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The full one-page layout with worked bullets, ready to edit. Free, no email required.
The template, section by section
Investment banking CVs are deliberately conservative. Deviation reads as inexperience, so the order below is close to mandatory for analyst and summer analyst applications in London, New York, Frankfurt and Hong Kong.
1. Header
Name, city, one phone number, one professional email, LinkedIn. No photo, no address block, no date of birth. Two lines maximum.
2. Education
Education sits first until you have a full-time analyst role. University, degree, expected graduation, GPA or classification, standardised test scores where strong, relevant coursework and honours. Banks screen on this hard.
3. Professional experience
Reverse chronological. Firm, division, city, dates. Three to five bullets for the most relevant role, two for older ones. Deal or client work first, admin work never.
4. Leadership and extracurriculars
Investment societies, case competitions, sports at a serious level, student-managed funds. Show ownership and a result, not membership.
5. Skills, certifications and interests
Financial modelling, Excel, VBA, Python, Bloomberg, CapIQ, FactSet, languages with fluency level, CFA Level I. Two or three specific interests — they get used in interviews.
Formatting rules banks actually enforce
- One page. No exceptions for internships and analyst applications.
- Single column, no tables, no text boxes, no logos, no colour bars — parsers drop them.
- 10–11pt serif or clean sans, 0.5–0.75in margins, consistent date alignment on the right.
- Export as PDF with selectable text, named Firstname_Lastname_CV.pdf.
- Consistent tense: past tense for finished roles, present for current.
- No pronouns, no full sentences, no full stops at the end of bullets (be consistent either way).
The bullet formula
Action verb + what you built or analysed + the deal, client or dataset + the quantified outcome. Every bullet should answer "so what?" before the screener asks it.
Assisted the M&A team with various tasks and research
Built the three-statement operating model for a $340m industrials carve-out; sensitivity analysis informed the final $22m price adjustment
Responsible for updating comparable company analysis
Maintained trading comps across 14 European chemicals names, feeding weekly valuation updates to two live sell-side mandates
Member of the university investment society
Led a 6-person sector team managing a £120k student fund; equity pitch on a mid-cap logistics name returned 18% over 9 months
Never invent a number. Where you genuinely don't know the figure, estimate honestly and be ready to explain how you arrived at it in the interview.
Bank-by-bank differences
Goldman Sachs weights academic pedigree and evidence of sustained excellence outside work. J.P. Morgan screens hardest on quantified commercial impact and division fit. Morgan Stanley looks for depth in one sector rather than breadth. European offices expect classification and language fluency; US offices expect GPA to two decimals. The same experience should be reframed for each — not rewritten dishonestly.
Tailoring it: Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Google
The same template survives all three screens, but the emphasis changes. Reframe the evidence — never invent it.
Goldman Sachs
IBD Summer Analyst
- Academic pedigree carries the most weight of the bulge brackets: classification, GPA and test scores belong in the top third.
- Sustained excellence outside work matters — national-level sport, music or competitions signal the intensity the desk expects.
- Deal or transaction exposure must be named explicitly, with size and your specific contribution.
- Dense, error-free one page. A single formatting inconsistency is read as carelessness with numbers.
J.P. Morgan
Markets / Coverage Analyst
- Division fit is screened first: make it unambiguous whether you are targeting markets, coverage or advisory.
- Quantified commercial impact beats prestige — size the book, the model, the client or the return.
- Show product and macro literacy rather than a generic 'interest in finance'.
- Consistent progression, no unexplained gaps; explain any gap in the cover note, not the CV.
Software Engineer / Business Analyst
- Impact-first bullets: what changed, by how much, for how many users — never a task list.
- Scale signals matter: requests per second, dataset size, latency, monthly users.
- Ownership of a component end to end outweighs breadth across many small tasks.
- Concrete languages, systems and tools; drop soft-skill filler like 'team player' entirely.
Frequently asked questions
How long should an investment banking resume be?+
One page for internships, summer analyst and analyst applications, without exception. Two pages are only acceptable for experienced hires with several years of full-time transaction experience.
Should education go above or below experience?+
Education sits at the top until you have completed a full-time analyst role. Banks screen hard on university, degree classification or GPA and test scores, so those must appear in the top third of page one.
Do I need a GPA on my banking CV?+
Include GPA if it is 3.5 or above (US) or a predicted First / high 2:1 (UK). If it is below that, lead with other quantified academic signals such as test scores, module marks or competition placings rather than omitting all academic evidence.
Is a summary or objective statement needed?+
No. Bulge-bracket screeners skip them. Use that space for an additional quantified bullet in your most relevant role.
Can I use a template with columns, colour or logos?+
No. Applicant tracking systems drop text in tables, text boxes and headers, and screeners read deviation as inexperience. Single column, black text, standard headings, PDF with selectable text.
Is this template free?+
Yes. The DOCX and PDF versions are free to download and edit, and you can run three full CV reviews against a specific bank without creating an account.
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