Crafting a Standout Investment Banking Internship Resume

Securing an investment banking internship is a fiercely competitive endeavor. Acceptance rates for investment banking jobs at top finance firms tend to fall under 2%. A well-crafted resume is your first impression and a crucial tool to stand out from the numerous applicants. This article provides comprehensive tips to create a resume that effectively showcases your skills, experience, and readiness for the role.

Essential Resume Components

A strong investment banking resume should include the following key sections:

Education

This section should prominently feature your academic background.

School Name and Degree: Include your major(s), minor(s), and expected graduation date. A Bachelor’s (or in some cases, Master’s) degree in finance, economics, accounting, or a related field from a top-tier school is generally expected. For example, Goldman Sachs lists a Master’s degree requirement for their Bangalore analyst program.
GPA: If your GPA is 3.5 or higher, feature it prominently. Strong academic performance, typically a GPA of 3.2 to 3.5 or higher, is desirable. Candidates who exemplify intellectual rigor are often considered more desirable. If your GPA is below 3.5, omit it and focus on other strengths.
Awards and Scholarships: Detail any awards and scholarships you received at the university level, and most importantly, how competitive they were.

Experience

Recruiters seek hands-on experience that demonstrates your preparedness for the fast-paced world of investment banking. This is probably the most important part of your resume to get right, but the easiest to get wrong. The work experience section should include previous work positions you’ve held, as well as your main achievements in these roles. Instead of simply listing your responsibilities per role, you need to talk about actions.

Internships: Include past internships, even if they weren’t directly in finance, and focus on transferable skills. Relevant experience, such as prior internships or jobs in investment banking or similar finance roles, is a key requirement.
Quantify Achievements: Numbers catch the eye. Quantify results whenever possible, but don’t go overboard with numbers that could make it look like a math problem. Think like a deal team-clear, concise, and ROI-focused in every bullet. Each bullet should show action, skill, and results in one punchy line. In banking, results speak louder than responsibilities. So, if you’ve gotten great results in a past project, share your KPI metrics. Don’t be shy to show off as much of your work experience as possible, and be specific. Yes, even if all you did was prepare some slides for a deck, conduct diligence for a merger, crunch numbers on inbound deal flows, etc.
Action Verbs: Always start with strong action verbs: analyzed, modeled, executed, led, etc. Start with strong, industry-relevant action verbs. Use present tense verbs (e.g. "Lead, Coordinate, Execute") in your current position (except for completed achievements), and past tense verbs for past positions and completed achievements (e.g. Led, Coordinated, Executed).
Framing Deal Experience: When describing deal experience, especially as an intern, focus on your specific contributions. Instead of "advised so and so client," consider wording like "Supported the advisory team on a \$2B sell-side transaction from initial pitch to deal announcement" or "Conducted due diligence and financial analysis for two major restructuring deals."
Reverse Chronological Order: Your work experiences should be listed in reverse chronological order, so your most recent experience should be at the top. Ensure the job titles are clear so that the reader immediately knows what each experience was about. For example, ‘Intern’ is not a sufficient job title. Instead, consider job titles such as ‘Investment Banking Summer Analyst’ or ‘Business Development Intern’.
Bullet Point Structure: You should aim to have 3-4 bullet points for each relevant experience, and 2 bullet points for non-relevant experiences. Every bullet point should talk about a specific task or achievement you personally made. Avoid writing context-providing bullet points or speaking about your broader team’s achievements instead of your personal contributions. Since you’re talking about things you have achieved, almost all bullet points should be in past tense, even if you are still completing the experience. The only exception to this is if you have only just started the role and have no achievements yet. Every bullet point should start with an action verb. You should aim for most bullet points to be structured like “Did X by doing Y, delivering Z result”. In this structure, Y is an opportunity for you to showcase technical knowledge, and Z allows you to demonstrate that you can deliver great results. Use concise language and keep your bullet points to 2-lines maximum.

Technical Skills

Technical skills are essential for investment banking, and recruiters need to see that you can hit the ground running.

Excel: Proficiency in creating financial models and performing data analysis.
Financial Modeling: Highlight familiarity with DCF, LBO, or comparable analyses. Financial modeling is a core skill for investment banking analysts, whether you’re building DCFs, LBOs, or M&A models. Investment bankers are often challenged to develop automated trading algorithms, solve complex business and client problems, and manage risk. They are also responsible for reviewing and validating models to ensure accuracy.
PowerPoint: Ability to design and deliver professional pitch decks.
Other Relevant Skills: Proficiency in finance technologies is a must for investment banking roles. For example, a position may require you to use Excel or Google Sheets to build models, analyze financials, and prepare client materials. Proficiency in basic tools, like Google Suite and MS Office, is almost always a basic requirement across all banking roles.

Leadership and Extracurricular Activities

Investment banking values leadership and initiative. Your participation in student organizations can set you apart. This section should include any finance clubs, volunteering, student-led organisations or leadership positions you hold. Although you should still prioritise finance-related activities, this is also a great place to include non-financial experiences such as committee positions in university societies.

