The banking resume, section by section

Before anyone at a bank speaks to you, somebody reads your resume. Usually that is an analyst or an associate doing it between other work, going through dozens of resumes in a sitting, and giving each one well under a minute. They are not reading to learn about you. They are scanning for a small set of signals and moving on.

The page has a second job, and it lasts longer. Every line on it is a question you are inviting. In the interview, the resume is the script for walk me through your resume and the source of every "tell me more about this" that follows. A line you cannot talk about for two minutes is a line that will hurt you in the room.

Everything here comes from real resume reviews, freshmen through recent graduates, and it is the same advice the SuperdayReps Resume Review gives. The rules that apply to every line come first, then each section in the order it sits on the page.

At the bottom of the article there is a prompt you can paste into ChatGPT or Claude to run the same review on your own resume, as a conversation.

The rules for every line

One page, the standard template

Use the standard banking layout and do not get creative with it. Screeners read hundreds of these, and the familiar layout is what lets them find your GPA, your best experience and your skills in seconds. A distinctive design makes them hunt.

For an undergraduate the order is fixed:

Experienced hires flip the middle: Work Experience goes above Education once the work is the stronger argument.

No objective statement, ever. The screener knows what you are applying for. That space is worth more as one more line of evidence.

One line per bullet, and fill the line

It is one of the easiest things to get wrong, and one of the easiest to see at a glance.

Every bullet sits on one printed line. A bullet that spills two or three words onto a second line looks careless and wastes a whole row. A bullet that stops at the halfway mark looks thin. Aim to fill each line, roughly 90 to 95 percent of the way across.

When a bullet is too long, shorten it, or split it into two bullets if it really holds two things that can each fill a line. When it is too short, add a true detail that makes it stronger: how big the work was (a $2B portfolio, 40 companies screened), the tool or model you used (Excel, a DCF), what came of it (cut the monthly close by two days), or who it went to (presented to the CFO). If the only thing left to add is filler, fold the short bullet into a related one in the same entry instead of leaving a stub.

Give each entry two to five bullets, with the most relevant finance experience getting the most. End every bullet the same way: no period is the usual style.

Lead with a verb, then the task, then the result

Every bullet opens with a strong, active verb, and the verbs vary down the page. Then it says what you did, then what came of it.

Some words never belong on the page at all:

• "Responsible for." That describes the job, not what you did in it.
• "Assisted with" and "helped." They tell the reader somebody else did the real work.
• Pronouns. No "I", no "my".
• Job-description language. If the line could have been pasted from the posting, it says nothing about you.

Quantify with judgment, not everywhere

Numbers make a bullet credible, so use the ones that convey scale or relevance: a percentage improvement, a count of models or reports or people, the size of what you worked on.

But not every number helps. A number can understate an achievement to the person reading it. "Generated $60K in sales" is a real result at a small company, and to a reader at a bulge bracket it can look small. In cases like that a qualitative signal lands better: outperformed peers, received a return offer, entrusted with the key deliverable. Sometimes the honest sentence has no number in it, and that is fine.

Write it through a banker's eyes

Whatever the job was, the reader is asking the same questions. Can this person work with rigor? Are they accurate? Can they take on a large project in a short time? Are they comfortable in Excel? Have they put work in front of someone senior? Have they ever performed a DCF, LBO and/or Comparable Company Analysis on the job?

The same summer job reads differently once the forecasting and the reconciliation are the subject instead of the customer service. You are not inventing anything. You are choosing which true parts of the job to put first.

Never claim more than you did

This is the rule that protects you in the interview, where every line gets tested.

"We decided" stays a team decision. "Helped with" is not "led". A deal under review is not a deal signed. A model you worked in is not a model you built: say "built" only if you started from a blank sheet. Never list something you have not finished, and never put a number on the page that you cannot explain.

The small things that get noticed

• Two rows per entry. The organization and its location on the first row, the title and the dates on the second. Never put both on one row joined by a dash.
• No parentheses on an entry row. If the firm needs describing, or the role had a group or a promotion, that goes in a bullet.
• Tense. Present tense for a role you are in now, past tense for one that has ended.
• Dates in one format throughout.
• The header. Your name the way you use it professionally, one phone, one email (your school one if you have it) and your LinkedIn URL. If you need to state work authorization, it is one line at the top: "No Sponsorship Required. Eligible and Authorized to work in the US."