How to write a CV for banking applications

Banking CVs follow very, very specific conventions that the industry has settled on over decades.

What are banks looking for?

Before the structure, understand the logic. At the graduate level, most banks, investment banks, commercial banks, asset managers, trading firms, are hiring for three things: academic ability, commercial awareness, and evidence that you've already tried to understand the industry. Your CV needs to signal all three, clearly and quickly. Recruiters at large firms often spend less than a minute on initial screening.

Structure, in order

1. Education, at the top, with grades

Banking is still heavily grade-conscious. Put your degree, university, and classification at the very top, immediately after your contact details. If you have A-levels, include them too, particularly if they're strong. If you're at a target or semi-target university, this works in your favour. If you're not, strong grades and everything else on this list can compensate.

Example:

BSc Economics, University of Exeter, 2024 - 2:1 (predicted First)
A-Levels: Mathematics (A*), Economics (A), History (A) - Highgate School, 2021

Include relevant modules if they're genuinely relevant (things like financial mathematics, corporate finance, econometrics)

2. Work experience (the centrepiece)

In reverse chronological order. Banks want to see that you have some understanding of professional environments, and ideally some exposure to financial services or adjacent industries. But this doesn't mean you need a Goldman Sachs internship.

What counts as relevant work experience:

• Finance internships

• Any client-facing or commercial role

• Part-time work in environments that required numeracy, judgment, or communication

• Research assistant positions with any quantitative element

For each role, write two to three bullet points. The formula that works: what you did + how you did it + what the result was. Quantify wherever possible.

Weak: Assisted with client reporting.
Strong: Prepared weekly performance reports for 12 institutional client portfolios, identifying a data reconciliation error that had overstated returns by 0.3% across three months.

3. Virtual internships and online courses

This is highly useful for banking CVs and underused by many applicants. Programmes like Forage (formerly Inside Sherpa) offer free virtual work experience simulations with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citi, and others. Completing one gives you something concrete to discuss in interviews and shows initiative.

List these under a heading like "Virtual Experience and Professional Development." These are evidence of commercial curiosity.

Similarly, if you've completed relevant short courses (a Bloomberg Market Concepts certification, a CFA Institute Investment Foundations certificate, a financial modelling course) list them here. These are low-cost, high-signal additions to a graduate CV.

4. Volunteering (always the key differentiator)

Banks, particularly the larger ones, pay attention to social responsibility. More practically, volunteering demonstrates that you can manage commitments beyond your degree and that you engage with things beyond yourself. Sustained volunteering (something you've done for a year or more) is more impressive than a one-day charity event.

If your volunteering has any financial literacy, mentoring, or leadership angle, highlight it. Running a fundraiser where you managed a budget is worth describing properly, not just listing.

5. Extracurricular activities and positions of responsibility

Society memberships are fine to list, but positions within societies are significantly better. Treasurer of anything is directly relevant. President, events organiser, head of recruitment show you can lead and manage.

Finance and investment societies are obvious additions. Interviewers will ask what you actually did and what you learnt, and a hollow answer is worse than not mentioning it.

6. Skills

Programming languages (Python, R, VBA are all relevant), software (Excel, be specific about what you can do, not just that you "know Excel"), and languages. Keep this honest. They might try to speak to your in the languages you claim to know.

Things that recruiters filter out immediately

No grades visible. If a recruiter has to hunt for your degree classification, they'll often just move on.

Generic bullet points. "Responsible for client communication" tells a recruiter nothing. What did you actually do, and what happened as a result?

Spelling and formatting errors. Banking CVs are held to a higher standard than most. One typo can end an application. Have at least two people who didn't write it read it carefully.

Too long. One page for most graduate applications. Two pages maximum if you have genuinely substantial experience. There is no situation where three pages is appropriate at graduate level.

Unexplained gaps. If there's a period of time unaccounted for, a recruiter will notice. A brief explanation is always better than silence.

A note on virtual courses

Some people feel embarrassed listing virtual internships, as though they're not "real." Don't be. The point isn't that you worked at Goldman Sachs, the point is that you sought out an opportunity to understand how investment banking works, and you completed it. That's initiative, and initiative is exactly what banks claim to want. Use the experience as a talking point, not just a line on a CV.

Banking applications are competitive and often involve multiple filtering stages. A clean, structured, evidence-rich CV gets you past the first one. The rest is interview preparation.