Example Finance Career In This Example Resume The Job Applicant Is Trying To Secure: Fill & Download for Free

Update 10/2015: For whatever reason, this answer has picked up a lot of traction. If you're a media outlet looking to post this in some way, please connect with me or Quora first, as it's marked "not for reproduction" to maintain some of its integrity. Responses to this answer over the last few years have been really fun, if not over-dramatic. My answer to this question was published last year on Mashable, and as a result I got all types of feedback -- both negative and positive. Time has passed and I've changed some of my perspectives here and there or further explained the logic with more examples and practical application. It felt like a good time to update my answer to this question so I did! Thanks, friends. Carry on.I think this varies from recruiter to recruiter and also depends on the role for which you're applying. For one, I don't look through stacks of resumes anymore. I hate paper. I do everything online.There has been for many decades, some mysterious "wizard of oz" type viewpoint of the recruiting world that I think is somewhat misappropriated. People seem to be truly fascinated by what goes on behind the curtain, when in reality, recruiters aren't running the covert operation many think we do. Our world is a lot simpler than you think. "Does this candidate seem like they stand a chance of being a good match for this role? If yes, proceed to next step. If no, reject." Each recruiter is different, so there's no one way to answer this question. But I'll highlight briefly (actually, not so briefly) how I personally absorb a resume. I should preface this by saying that currently I primarily recruit for senior-level software engineers. In my past life I recruited for PMs, MBAs, Finance, Sales, and pretty much all of it. Everything I'm about to say broadly applies to all of these fields. I also was a campus recruiter, and you read resumes of new grads a bit differently since experience is less meaty. So for non new grads, here's how it goes in my brain:Most recent role - I'm generally trying to figure out what this person's current status is, and why/if they might even be interested in a new role. Have they only been in their last position for 3 months? If so, probably not the best time for me to reach out, right? Unless they work for Zynga, or somewhere tragic like that (said with great respect for Farmville...the app that put Facebook apps on the map). If it's an incoming resume, I'm wondering why the candidate is looking now. Are they laid off? Did they get fired? Have they only been in their role for a few months and they're possibly hating it? But most importantly, is their most recent experience relevant to the position for which I'm hiring?Company recognition - Not even gonna lie. I am a company snob. Now don't get all Judgy Mcjudgerson about my judgy-ness. Hear me out. It's not even that I think certain companies are better than others (although some most certainly are). It's purely a matter of how quickly can I assign a frame of reference. This is also known as "credibility." Oh you worked at Amazon? Then you're probably accustomed to working on projects at scale. You're at a well known crash and burn start up? You have probably worn many hats and have been running at a sprinter's pace. There are some pretty blatant if/then associations I can make simply by recognizing a company name. Because recruiters have generally been doing this job for awhile, we notice patterns and trends among candidates from certain companies and we formulate assumptions as a result. There are edge cases and our assumptions can fail us, but again, this is a resume review -- we're talking a less than 20-second analysis. Assigning frame of reference is often more difficult to do when a candidate has only worked for obscure companies I've never heard of. When I can't assign company recognition, it just means I have to read the resume a little deeper, which usually isn't an issue, unless it's poorly formatted, poorly written, uninformative and wrought with spelling errors, in which case...you might have lost my interest. See? That's tragic. Keep it tight, folks.Overall experience - Is there a career progression? Does the person have increasing levels of responsibility? Do the titles make sense? (You're a VP of Marketing for a 5 person company? Heck, I would be too.) Do the responsibilities listed therein match what I'm looking for?Keyword search - Does the person have the specific experience for the role I'm hiring for? There have been times when I command + F the crap out of resumes. Especially the long ones that are hard to follow. This isn't fool proof, but if I'm looking for an iOS Engineer, for example, and the words "iOS" or "Objective-C" don't even make a cameo appearance in someone's resume, I have to furrow my brow, read a little deeper and figure out what the heck is going on. Throughout my career supporting hiring for different profiles, I've done this on many occasions searching for things like Ruby on Rails, Mule, Javascript, and seriously, anything you can think of. Now if you're thinking you should "key word" it up on your resume, think again. Keep it authentic. And don't you dare think of putting your resume on the Internet and imbedding 250 completely irrelevant to your skill set key words at the bottom in 5pt white text so no one can see. I'm on to you. But I do think you should be vigilant to ensure that the actual important key words contained in the meat of your experience