I’m writing this post for a few reasons. It’s COVID season and a lot of people are out of jobs. These people, many of whom are professionals, are looking for new jobs after some very long careers at their previous companies.
Many young people are also graduating and entering the professional job market for the first time. I’m writing this because it would have helped me to read this when I was first starting out. I have parts marked with GradTip specifically for graduates.
Why am I qualified to write this
I’ve been working in the Financial Tech industry for what is nearing 14 years now. I’ve worked for Six different firms ranging from Investment Banks, to Funds and Software houses. I’ve held multiple positions in each of these companies and lasted multiple years in each. I’m writing this because I got each of those jobs through the recruitment process, meaning I wrote a CV and interviewed for the job. I’ve applied for many jobs, I would estimate in the hundreds, and interviewed at many companies. I’ve also hired/helped in hiring 7 people and have interviewed upwards of 50 candidates. With this I systematised my application process and put a lot of thought into each stage. My final record was 6 weeks end to end. 6 weeks from first clicking on the job advert and uploading my CV to walking through the door at my new company.
Job applications are methodical procedures, it’s more like baking a cake than writing a short story. This only clicked to me once I saw the process from the other side. I then understood how to whole chain works. In this post I’m going to explain the initial step of this chain. The CV.
What is a CV for?
THIS IS IMPORTANT: A CV needs to accomplish Two things:
- A CV gets Recruiters interested in you.
- A CV gets the hiring manager to invite you to an interview.
That’s all you need it for. Your CV is useless once you have the interview appointment. Sure the interviewers will have it in front of them when they talk to you, but think of it as a prop than a tool. It’s similar to news anchors who hold papers when they’re reading from the teleprompter. The only time your interviewer will refer back to your CV is if you have done so badly at the interview that they look back at your CV and think why in the name of God did they ever invite you in. Other than that everyone stops looking at it once you get to the interview.
My method in applying for jobs
To give some context to the rest of this article, I have to explain my method when I apply for jobs. I believe in the Cast your net as wide as you can method. This means that when I’m looking for a new job I apply for as many jobs as I see relevant. I go to my favourite job sites (like efinancialcareers, and recently linkedin) and I apply for any job that I find interesting. Interesting to me is anything that I believe I can do and I can be bothered to show up to do.
Recruiters work on the basis of keywords. Think of it like google search. They’ve been given a mission by the hiring manager to get them a person with X, Y and Z qualities. Guess what they’ll search for. Keywords are very important, this method depends on it.
If you decide to take this method as the basis for your job application you can follow the rest of this post as a recipe to writing your CV.
Writing your CV
These are the rules that I follow. I sometimes break the rules knowing exactly which rule I’m breaking and why. Until you get to this understanding please follow every rule.
Cover letter
Cover letters are a waste of your time. Recruiters who ask for cover letters should be avoided. In our blitz approach when we’re applying for 20 jobs a day we don’t have time to write cover letters.
Sections of your CV
Your CV should be broken up into the following sections:
1. Your name and contact details.
Put this at the top.
2. Your Education.
This will be in chronological order from most recent. put it in the following format:
2004-05 MSc. Financial Mathematics - City Business SchoolIf you have more than 5 years work experience you can leave each line as the above, there is no need to go into further detail. Simple reason is that hiring managers care more about your work experience at this point in your career so we need the space for that.
GradTip You need meat to fill up your CV, this is the perfect place to put it. under your education certificate heading I want you to add four lines:
- Explain in one sentence what the course is.
- Give a small list of the most important subjects you studied. List at least 5.
- Give a small list of important skills that your were taught. These could be things like programming skills or negotiation skills.
- One liner which says
Dissertation: The title of your dissertation.
Don’t forget to include your professional certificates, If you did the exam make sure you list it, it really doesn’t matter if you’re still paying the fees for it.
3. Skills
If you’re in any technical field this is your place to shine. Write down all your skills, and try to group them. These two examples should make it clear:
Skills:
Programming: Python, Cython.
Front-End: Js, React, Angular.
Databases: MS SQL, PgSQL, Oracle.
Project Management: Agile, Kanban.Another example
Skills:
Accounting: Monthly Budgets, Project Costing.
Software: Quickbooks, Sage.
Reporting: Power BI.Write these is a comma separated list. Don’t put and before the last one. and implies that the list is finished, omitting it gives the illusion that the list goes on.
GradTip In this section put all the skills you learned at university. You have skills, you learned stuff, if you can’t think of anything write down the subjects you studies and make them look like skills. The following is from my old CV. You might laugh but it serves the very important purpose of adding Keywords.
Skills:
Financial modelling: Options, Futures, Forwards.4. Your employment history
This is the most important section and is usually where people let themselves down. I will go through what you should put here and also answer some questions that I’ve faced in the past.
