Like many companies, private equity firms are flooded with resumes, so it’s not surprising that the executives who sift through them usually take only 10 to 15 seconds to decide whether a candidate’s resume goes into the “explore further” pile or is tossed away.
Robin Ryan, one of America’s top career coaches, suggests that you can prevent your resume from being deep-sixed right away. She says spending time crafting a “summary of qualifications” section at the top can make the difference. In fact, in her survey of 600 hiring executives, the overwhelming majority said this one was of the first things they read. A well-crafted, compelling summary or profile instantly catches their attention, demonstrates your professionalism and encourages them to give the rest of your resume more careful attention. Yet surprisingly, Ryan reports that only about 5% of applicants bother to use a summary of qualifications on their resumes.
The summary usually contains 4 to 6 sentences that give a quick overview of your unique experience, accomplishments, any special talents or work habits and skills. True, it’s difficult to summarize your unique abilities in one paragraph. But that’s why it’s so effective when you get it right.
For a private equity job application, some of the key pieces of information that should be included in this section include the number of deals you’ve worked on, the type of deals (M&A, IPOs, Convertibles, etc.), and the key skills you gained working on these deals (such as modeling, valuation, and others).
Note: a summary of qualifications is NOT a statement of “objectives.” Many experts recommend against an objectives section, because it is usually too vague, due to lack of experience, or simple a waste of space and does not reveal anything unique about you.
And unique it must be. Unlike resumes for other jobs, a private equity resume must focus almost entirely on your investment banking experience. And unlike the typical investment banking resume, experts say you should put your education at the bottom, and start with your work experience first.
As with other financial resumes, you will summarize deal experience in bullet point form, being as concise as possible. When picking deals, it’s more important to describe ones in which you made a substantial contribution, or unusual deals where you gained unique experience. The prestigious mega-deals are important, but if you were only a small cog in a big team working on it, it may not be as impressive as a smaller deal where you made a significant contribution.
If you’re going after a private equity job, experts suggest that you emphasize your investment banking experience in M&A and debt financing, as that will be closer to the type of work you’ll be doing in private equity.
In your descriptions, write about what was unique about the deal, or whether your analysis influenced the pricing or the negotiations. Try to be as specific as possible. It’s okay to write about unannounced deals or deals that did not close; just don’t reveal any specific numbers or proprietary information.
You can see a sample private equity resume for “John Doe” here, though this one does not have the “summary” paragraph suggested above.
Next time we’ll look at a crafting a resume for venture capital jobs.
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