something like Recipient of Chemistry Prize, there is no context there: how many people is this given to? How big is the cohort? Moreover, if your university doesn't follow the standard percentage structure where 70% = a first (mine didn't), make it easier for a recruiter to understand your grades. If you write that your average to date is 17.4/20, then put (16.5=1st) next to this. If you did particularly well in a module, e.g. ranked first, then go ahead and put that down too.
However, if your grades haven't been great so far then it's really not a problem. Just have a single line predicting yourself a 1st or a 2:1 and move on. Students put far too much emphasis on their grades. It's really only a line or two on your CV for most roles.
Don't list a huge number of modules that you think could be relevant in some way. For investment banking maybe you would put down Corporate Finance, Asset Pricing, and Accounting and that would be it. If you've taken any Computer Science modules then it might be good to put that in too to show that you can cope technically. If you're applying for something more generic, such as consulting, I would recommend leaving this out and focusing on other parts of your CV. Also, if you're tight on space, I would also recommend getting rid of this line.
It is usually also worth putting your secondary school down, with any notable prizes, and extracurriculars as a single line. This is particularly relevant if you're doing a spring week or a summer internship given that school was relatively recent for you. Here you should note your major grades, e.g. A-Levels, Highers, IB score, GPA etc. Your grades from earlier on in your school career, e.g. GCSEs, National 5s etc., are less relevant but if they were particularly impressive there's no harm in putting them in. Some applications require you to manually fill in all of your grades in a separate part of the application.
If you've completed any online courses that are particularly relevant, put them under the education section on your CV.
Work experience
Choosing what to include
If you're applying for spring weeks, or even summer internships, you might not have much of this yet. In that case, you may want to include major society positions here, particularly for professional societies, e.g. if you're a consultant/team leader for a student consulting society or President of a committee. However, if you can, put any work experience you have here and put society positions in a separate section. Work experience can include customer service roles and tutoring jobs. It doesn't have to be directly relevant.
On the other hand, if you have a lot of work experience, name this section relevant work experience and list your most relevant positions in which you accomplished the most. If you have any experience at a name-brand firm, it would also be good to include that to signal to employers that you've previously passed a competitive screening process and worked at a trusted company.
Please do NOT put online virtual internships here that were not selective, e.g. Bright Network's internship experience, or Forage (formerly InsideSherpa) free work experience programmes. Some of the more selective recruiters are sick of seeing these on CVs and will immediately dismiss candidates that call these experiences work experience, given that they are unselective and equivalent to attending a few webinars. If you'd like, these can be mentioned in cover letters.
If you had an internship or experience cancelled due to COVID-19, most recruiters are happy for you to include this as a line on your CV since it is still impressive to have received that offer.
Generally, experiences listed should not be from more than 3–5 years ago at this stage.
Formatting
Generally, your work experience should be listed from most recent to earliest. In line with this, it should follow that you give the most details about your recent experiences, and the number of bullet points decreases as you go down this section. Thus, your most recent experiences might have 3–4 bullet points, and the last experience you list might just have 1 or 2. Some things, such as spring weeks, might not even require bullet points. You don't want to try and quantify your impact or overinflate accomplishments for what is essentially an extended networking event. Firms will see through this.
Content
Your bullet points should not read like a job description, i.e. they shouldn't just describe what the role entailed, or list some general skills that you may or may not have picked up. Instead, they should imply skills by showing what you accomplished on the role.
Use high impact words such as 'organising, achieving, delivering and liaising'.
Always quantify your impact where you can and give detail. By that, I mean use numbers.
Here's a general example:
Led X while at Y to achieve Z, resulting in an increase in Q of 25% and a savings of $10,000 for the organisation.
Here's a more specific example, courtesy of Lily Zhang from The Muse:
"Person 1: Duties included taking field measurements and maintaining records, setting up and tracking project using Microsoft Project, and developing computerized material take-off sheets.
Person 2: Initiated and managed tracking systems used for the Green District water decontamination project, saving $125,000 on the overall project through a 30% decrease of staff allocation time."
Clearly person 2's bullet point is far more compelling.
Each point doesn't just explain what they did; it goes one step further to say what was achieved through doing this, with numbers. It doesn't need to be a substantial impact, just enough to show that you understand the importance of quantifying outcomes.
It may seem unnatural to think about your positions like this, but the purpose is to indicate that you are a results-driven person and you create value. At this stage, it's unlikely that you know exactly what the numerical impact of everything you did was. It's fine to put down an estimate. They won't question it.