Skills & Interests Section

This section is used for miscellaneous information that has not appeared elsewhere in your resume but you want to include.

Languages: Only include this bullet point if you speak a second language. You should list all languages you speak and describe your proficiency e.g. “English (Native), French (Fluent), Portuguese (Working Proficiency)” Multilingual ability is a plus and often preferred for regional roles.
Skills: Do not make the common mistake of listing soft skills here like ‘teamwork’ or ‘communication’. This line is reserved for hard skills (usually IT) such as computer programming or specific relevant software e.g. “Python, C++, Bloomberg Terminal”. You can include Microsoft Office Suite, but we’d recommend to not include this line if Microsoft Office is your only technical skill
Courses/Certifications: This is a good bullet point to include if you have some notable courses or qualifications. List out the names of these courses but keep them brief as you don’t want this to use two lines. Professional certifications are frequently listed as advantages.
Volunteering: If you have some remarkable volunteering experience that will make you stand out but you don’t have space to include it somewhere else on your resume, you can briefly describe in this bullet point
Interests: This is a must-have bullet point and is the most underrated line on any CV. Here, you should list unique and non-academic interests. We recommend choosing interests that will make an interviewer curious - when you get to speak about your interests in an interview, you are given the opportunity to demonstrate how likeable you are as a person and differentiate yourself significantly. Avoid generic interests such as ‘Football’ or ‘Travelling’ and academic interests such as ‘Economic History’ or ‘Trading’. You should aim to have at least 1-2 interests designed to capture their attention e.g. ‘Hippos’ or ‘Omelettes’. This is the advice no one else will tell you, but we’ve seen several candidates receive offers on the back of conversations that started with these topics.
Personal Interests: A well-rounded resume includes a glimpse into who you are outside of work. Personal interests can serve as conversation starters in interviews. Examples: Marathon running, learning foreign languages, competitive chess, or cooking.

Resume Polish and Presentation

A polished, error-free resume is non-negotiable in investment banking.

Formatting: Use consistent fonts, bullet points, and headings. Choose a simple, professional-looking font: Size 10-12, black and white. Use bullet points: This makes it easier for recruiters to pick up relevant details at a glance. Double-check for 100% neat and consistent formatting: Keep the bullet points and margins aligned.
Length: Keep your resume to one page. If you’re a fresh graduate with no experience, keep it to one page only. Keep it clean, concise, and simple.
Proofreading: No grammatical mistakes. Don’t skip this step! Use a grammar-checking tool and then proofread until it’s perfect. This is harder than it sounds because multiple revisions after the initial proofread can easily create new, hard-to-spot errors. Receiving feedback is also important. Share it with a trusted friend or partner, and they’re more likely to see mistakes that you haven’t noticed. Send it with typos. This can signal a lack of attention and professionalism.
File Format: Submitting a .docx file instead of .pdf.

Networking and Referrals

Often, the resume is only one piece of the puzzle. Networking can make all the difference.

Informational Interviews: Reach out to alumni or professionals to learn more about their experiences and get advice.
Referrals: A referral from a current employee or former intern can significantly boost your chances.

Tailoring Your Resume

Every bank has slightly different priorities. Adjust your resume to reflect the specific role and firm. Before you start writing or editing your investment banking resume, start by doing some research. First, find a job specification for your target role and read it thoroughly. Identify the exact type of finance role you’re aiming for. Figure out what type of profile the job description is looking for. Identify which skills are most crucial for the role. Prepare to adapt your resume accordingly. Look into the keywords of the job description and, as much as possible, use them where they’re applicable. Suppose your previous jobs or internships are not directly related to investment banking. In that case, you can phrase your descriptions to highlight specific finance skills, such as leadership, problem-solving, a service mindset, client relationship management, and any technical expertise you may have, etc. Zoom in on a few of the responsibilities in the job description that you think are most important. Search for specific examples from your past that demonstrate your experience in doing the same thing, or something very similar. Take note of the language used in the job description. Research the company. For example, imagine you’re targeting an investment banking role at Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs has 4 core values, as well as 14 business principles. These values are the foundation of the firm’s culture and articulate what it stands for. Make sure that your resume communicates the same values (or, at the very least, doesn’t contradict them). Does all this mean you’ll need a different iteration of your resume for every investment banker job you target? Ideally, yes.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Here are some common mistakes that are often seen while reviewing resumes:

Over-reducing margins to make space for more content. This can cause the resume to look cramped and lead to issues when printing the CV.
Including “References available upon request” at the bottom. This statement is not necessary on a resume for investment banking internships and wastes spaces.
Inconsistently using dashes and hyphens in the experience dates
Inconsistently shortening months in the dates e.g. “Sep 2024 - October 2024”. We generally recommend shortening all months to 3 letters long for conciseness; you can choose not to but you should be consistent through the CV.
Font too small (aim for 11pts)
Including a blank second page. This often occurs by accident with Microsoft Word - reduce your bottom margin to prevent this.
Listing experiences from over 5 years ago - even if slightly relevant, an experience from when you were 14 years old will not be considered with much value.

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