Case Study: How We Write Corporate CVs That Have a 100% Success Rate. (Yes, really.) Part 1.
This article is written by Hassan Akram, the Managing Director of City Careers Coach. He is an ex-investment banking recruiter, corporate law, private equity and venture capital recruiter. He has interviewed 1,000+ professionals from tier-1 firms. This includes elite bulge bracket investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs; top corporate law firms, such as Kirkland & Ellis; and prestigious private equity firms such as KKR. Want to secure a top corporate career with our world-leading career development programmes? Please book here:
This article is for international students applying for elite, front office careers. These include investment banking, corporate law, private equity, venture capital, and strategy consulting (MBB).
Introduction
What makes a CV successful for elite firms? In short, a lot. We’ve read through thousands in our time from elite corporate careers. But the key difference between a failing and exceptional CV is content and language. This is something that we have seen university students from an international background particularly struggle with.
Content is undoubtedly king. Producing a CV that is analytical, impact-driven, and focussed is what you should aim for. These themes are present in CVs that are successful in recruitment processes at the most elite and prestigious of firms. Such firms include the likes of McKinsey, J.P. Morgan, and Slaughter and May.
‘These themes are present in CVs that are successful in recruitment processes at the most elite and prestigious of firms. Such firms include the likes of McKinsey, J.P. Morgan, and Slaughter and May.’
How do we know this? We’ve seen these CVs directly as recruiters for these elite industries.
LANGUAGE and content are one of the most important aspects
When writing, it’s vital to ensure that a CV’s lexical and sentence structure is strong. Demonstrating these structures allows the reviewer to see a clear, well-formulated, and articulate thought process from you, the writer. These strong grammatical and linguistic structures create impactful and persuasive writing. Such writing will ultimately persuade us as hiring managers and recruiters.
Likewise, it’s key to effectively headline a point and subsequently its impact. This enables us as reviewers to clearly see the most salient points of an individual’s profile — we spend at most 4/5 seconds per CV at the very most. You need to make sure your points are clear and direct. These direct signposts help us a lot. Employing these features will enable you to create exceptional recruitment documents. Recruitment documents that are academic, detailed, and clear.
‘Employing these features will enable you to create exceptional recruitment documents. Recruitment documents that are academic, detailed, and clear.’
At City Careers Coach we have a 100% CV success rate for front office roles in elite finance careers. This includes in investment banks, venture capital firms, private equity funds, and corporate law firms. This is through the personalised and 1–1 support we give our clients in creating these documents.
In this article, we’ll critically analyse a client’s CV we worked on. We’ll give a before and after, and show the key points on what makes an exceptional CV.
So, let’s see this in action
CV — Before Working with City Careers Coach
N.B. We recommend not using any of the text in the CVs below. Some elite corporate recruiters may use anti-plagiarism softwares. If caught, this may lead to your applications being blacklisted due to dishonesty/unfair practices/lack of integrity.
We worked with a very bright client from an international background at a top U.K. university. He wanted to develop a strong CV for his investment banking applications.
However, he wasn’t able to develop this. He was unsure about the strength of his experiences, how to develop these, and what was relevant.
The written quality also needed further depth and analysis.
Before Our Consultancy
His initial CV had promise but was just not strong enough. It was brief and vastly lacking in financial services-related experience. This could — to a particularly cynical recruiter — suggest a lack of passion for a career in investment banking.
There was also a lot of white space…
His CV would fail most recruitment processes.
However, we worked with him on a 1–1 basis over multiple sessions with our world-leading CCC CV programme and got strong results. This is his CV after our programme.
This is His CV After Our Programme
As you can see, this is significantly developed, analytical and impact-driven.
With this client, we firstly had an initial conversation about how best to frame his CV to ensure it was explicitly and clearly driven towards an elite career in finance. Furthermore, many experiences that he initially left out as he felt were not very strong, were actually very good and relevant.
‘Furthermore, many experiences that he initially left out as he felt were not very strong, were actually very good and relevant.’
They showed his quantitative and analytic skills. These were vital as a career in finance often relies on a strong grasp of excel and other softwares.
Small tweaks such as this — and the re-definition of his experiences — strengthened the assertion that he was interested in an elite finance career. This is something which could help you as a reader.
The client also omitted some experiences that he felt were not strong enough to include. We challenged this.
We work on an extremely consultative and results-driven basis — (ultimately, clients pay our premium fees due to our track record and verifiable statistics. We are a statistics focussed business. Our reputation as a world-leading career development firm is vital to us!) Some experiences that you have may actually be extremely relevant to a career in finance.
In terms of his educational history, this individual had a strong academic record. By working together, we helped quantify this in strong detail. We suggest that you do this too.
Likewise, if we look at this work experience, he now has multiple finance-based work experiences including many that he previously excluded as he thought they were irrelevant! If we dig deeper into these experiences, his actual work tasks and responsibilities are also very specific and detailed. In each experience, he has made a tangible and specific contribution which has added value. We were able to pick these out by speaking to this client and asking effective open questions through our years of experience as elite corporate recruiters.
Furthermore, if we look at his achievements & leadership section, it’s clear that he has excelled here too. We again highlighted the importance of this being impact driven. For example, he founded his own company and is a published writer with various articles listed on leading blog websites. This is impressive! It undoubtedly differentiates his profile. It also demonstrates his proactivity and quality as an all-around candidate: someone that excels in everything he does, at university, at work, and even in his spare time.
We gave line-by-line feedback to this client on his CV providing feedback on each word, sentence, and grammatical structure. We focus on providing world-leading career development programmes, and this is the exceptional level of detail we provide to each and every one of our clients.
‘We gave line-by-line feedback to this client on his CV providing feedback on each word, sentence, and grammatical structure.’
After working with the client, we feel this client has an exceptionally strong CV which will lead to success. This is a result of the direct work we did with them.
In our sessions, you work directly with an ex-finance recruiter on a 1–1 bespoke basis to create exceptional recruitment documents.
You will work on an exclusively 1–1 personalised basis with an expert recruiting professional. We provide line-by-line detailed analytical feedback, focussing on linguistic, grammatical and formatting structures among many others. Also in terms of lexical choices, we focus on high-impact, emphatic, and clear language. We use a hybrid of McKinsey and proprietary City Careers Coach principles. These ensure maximum impact in written communications to persuade people like us — recruiters — and be successful
You will work directly with an expert recruiting professional who has read 10,000+ CVs as either an ex-investment banking, private equity, corporate law, or venture capital recruiter. They have seen screened successful CVs from elite strategy consulting firms, such as McKinsey. They have seen CVs from top investment banks such as Goldman Sachs. They have seen CVs from elite corporate firms such as Slaughter and May. Our expert will know exactly the benchmark you need to achieve to excel
We have developed a proprietary CV framework mechanism that has a 100% record of success for all clients. This has been developed over 2 years. It has been contributed to by 20+ recruiters with 50+ years of corporate recruiting experience in investment banking and other elite careers. Quite simply, our expert will know what you need to be successful
Our insights and strategic advisory stem from reviewing 10,000+ CVs from venture capital, private equity, corporate law, and investment banking backgrounds.
We look forward to helping you secure the elite, high-paying, and prestigious corporate career you deserve.
City Careers Coach is an international network of freelance finance recruiters. We are from investment banking, corporate law and private equity backgrounds. We provide premium, bespoke and personalised 1–1 career development programmes. These are for university students looking to enter elite corporate high-paying careers. We have an exceptionally strong track record. 100% of our clients pass CV stage. 90% of our clients secure at least one internship or graduate role. And our average client starting salary is £150,000.