are represented on your resume.Gaps - I don't mind gaps so long as there's a sufficient explanation. Oh you took 3 years off to raise your children? Fine by me, and might I add: #respect. You tried your hand at starting your own company and failed miserably? Very impressive! Gap sufficiently explained. Whatever it is, just say it. It's the absence of an explanation that sometimes makes me wonder. Still, I understand that sometimes people feel uncomfortable sharing certain things in a professional context. If you had a gap, surely you were busy doing something during that time, right? Get creatively honest and just name that period of your life in a way that shows you acknowledge that it might raise an eyebrow.Personal online footprint -- This is not required. But if you have an online footprint, and you've bothered to include it in your resume, I'm gonna click. This includes personal domains, Quora profiles, Twitter handles, GitHub contributions, Dribbble accounts, or anything a candidate has chosen to list. Two out of three times, I almost always click through to a candidate's website or twitter account. It's one of my favorite parts of recruiting. You never know what you're gonna get.General logistics -- Location, Eligibility to work in the US -- I try to make some raw guesses here, but this is not a place of weeding someone out, more just trying to figure out their story.Overall organization -- This includes spelling, grammar, ease of use, ability to clearly present ideas. If you're in marketing and you've lost me in the first three bullets, I have concerns.Total time it takes me to do all of above: < 25 seconds*Note: I will likely later read the resume far more in depth, but only if I already know I like the candidate. It takes me way less than a minute to fully digest a resume and flag that person for follow up. I read a resume pretty thoroughly once I know I will be speaking to that person on the phone or reaching out via email. But I will not thoroughly read a resume of someone who did not pass the above categories. Maybe that makes me a heartless corporate recruiter, but I'm just keeping it real, folks. Recruiters move quickly. I'm trying to remove the barrier for people who might struggle with getting their resume properly acknowledged.Things I rarely pay as much attention to:Education -- Believe it or not, this is more an after thought for me in a resume and certainly not the most relevant element by a long shot. There have been times in my career where I could go a month reviewing hundreds of resumes and not recall looking at that section even once. Peeps, our college career center counselors lied to us. However, I will say that as a university recruiter, I almost always looked at education first. But that's because experience is often lacking with new graduates. But if you are not a new graduate, experience is king, my friends. I can think of a few exceptions where perhaps a hiring manager wanted a certain pedigree (Wharton or HBS MBA, for example), but even that's being de-prioritized less and less I find. I will also add that this changes drastically by industry and company. I currently work in tech, but I've also worked in management consulting and education is huge in consulting. I'll also add that some tech companies care more about education than others -- for example, Facebook definitely more heavily favors engineering candidates who have demonstrated core CS fundamentals by obtaining a computer science degree. Some recruiters even narrow the field and look for candidates with computer science degrees from top 25 schools. Even still, Facebook employs many engineers who never finished college. Experience rules the school.Fancy Formatting -- There are exceptions here. I say this with the caveat that I LOVE a creatively formatted resume. LOVE. However, no amount of fancy formatting is going to make up for a lack of experience. So reign it in. Also, it's important to keep in mind that if you're applying to a position online, whether it's a PDF or not, many companies' applicant tracking systems parse your resume for information and convert it to pure text as the most immediate viewing format. Recruiters don't often see how awesome your resume is. The original file is usually there for us, but many recruiters aren't clicking through to that. If you're going to do something fun with your resume, I recommend keeping it PDF and also be sure it converts to text fairly cleanly so it doesn't come through our system looking wonky. Or just email it to an actual person.Uncomfortably personal details -- In Europe for example, I've noted that it's very common to list things like family status, citizenship, and sometimes even weight and height on CVs. Often it's common to even include a photo. The US is a bit different, and by different I mean very litigious. Many employers are trying to avoid any type of discrimination, so often seeing that stuff on a resume can make recruiters feel uncomfortable. We just want to know about things that pertain to your work history. So please take your photo off your resume. If we want to see what you look like, recruiters can just stalk you on LinkedIn.Cover letters -- There is a debate on this, but I'm sorry, I don't read cover letters. I want to see the resume. Most of my recruiting colleagues agree, but I know there are still recruiters that do love and value cover letters. I find that a lot of candidates don't even send them anymore (Hallelujah). Cover letters are sort of a throwback to a different era - an era where you actually sent your