Real-life B-school resume prep.

Question

In the past months while researching and meeting people from lots of different business school, I have been given the advice of having my recruiting resume ready before I get to campus. Many companies start visiting as early as September, and you'll be so busy adjusting to business school life that it's easy to fall behind in the recruiting process (look at the story from that guy from Stern that was posted a few days ago).

I'm getting ready for a Darden interview and I ran across a useful resource. The Darden finance club actually posts their resume book online, so you can take a look to see how others have structured their resumes for business school recruiting. Also, if you look at the class of '07, you can see what type of internships they were able to land last year. It seems that just about everyone in the club was able to at least get on with a bulge bracket bank. Does anyone else have similar information for other schools? I saw something from Wharton, but the data was pretty dated.

Anyhow, here's the link, I think some might find it useful:

https://student.darden.virginia.edu/finc ... _links.htm

dukes · Answer

A couple more: Wharton Real Estate Club: https://realestate.wharton.upenn.edu/resumebook/

dukes · Answer

Its funny to see how people who attend top-notch schools still screw up their resumes.

pelihu · Answer

Those are interesting additions. I think it would useful to apply this information strategically, to best position your own resume.

It seems that the Indiana Kelly resumes are a mix of undergrad and MBA students.

dukes · Answer

You're right, the Kelly resume book was undergrad which I didn't notice until now, so I removed it. The Wharton book is unfortunately not pdf based so you can't really see how they would be formatted but you get a decent idea of what they include.

I thought it was interesting that at least one of the Darden resumes had SAT scores (lame?).

pelihu · Answer

I didn't see that but putting your SAT score on does seem pretty lame. I seem to recall, though, that Goldman Sachs does ask for all standardized test scores including SAT as part of their application, so perhaps he was preparing for something specific?

gmatclb · Answer

It's interesting that the finance club at Darden is filled with people with internships in investment banking (with a handful of sales and trading). They should rename the club to investment banking.

Nsentra · Answer

here is a pretty good collection of resumes of investment club first year students at tuck: https://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/clu ... 20Book.pdf

OasisNYK · Answer

Great resources, I actually edited my resume to match the Darden examples when I applied there - very good stuff.

OasisNYK · Answer

So is 700 the cut off for putting your GMAT score on your resume? I think its funny that some of these people list the AWA score since it seems to be somewhat of a joke. 

I wonder what scores recruiters consider to be impressive?

pelihu · Answer

Yeah, it looks like 700 seems to be the cutoff. There were some comments on this at the BW forums a while back, I think it goes something like this. People scoring below 700 do not include their GMAT scores on their resumes and hope that they aren't asked about it. People scoring 700-740 put their score on reluctantly because if they don't put it on recruiters will just assume they scored below 700; but having a score in that range doesn't help much. As far as looking impressive to recruiters, I think 750+ is the number for most top schools; with the possibility of moving up this year with the percentile change on the GMAT?

I think these generalizations apply to the big recruiting industries like IB & MC. It's well known that GMAT plays a pretty important role during the early stages of recruiting for those fields. On the other hand, I have been told by friends looking into general management and marketing that once they secure an interview (often through a bidding process), the interview(s) are the most important criteria - perhaps the only criteria - to landing a job.

dukes · Answer

I hope 750 still stays impressive enough to stay on my resume. Perhaps its more a function of being a round number. For most schools I've looked at it represents the top 10% of students.

aaudetat · Answer

Peli -

Some info from the Johnson School indicated that students should come to school with a resume, but that it should be in the Johnson format. Then you have a session with the career services folks early -- maybe even during orientation -- where you get your resume up to speed. UNC does the same thing, so I wouldn't spend too much time on it now. You'll have plenty of time once you know where you're going.

rhyme · Answer

Anyone look at this guys resume on page 4? Ryan Burkart. 

Wow, I feel like an underachiever. VP at a hedge fund 3 years out of undergrad? COO at a startup 2 years out?

gidimba · Answer

I am totally with you Rhyme. Some of these folks are real go getters to put it mildly.

dukes · Answer

The titles look good, but you have to wonder about 4 jobs in 6 years.

rhyme · Answer

Sadly, I've had 4 jobs in six years too.

dukes · Answer

Interestingly, the Tuckies were far less likely to list their GMAT score (compared to Darden). I wonder why?

gmatclb · Answer

I think you have the tiles mixed. He was a COO at the hedge fund and a VP at the startup.

The COO was just a title. 40M hedge fund is tiny. I knew a guy that ran a 60M hedge fund by himself. The job description sounds like someone in opeations. Yeah, if he was the only guy in operations, you could say he was the COO.

His other jobs are impressive though (@ bear steans and goldman)

rhyme · Answer

Whatever. All I know is I havent run a $1MM hedge fund. To me, 40MM is something. I know all about title inflation, and there may well be a lot of that going on his resume. In any case, compared to my resume: 

Big Bank
Senior Analyst, Team Lead

Finance Consulting Firm
Associate

Smaller Bank
Analyst, Senior Analyst

Strategy / Consulting Firm
Analyst 

His looks better.

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