In this section you will list your employment history in chronological order starting with the most recent in the following format
Aug 2011 - Aug 2013: Application Developer - Commodities Market Risk Tech - JP Morgan
Technical Skills: Python, Athena
*. Working as part of the Athena initiative to migrate all market risk reporting from legacy commodities trading systems to the Athena platform. This spanned reports across all the commodity classes.
*. Cleaning up and stabilising the market risk reports for VaR, Stress and Greeks allowing our users to get their reports in a reliable fashion with accurate data.
*. Building market risk reports and extensions to the VaR and Stress reports as spec’d by the market risk managers.
*. Documentation of the current code to allow the risk managers to better understand their reports.- Start with the date. The date is in the format of Month-Year. If this is your current job put the word Current instead of the end date.
2. Add your technical skills. These are the skills you used on the job. You should be repeating part of your skills that you have in the skills section.
3. You need to write the rest in bullet points. 1–2 sentences each line explaining:
- What was your job. What did you do? What were they paying you for.
- 2–3 bullets on What you did day to day.
- Last one and most important. One bullet point on how you made the place better? What did you contribute? What did you do above and beyond what was asked of you. This is the sentence that will get you your next job. Hiring managers want to hire professionals, this is the sentence that proves you’re a professional.
GradTip If you don’t have a lot of work experience, put what you have. Hiring managers know when they hire grads that you’re not going to be the complete piece of art. They’re expecting this section to be thin. Put all you work experience here even if you spent 1 month flipping burgers. It’s a job, you did it and you’re proud of it.
Q: What if I’ve spent a long amount of time in one company?
If you’re faced with this problem, where you have one or two companies that you worked for in the past 15 years I want you to think of all the projects that you did and put each one as a job experience. Exactly in the format I showed above. Don’t bunch multiple jobs under one company heading. Fan it out.
That’s it for the CV, but it’s by no means the end of the process. Now you have a Keyword based CV that will help you apply for jobs that suit your skill set. After this you should hit the job sites and apply for as many jobs as you can. Make it a mission that for the next week you will apply for 20 jobs a day.
In a future post I will go through the next stages and how you should deal with them in the same methodical way. I want to dedicate the rest of this post to answering questions.
Q: Should I write a cover letter?
Cover letters are a waste of time because they require a lot of energy to word them in a way that’s unique to every job. That’s why I stay away from jobs that ask for cover letters. If you want to apply for one make sure you really like the job so that it’s worth your time.
Q: How long should my CV be?
1–2 sides for graduates
2 sides for professionals. Don’t go over 1 page. Your CV will be printed and it’s better if it’s just one sheet of paper. If you see that you don’t have space remove the bullet explanations from the following sections in the order prescribed until you get to 2 pages
- Remove the bullets under your education starting from the oldest. This means you only leave the heading.
- Remove the bullets under your employment starting from the oldest.
Stop as soon as you hit your required pages.
Q: What about my hobbies?
No one cares. It’s fun to chat about them in an interview, but you’ll rarely be hired for them. If you’re a grad and finding it difficult to fill your CV they can be useful.
Q: Should I send it as a word document or Pdf?
Recruiters template your CV before forwarding it to the hiring manager. This is a process where they copy the contents of your CV (excluding your contact details) and paste it into a word document that has their company heading on it and their contact details. To make this process easy for the recruiters you should post your CV as a word document.
Q: What if I’m not getting any replies to my applications?
Short answer: your keywords are wrong.
Long answer: Go back to the jobs you applied for, look through the keyword. Do you have these keywords on your CV? Why Not? Do you have these skills? if so add them, if not then are you applying to jobs that suit your skills.
You should be applying for jobs that are interesting, that means jobs that suit your skill set. When you look back at the jobs you applied for you should see your skills listed in the job advert.
By skills and keywords I don’t mean stuff like Team Player, and Quick Learner. I mean the important stuff that you wrote in the skills section.
Second thing to check is that you’re applying for positions that match your seniority. In this case there is a range that you should look for e.g. If you’re a grad you should be looking at Graduate jobs up to jobs that require 2 years of experience. If your’ve got upwards of 10 years experience don’t apply for entry level jobs.
Matching Skills and Seniority should attract interest in your profile.
Q: Should I place my Education at the beginning or the end?
I think the answer to this comes down to your answer to the question: Do you want the hiring manager to read it?
If your qualifications are important to you then place it at the top. I like to show off my education history for two reasons:
- I work in Tech in Finance, my education is where I show that I understand Finance and that I’m not just another programmer.
- I went through a lot of difficulty to achieve my qualifications and I wear them with a sense of pride.
If you don’t feel the same and want your employer to pay no attention to your qualifications then place them at the end. Hiring managers and interviewers rarely read that far into your CV.
If you have more questions please post them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them here.