resume snail mail. If you're going to send one, that puppy better be darn good. I'm of the mind that most companies that request cover letters only do so to weed out the people who haven't bothered to read the directions. But if you're in marketing or sales, etc., I can see the cover letter as a strong component of someone's potential candidacy. But seriously...ugh with cover letters.Things I wish more people would do:Bring personality into the resume -- We recruiters are staring at these missives all day long. Throw a joke in there somewhere for goodness' sake. Very few of us are curing cancer. We should lighten up a bit. Know your industry, of course. An easter egg buried in a resume may not go over well if you're in a very buttoned up industry. I think it's important to keep the work experience details as professional as possible, but trust me, there are ways to have fun with it. I love an easter egg buried in a resume. And I absolutely LIVE for creatively written LinkedIn profiles. For example, this guy is boss. I have emailed his LinkedIn profile around to dozens of friends and co-workers over the years. It's that epic. So well done and tells a great story. Best read starting from the very bottom and working your way up to the top. But he knows his industry. Probably not a good play to talk about marijuana in your LinkedIn profile if you're gunning for Director of Communications for Bank of America.Include URLs for online footprints -- Nuff said. And within your comfortability of course. I get it. We've overshared our way to a more private society, but if you're looking to stand out, write some stuff on the Internet. Contribute to open source repositories. Demonstrate some level of domain expertise/interest outside of your 9-5.List key personal projects -- I ask this in almost every phone interview I do. "What kind of stuff are you working on in your free time?" I am always inspired by this. Also shows me that you have passion for your industry.Things I wish people would stop doing:Using MS Word's resume templates -- Period. Oh my gosh. Please, let's kill them all. Especially that one with the double horizontal lines above and beneath the candidate name.Writing resumes in first person -- Exceptions made for people who do it cleverly. If no one has ever told you you're clever, then you're probably not that clever. Don't do it. It reads oddly.Allowing their resume to be a ridiculous number of pages -- Unless you are a tenured college professor nobel laureate with multiple published works, you do not need an 8+ page resume. That is not impressive; that is obnoxious. Also, I do not care that you worked at Burger King in 1988. I mean, good for you, but no; not relevant.Mixing up first person and third person or present tense and past tense -- Pick a voice, pick a tense, and then stick with it. I suggest third person and past tense. If I were you, I'd eliminate pronouns (e.g. My, I, She, He) from your resume altogether. Instead of writing "I helped increase overall sales by 300% by breeding rabbits in my garage," Simply eliminate the "I" in that sentence. So, "Helped increase overall sales...blah blah blah." Go through your resume and remove all the pronouns and rewrite the sentence to make it sound like a bullet point. By "past tense" I mean that your resume should always be voiced from the perspective of something you already did -- not something you're currently doing. So even if you're in your current position, you should still list those accomplishments in the past tense.Listing an objective at the top of the resume -- Dude, seriously? This isn't 1992.Mailing, faxing, or hand-delivering paper resumes -- Immediate disqualification. Do not pass go. Go straight to jail. While I have your attention though, let's camp out on that last point for a moment: Hand-delivering paper resumes. Look, I get it. People are trying to stand out. It can be tough out there. And I completely respect the hustle. But in 2015, HR professionals are swamped, anxious, and jumpy. When a random stranger shows up unannounced asking to speak to someone in HR or recruiting, we're wondering if you have a gun and a vendetta, and we've probably alerted security. Seriously. It's really creepy. It's also not really how the corporate world works any more, and oftentimes it can place an undue burden on people to rearrange their schedule to make time to talk to you...which makes them grumpy...which doesn't exactly put you in a good spot as a potential candidate. So seriously, folks. Think long and hard before you decide to randomly show up at a company's headquarters with your resume. It might have a huge pay off, but it probably won't.Sending resumes addressed to the CEO that end up on some random recruiter's desk unopened - This is a gross generalization here and exceptions are made for smaller companies, but um, CEOs don't often read resumes -- not the first pass. Also see above re: paper resumes. P.S. We sometimes laugh at people who do this. (All of the above does not apply if you're Tristan Walker or exude ridiculous amounts of awesomeness)Exaggerating titles and responsibilities -- Eventually the truth comes out.There you have it. Thirty seconds in the brain of one lowly recruiter. I hope this helps make someone better or more effective in their job search. If you take issue with anything I've said here, you're well within your right. Recruiters are paid to be judgmental sharp shooters. We fail often and we miss out on really good candidates. This is one recruiter's opinion. I am nothing if not honest.Happy hunting.

