the must avoid mistakes in financial services resumes - laura hill and ivy exec

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The MUST AVOID Mistakes in Financial Services ResumesLaura Hill, Senior Resume Writer, Ivy Exec

2Want more info? Go to IvyExec.com/Resume or email us at [email protected]

About Laura

• Senior Resume Writer at Ivy Exec

• Specialty: Financial Services

• Ten years in banking with JPMorgan Chase

• Ten years as a career/outplacement coach

• MBA in finance from NYU – Stern; BBA in marketing from University of Texas – McCombs

• Certified Career Coach


Media

• Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, JobsInTheMoney.com, and Smart Money.

• She has been a featured career expert on CNBC, The Wall Street Journal Report With Maria Bartiromo, and MSNBC.


• What’s different? What’s the purpose of a resume?

• Most common mistakes in financial services resumes

• Resume Trends

• Aesthetics and Formatting

• Content

• Profile

• Job description

• Accomplishments

• Don’ts

• What to call it: “CV” vs. “Resume” (and bios)

• Q & A

Outline


• You’ve moved up: senior execs and retained recruiters are your audience now

• Executives (your competition) usually have better resumes

• The bar is higher: you must have accomplishments and metrics - describing your responsibilities doesn’t cut it

• Earlier and redundant experience should shrink

• Resume fashions have changed

Poll question: Do you work in a financial function?

You’ve moved up . . . has your resume?

What’s new in finance resumes


● It’s a brochure – a sales document

● Match you to a job and/or career path

● Get you in the door / get an interview

● Describe what you’ve actually done and the results; (you provide details on how in the interview)

● NOT: give your full job description or account for your time and whereabouts

Note: tone down the accomplishments for resumes used internally at your employer or for official business reasons

Purpose of a resume:


● Unclear positioning – reader doesn’t know what category you fall in

● Doesn’t convey what you actually DO

● Too much distracting design

● Too much stuff at the top before reader gets to your company and job

● Big company jargon (“cross-functional teams”)

● No metrics / accomplishments

Most common mistakes in financial services resumes:


Challenges in financial services resumes:

● Complexity and scale of the business

● Generic job titles (Associate, Managing Director)

● Too many deals to mention on your resume

What you can do:

● Tell the reader:

– Your function

– Your product or service

– Customer type/examples

● Add a functional title and/or description

● Addendum


● Forms an opinion in 4 - 10 seconds

● Has probably looked at many resumes and/or other documents before looking at yours

● Looks for key information in expected places

● Wants to know what you do immediately

● Probably doesn’t understand a lot about the job

When someone looks at your resume, he/she:


• In fashion now:

o Profile that positions you to a target audience

o Using key words for computer matching (narrative or list)

o Two pages around 10-15+ years; one page otherwise

o Small margins; not much white space

o LinkedIn URL

o Tell the reader what you do at the top of the resume

• Out of fashion:

o Objective statements

o Be everything to everybody

o Multiple fonts/sizes, graphics, colors, too much bold; Underlining

o More than two pages (exception: addendum)

o Blocks of text

o Lot of text before the job history

o “Functional” resumes


● Profile at the top

o Tell the reader what you do

o Advertise what you want the reader to know

o Communicate your value proposition / product features / brand

o Put key words that will match the job(s) you want

● Absence of a profile at the top is ok if you want to continue doing what you do now (or did most recently)

[Profile examples]

Content: Targeting Your Resume


● Short company description for less well known employers

● Very short job descriptions – two or three lines

o Un-bulleted

o Role, scope, budget, staff #

o Use “Lead” instead of “Direct” or “Responsible for”

● Try to make all your bullets accomplishments

[John Doe example]

Content: Company Names and Job Responsibilities


• Use strong/positive words:

o Revamped

o Championed

o Led/managed

o Developed and implemented

o Turned around

• Avoid:

o Helped

o Coordinated

o Assisted

o Direct/directed

o Proven track record


● A discrete project that you managed: scope, scale, on-time, under budget, overcame obstacles

● Improvements over time (e.g. – annual % increases/decreases)

● Has a result/benefit (make money or save money; give #s whenever you can)

● “Selected to”● “First-ever”● “In spite of…”● “Grew revenues x% OR from $x to $Y”● Replace:

o Did thus and such to improve something; with

o Did thus and such that improved something X%

[Risk Exec example]

Accomplishments: a definition


● Tell stories (“Recruited to turnaround…”)

● Include the title of the person to whom you report

● Bury the accomplishment in a block of text

● Repeat the same accomplishment in different places (even if stated differently)

● Use too much jargon (enough about “verticals”)

● Write “Global” all over the place (examples of work in named countries will convey it better)

● Give too much text/context (save it for the interview)

● Take your accomplishments out of the jobs in which they occurred

Don’t:


● Oversaw increase in rankings of research providers from 50th+ to top 20 across a broad array of clients:

– Actively participated in recruiting over 23 research analysts;

– Led the analysts’ brand franchise building activities: individually mentored 30 analysts in developing and implementing strategies for targeting clients and raising their profiles;

– Increased marketing outreach with over 50 conferences, field trips, and meetings annually.

For Great Big Accomplishments With Many Facets:


● Biographies

o Speaking engagements

o Not-for-profit/professional associations

o Not used for job search

● In the U.S., it’s always called a resume – even for CEOs

● In the U.S., a CV is used only in academia and is multi-page

● Outside the U.S., you can call it a CV if you like

[Bio example]

Proper Terminology


● Keep a career file at your fingertips

o Record key metrics when you start an assignment

o Collect important facts/metrics

o Write a summary of accomplishments for your boss in advance of your performance review

● Update your resume annually with new accomplishments and results

Important Advice:


Laura Hillis an expert in designing career strategies and job search campaigns. Her industry experience includes 10 years as a career/outplacement coach and recruiter, as well as 10 years in banking with JPM Chase. She has been published in The New York Times, The WSJ, and Forbes, and has been a featured expert on CNBC's The Wall Street Journal Report.

Staci Collinshas over 15 years of partnering with executives, directors and senior managers to achieve their career objectives. She has deep industry experience, having worked at Accenture and Ernst & Young in change management, human resources, and strategic planning. She received her MBA from the University of California - Haas and BA at Harvard.

Kim Mohiuddin a TORI (Toast of the Resume Industry) Award nominee in the international category, Kim has been featured in Yahoo News, NBC Chicago and Time Out NY. She is the former certification chair of the National Resume Writers’ Association and certified job search strategist.

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