If you're really stuck and can't think of your impact for a point, it may be best to leave it out since it indicates that you probably didn't take away much from this.
This is really difficult and takes some time. This is why it's really important to give your CV the attention it needs and to show it to as many people with experience in the industry you're looking to go into as you can. You don't want to take bad advice.
When you're cutting down your CV, you want to try and ensure that each bullet point shows a new skill. There's no point in having 5 experiences, each with a bullet point that talks about how you built an Excel model or you interviewed 5 people. By having each point once, the recruiter knows that you have each of these skills. They don't need to be repeated.
Extracurriculars
The same advice applies here as for work experience. You should try to include societies that you held committee positions in rather than ones that you were just a member of. Again, quantify your impact.
Here's an example of the bullet points relating to extracurriculars. Change your bullet point under captain of the football/soccer team from:
- As captain I organised games and attended meetings throughout the year, building my leadership and teamwork skills
To:
- Attended league meetings and organised all games and practices in lieu of coaching staff
- Successfully recruited over 10 new players and developed an alumni support network via campaigns
- Reinvigorated the programme, raising thousands of dollars in financial support from alumni
Additional information
Languages
If the only language you know beyond English is at GCSE level/pretty basic, there's no point in including a languages section.
Computer skills
In a modern world, coding and modelling skills are in great demand, so definitely put these down if you're comfortable using them. Don't bother writing that you're proficient in the Microsoft Office Suite. Most people aren't proficient; they have basic knowledge compared to what is required for banking or consulting. Firms will know this. The exception is if you actually are proficient through previous experience, or you have taken a PowerPoint or Excel course. Then include that you have taken a course (potentially under 'Courses'/'Certifications'). This will also demonstrate your interest and commitment to the role (but don't take it for the sake of it).
Interests and hobbies
This is actually one of the most important parts of your CV. I've heard that some recruiters look at this first. In interviews, sometimes your interviewer will skip straight to the bottom and chat to you about one of the hobbies you've listed. This is because this should be the most honest and truthful part of your CV. You shouldn't tailor your hobbies to suit your preconceptions about the industry, e.g. don't write golf unless you're actually interested in golf. Your interests give them a real insight into what you're passionate about, and they should be able to see this when you start talking about this interest through your energy. Here they're looking for a person with a personality outside of work. They want to be able to find a candidate they can go for a pint with or survive a plane journey with. Make your interests specific, e.g. instead of 'art' write 'still life oil painting', or instead of 'dancing' write 'competitive ballroom dancer'.
Do NOT write 'References available on request' on your CV. They know that. You don't need to list the contact information for references either (unless they ask you to).
Tailoring your CV to the role
You've probably heard this one a few times. On a more general level, choose to showcase the experiences on your CV that are the most relevant to the role you're applying to, not just the most impressive. Your CV for Investment Banking vs Sales at Google vs a startup should not be the same. You need to ensure that you look into what makes a CV different for each of these roles with thorough research, and getting feedback from people in the industry.
Nonetheless, if you don't have very much experience, you can use the same experiences across all CVs and adjust the bullet points to suit the industry. Anything can be made to be relevant. Consider the skills from your experience that overlap with the industry.
However, usually, you can stick with one standard CV across one industry. If you want to further increase your chances at a role, look for keywords in the job description, e.g. 'financial modelling', 'accounts' etc., and try and put those words in your CV if you can (but don't force it). This is because a lot of the time CVs are sent through an automated system before a human, and the automated systems match your CV and experiences with the job description to see if you match what they're looking for.
Investment banks tend to prefer quite technical CVs that showcase a clear interest in things like maths, economics and finance (even if you aren't studying one of those subjects). On the other hand, Goldman Sachs likes to see that you're an eclectic person; this is why it's important to look into the specific firms' screening criteria (which you will be able to gauge through going to networking events). Consulting firms tend to be much more flexible with the relevance of your experience, and like to see all-rounders. If you're applying for a consulting graduate role, most firms don't mind if you've never had any consulting experience before.
Certain firms like McKinsey (who are particularly selective at the CV screening stage) are very clear about what they're looking for in a CV (not necessarily clear on their website but in webinars etc., which is why it's important to attend these information sessions). They say they look for examples of leadership, problem-solving and personal drive. They score your CV against this, and if they can't find clear examples of each, they'll dismiss it. BCG score against similar criteria.
The CV review checks your layout, bullet points and interests section line by line against what banks and consultancies screen for.