Internship requirement and mandatory career planning workshop.There is this Finishing Touch Workshop for Year Ones and Year Twos. In year one we were tasked to evaluate our personality with some online tools and then explore career choices. In year two we are expected to write a reflection of a networking event, craft our resume, construct your LinkedIn profile, a cover letter to your desired company and go through a mock online interview.Throughout your study in SMU, there are also career coaches who are there to discuss your future and your job application with you.Not all the students from NUS and NTU had a hard thought about what they are going to do with their lives. For instance, the two unit section mates of mine from NUS still had absolutely no idea what to do after graduation.In SMU, you are required to think of the desired field to go into, then do actual work to explore that field which includes networking and writing up your resume and cover letter. Although it is common to hear fields like finance and data science as desired professions to work in, we also examine them to see if it really aligns with our values (e.g. you cannot have work-life balance in as a management consultant for example).In SMU, the internship is a requirement. You are required to work in an internship related to your field of study. Your illusion that you will automatically land your dream job ends when you actually start trying to apply for it. With such an internship requirement, many of us wake up to reality sooner. Then we start to fix our resume, secure an acceptable internship and prepare for full-time employment.Reality hits really hard when you are tasked to consider your value to your employer and to the economy. This really changes the way you look at education at school. It is not just about maximizing fun or grades.Btw, SUTD has a higher median salary. There is also a similar system at SUTD.

2021 answer (based on knowing many of them and integrating many of them into my network): It depends on which industry you want to crack into. Some industries (like finance and VC, are often hard to access unless you enter an Ivy League school, or at least a school in the northeast where many of these connections start off [eg Will Manidis went to Olin rather than an Ivy])You can get *so* many of the social benefits of an Ivy League school by just living next to the school and joining in on student organizations/sitting on classes/hanging out with undergrads at the schools. Many students at Ivies have less “tunnel vision” than students at state schools simply because they’re exposed to people from all over the world and have richer life experiences.I updated this after I finally ended up surfing Ivy League schools, living next to Harvard, and watching as many Harvard and Princeton students changed my internal psyche from within (in *really really* good ways). They often had the highest amount of insights on my psyche that people from elsewhere did not have, and smart undergrads are often the best people to “develop” with because they have insane amounts of fluid intelligence, are not super-attached, and are more likely to find you fascinating than older professors are. [the story of this, btw, will take pages and pages to really write up, but it needs to be written]. Many of the “best” (or “most compatible”) students at top universities, incidentally, end up disappointed with most of the other students at their own university (or only end up discovering the “good ones” in their last year, when it’s almost too late), but discovering the “good ones” is not always difficult when there are certain routes of finding them (it sometimes depends on luck, but they sometimes also gravitate towards certain organizations, and they are easier to find over social media than before).The level of resourcefulness students have with navigating their own school is also *much* higher for students at Ivies than students at most “state universities”.Being “good at the Internet” can make you more impressive than the vast majority of students at top schools, but if you want to *truly* make the most out of every minute of your life to make the most optimized and fulfilled life ever, you *own* the internet *and* spend your IRL surrounded by some of the smartest most neuroplastic people you can ever meet in your formative years (there are now a few other alternatives, such as Thiel Fellow, Interact Fellowship, and Mercatos Center networks, and you can get far more out of hanging out with Thiel Fellows than students at top universities, but there aren’t that many Thiel Fellows so it may be easier for many just to hang with students at top schools.)Old answers: It depends.There is a fairly well-known 1999 study (by Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger) [1] that basically shows that students who apply to Ivies but ultimately don't attend Ivies just do as well as students who ultimately attend Ivy League schools, income-wise. Most students who apply to Ivies usually have certain characteristics (along with academic qualifications) that tend to be quite beneficial to them no matter where they end up.Below is a summary of the study: (another summary at How much does where you go to college affect earnings? )Who Needs Harvard?But maybe the kids who got into Yale were simply more talented or hardworking than those who got into Tulane. To adjust for this, Krueger and Dale studied what happened to students who were accepted at an Ivy or a similar institution, but chose instead to attend a less sexy, "moderately selective" school. It turned out that such students had, on average, the same income twenty years later as graduates of the elite colleges. Krueger and Dale found that for students bright enough to win admission to a top school, later income "varied little, no matter which type of college they attended." In other words, the student, not the school, was responsible for the success.Keep in mind, though, that this original study tracked students who graduated in 1976, and tracked their incomes by 1995. So it may not necessarily be as applicable today (as top colleges have become even more competitive today, and the applicant pool is most likely stronger).There is one newer study (http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/51889/1/664668143.pdf ) that tracks students who were freshman in 1989 and which tracks their incomes through the mid-2000s, and which comes to fundamentally similar conclusions.As you can see from the link below, however, some students benefit more from attending top colleges than other students.Revisiting the Value of Elite CollegesIt’s important to note, though, that a few major groups did not fit the pattern: black students, Latino students, low-income students and students whose parents did not graduate from college. “For them, attending a more selective school increased earnings significantly,” Mr. Krueger has written. Why? Perhaps they benefit from professional connections they would not otherwise have. Perhaps they acquire habits or skills that middle-class and affluent students have already acquired in high school or at home.There should be a number of other important points to make (regarding whether or not going to an Ivy is worth it).(1) Harvard, Yale, and Princeton generally offer generous financial aid to most students. So going to those places generally shouldn't break a student financially. This could be different for other Ivy League schools, which don't necessarily have that level of financial aid.(2) A lot of it depends on what you ultimately want to do. Going to an Ivy League school definitely helps if you want to, say, become an investment banker. There are a number of other types of careers that hire very heavily from Ivy League schools, and where having an Ivy League degree can literally mean the difference between whether or not your resume gets read or not. Also, the Ivy League connections matter more for some fields than for others (and can be quite big if you go to, say, UPenn's Wharton).That said, 1st-year college students often change their idea of what they want to do in college (as horrible as it sometimes sounds).(3) Location. Much of it could also depend on resources available at the school that you can't necessarily get in your home state. Many Ivy League schools are in the Northeast, and if you're interested in fields like journalism or finance, it's much easier to get opportunities in the Northeast than it is to get in one's home state (of course, this also applies for universities like NYU and Boston University). And also since (somehow) the Northeast urban corridor doesn't have any particularly strong public universities at the level of Berkeley/Michigan/Washington.(4) Risk. If you're not the most conscientious person (and aren't prone to getting the highest grades - or if you want to spend significant time on extracurriculars), it may actually be safer to go to an Ivy League school than a state school. There is more grade inflation at Ivy League schools (see National Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities ) even when you control for student quality. Furthermore, people will at least be somewhat more likely to look at your resume/application if you came from an Ivy.Some schools (like the University of Washington) also don't seem to treat all their undergrads equally, in that admissions to some of their departments (like Computer Science) is competitive even once you're in. You don't see these types of hurdles at most Ivies (UPenn being a possible exception).(5) If you simply need more time to graduate, it may be easier to stay longer than 4 years to graduate at a state school than at an Ivy. Also, if for some reason you can't find a job/position post-graduation and have to live with your parents, it may be much easier to do this by attending the local state university (though this depends on the strength and opportunities of the local state university).This could be especially relevant if you have student debt left. If you couldn't secure a position post-graduation, the debt could be especially harsh on you (though most Ivy students eventually find some form of employment).