My Goldman Sachs Resume for Investment Banking - YouTube

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