Many a time, I receive resumes of 11 pages long. These resumes usually begin with career goal, career objective, executive summary, career profile and so on. Not until I flip over to the 4th page, I wouldn’t know what does this candidate do and with which company. Usually I am tied by then and will continue to read another resume.
Contrarily, when I approach senior and highly respected investment bankers in my daily work, some of them can’t even produce a one-page resume. Some can produce a few lines summarizing their experience and I have to write up the whole resume for them.
May I remind all my blog readers, resumes do not need to be long - the value of its content is far more important than its length.
Few people realize that banking managers spend on average 30 seconds to read a resume. Why giving up the most valuable position and space on your resume writing career goals, objectives, summaries, which no banking manager would care to read? Why not make use of the golden 30 seconds to present your most outstanding academic credentials or experiences that would add value to the position that you are applying for?
‘Tell what you want to tell’ – is usually the cause of long resumes. Some people even tell how many dogs they have at home, how many times they have married, how many countries they have traveled. Some others describe exactly in detail how good they are at all the seven languages they know (read, write, oral / basic, intermediate, conversational, fluent, native…).
May I ask you to stick to this strategy – ‘tell what readers want to know’. This will effectively make your resume shorter and more focused. And of course, optimize the golden 30 seconds in presenting the best of you.
Test of your knowledge on my blog
What is my recommended length of an investment banking resume?
A. One page
B. One and a half page
C. Two pages
Resume Writing
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