(6) I think it would be especially informative if these studies tracked broke down post-graduation earnings by specific field. All of these studies are fairly old, and the job market could have changed since then (for example - computer science has definitely exploded in popularity since then). I'd be especially curious to see if Humanities students at Ivy League universities enjoyed an advantage in finding positions compared with Humanities students at state universities.Most Ivy League schools (other than Columbia and Cornell) also tend to be comparatively weak at engineering, which is one of the higher-paying fields. It's possible that in terms of average salaries, better engineering opportunities at some state universities could partially compensate for weaker opportunities in finance, journalism, and other fields.(7) It may be easier to make friends at Ivy League schools (especially for students who are smart enough to get into Ivy League schools to begin with). As Sean Carroll says in an article quoted below, the best part about Ivies is your fellow students. The students who you will be friends with are more likely to be the world-changers of the future (though many Ivy students I know don't seem to have those connections). And perhaps most importantly, they're more likely to be the people who will push/nudge you to be at your very best (both inside and outside the classroom). It takes a certain type of pressure to do that, and it's hard to find that at state schools.Many state universities are commuter schools, and it's generally much harder to closely bond with other students when you're not living with them all the time (though this probably doesn't apply as much for isolated schools like UIUC and Penn State). Furthermore, many in state universities remain in the same friend groups as the ones they had back with their high school friends (though not all of them), and it's often harder to make friends in the larger 1st-2nd year introductory courses offered in state universities. By the time class sizes get smaller in people's 3rd-4th years, most students are already somewhat more established and harder to become friends with.Many Ivy League students seem to bond particularly well with their peers and with their alma mater. But this does not happen with all Ivy League students - I know several who pretty much felt lonely and isolated in their own school. One advantage of state schools is that they have so many students compared with Ivies, which also means that there's often a wider diversity of student organizations and clubs at them.(8) As I've hinted several times before, much of it really depends on the opportunities that exist within your state (and your local university). If you lived in California, for example, then there's a much weaker argument for going into debt just to go to an Ivy because there are so many amazing opportunities at the UC schools. But if you live in a state that doesn't have especially strong public universities (which tends to be true for New England, for some reason), then you may benefit a lot from going to an Ivy, even if it meant taking out student loans.If you want to go to grad school, then it the relative strengths of state university vs Ivy also must be taken into account. If you come from California, for example, you can get amazing research opportunities within the University of California system - opportunities that may even beat those that you get at most Ivy schools. On the other hand, you may be interested in a specific field that your local university may be weak at. When it comes to graduate admissions in some programs, letters of recommendation and research are often the most important factor. In that case, the strength of a program (or the professor you work under) can be an extremely important factor, especially if things don't go perfectly for you and you're unable to get stellar grades in undergrad.Unsolicited Advice, Part Three: Choosing an Undergraduate School gives some amazing advice on choosing an undergrad school (from an astrophysicist's point of view). As Sean Carroll says, the best part of an elite private university is the other students.The best thing about an EPU is the other students. So much so, that at a place like Harvard it’s generally acknowledged that a large fraction of your education comes from extracurricular activities. You’ll meet people, in your field and out, who will be running the world a few years down the line. The professors will be great researchers who may or may not be interested in teaching; there will likely be some opportunities for research and individual contact, but not all that much.The college years are a very formative period of one's life, and they can really change someone. I believe that one of the most important things that students can do is to try to do things that can expand their imagination of what's possible. Some of the experiences that people have from fantastic college experiences are impossible to quantify in terms of dollars or debt - they're worth it despite all the debt. Some students are better at getting these experiences than others - they're not guaranteed at either an Ivy or a state school. But for many students, they might be somewhat more likely at an Ivy.[1] Page on Nber. Also see 2002 paper at http://faculty.smu.edu/millimet/classes/eco7321/papers/dale%20krueger.pdf