If you’re a long-term reader of this site, you probably never thought that we’d return to the topic of private equity resumes.
After all, how much could resumes possibly change over time?
Yes, LinkedIn has become ubiquitous, but it’s not as if new technologies have “disrupted” the way you write a resume for finance jobs.
But the PE recruiting process itself has changed, and that has affected resumes and deal discussions.
Specifically, the on-cycle process now starts ridiculously early and seems to start earlier each year.
That means that you’ll often have to spin pitches and non-deals into sounding like deals and that you may need to use your internship experience in some cases.
And you may even run into some of these same issues in the off-cycle hiring process.
Here are the ground rules, templates, and examples:
I don’t want to bury the lede, so here are the templates:
And the video tutorial:
These are a bit different from previous templates shared on this site because I added more specific details for each entry.
You should replace everything in [] with language to describe your experience, but you can get ideas from the sample bullets here.
Let’s start with the basics for anyone with full-time work experience applying to private equity roles at the Associate level:
These points apply to everyone, so let’s go to the investment banking-specific tips next:
Your resume makes no difference to your participation in the recruiting process.
Yes, you will submit a resume, which will include your undergraduate university, grades, and other experiences, hobbies, and interests, but discussions with headhunters will determine your fate.
Therefore, writing your resume matters not because of the written document, but because it forces you to pick deals to discuss and plan your discussions.
“Deal experience” will always come up in private equity interviews – even if you started working a week ago and have 0 closed deals, 0 announced deals, and 0 “pending” deals.
Of course, it always looks better to write about closed or announced deals if you have them.
But the process starts so early that you are unlikely to have any substantial deals from your current job.
Therefore, you will need to spin quite heavily to come up with 2-3 deals.
It looks a bit odd to list only one deal, and if you list 4, 5, or 10 deals, it will be difficult to remember all the details – which makes 2-3 the sweet spot.
To find or create deals, go down this list:
If nothing in the list above works, then you’ll probably have to wait another year, gain deal experience, and recruit in next year’s cycle.
If you somehow have the opposite problem – too many deals – then prioritize by size and your involvement.
A $1 billion deal is more impressive than a $100 million one, and a deal where you made a specific impact – even in a small way, such as pointing out incorrect assumptions in a model – is better than one where you did not.
Once you’ve picked the 2-3 deals or quasi-deals you want to write about, take a step back before writing a word.
First, go and review the deliverables for each deal – presentations, models, emails, buyer/seller logs, and the results of any announced or closed deals (see: the investment banking deal sheet).
You should note the following points for each deal you list:
You will reference parts of #1, 2, and 3 on your resume, but you will not write anything about point #4 – save your opinions of deals for live discussions in interviews.
In terms of the mechanics of writing about each deal:
You can see everything above executed in our sample template below:
One final tip: be very careful about spinning your “results” or “contributions” too far.
If you write that your work resulted in a 10% lower or higher price, for example, interviewers could easily call you out and ask for an explanation.
It’s highly unusual for an Analyst to affect a deal that much, so you better have a great explanation for it.
If your explanation is less than convincing, then it’s much better to point to modest contributions, such as mistakes or problems you found in the company’s financials.
You can see that on the template above – this person is not claiming any crazy results for their work.
Instead, they’re just writing that it was used in certain ways or shown to key individuals in the deal.
Yes, you still need to include your university, grades/academic results, and test scores (SAT in the U.S., A-Levels in the U.K., or whatever your country uses).
You should keep the last two sections short and devote no more than 3 lines to Education – university name and location; major and graduation date; and grades and test scores.
The last section should also be short, but it’s still worthwhile to list proficiencies in human languages and programming languages and your interests – some interviewers like to discuss those, especially if you list something unusual.
If you’re attempting to win a PE Associate role from a smaller investment bank via the off-cycle recruiting process, everything above still applies.
The main difference is that you should, in theory, have more deal experience, so you can list “real deals” rather than pitches or aborted deals.
But the format and structure of your resume will be nearly the same.
If you’re trying to make another move, such as consulting to private equity or direct lending, mezzanine, or corporate development to private equity, your resume depends on whether or not you’ve worked on “real deals.”
In fields like direct lending, mezzanine, and corporate development, the answer is “yes,” so everything above still applies.
Many commercial real estate roles also fall in this category, as do Big 4 valuation / advisory roles.
Consulting is the tricky one here. You can get our template for it below:
Yes, you can break into PE from consulting, especially if you’re at MBB, but it’s still much tougher than doing so from investment banking.
The strategy here is “Focus on the specific client engagements or projects that are directly relevant to private equity or can be spun into having something to do with finance.”
If you have nothing like that, then the best approach is to take your operational projects and spin them to discuss the financial impact on the company and investors.
For example, if you revamped one company’s HR or recruitment strategy, how much money did that save the company? And how much did that improve their EBITDA margins, ROIC, ROE, and so on? Did the company’s stock price improve afterward?
Yes, you will have to be proactive, learn enough to calculate these metrics, and look up the required information.
If you’re not in one of the fields above – consulting or something related to large transactions – then you don’t have a good shot of getting into private equity.
For more on this one, take a look at our “how to get into private equity” guide.
If you’re applying to private equity internship or private equity analyst roles as an undergrad or recent grad, you should use our standard investment banking resume template.
You’re not going to have significant deal experience at this level, so pick the right internships or student clubs and then use the task-centric or project-centric structure.
As you gain more experience in the industry, you should reduce the amount of space devoted to your non-PE experience until it disappears eventually.
Once you’ve been in the industry for over 4-5 years, you’ll probably have to include a separate list of Transactions, which will make your entire resume 2 pages rather than 1.
That’s about it for now.
You have two examples of PE resumes, one for an IB or “deals” background, and one for a consulting background, as well as all the tips above and the video tutorial.
If you have any more questions, ask away below.
