Essential: A Must-Have CV Template to Significantly Boost How You Present Yourself to Top Graduate Employers
This template includes several real examples from the CVs that helped me land interviews with top graduate employers across different industries!
If you’re new to this newsletter, welcome!! We provide feedback to graduate job applicants by demonstrating how employers make ‘yes’ and ‘no’ decisions on CVs. Remember that company that rejected your job application despite your strong CV? This newsletter will show you what probably happened. #GiveYourselfTheHeadStartYouDeserve
Created by L. C. Serrão.
Click here to request a FREE CV review.
Hi, everyone! I’ve created an awesome CV template for you to download! 🎉🎉 And I’ve been especially generous by including several real examples from the CVs that helped me land interviews with top graduate employers across a range of industries, including:
Accounting/Financial Services (PwC);
Consulting (Boston Consulting Group (BCG), McKinsey);
Impact Investing (World Bank Group);
Investment Banking (Citi, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley) and;
Private Equity (Carlyle, Development Partners International (DPI), Helios Investment Partners, Warburg Pincus).
But before we get into that, do I have any Premier League football fans here? If yes, I’m sending an extra big shout-out to my fellow Arsenal fans—yesterday’s game against those guys down the road just confirmed it again:
NORTH LONDON IS RED! 🔴 Lol.
Okay, back to business!
Your girl (i.e., me 😎) has been hard at work all summer reviewing the many CV requests that came in. If you’ve requested one and haven’t received it yet, don’t worry—it’s coming! And I truly appreciate your patience!
I’ve enjoyed reviewing each and every CV, and above all, I’m super impressed by your initiative in seeking feedback—being open to constructive criticism is a highly underrated skill! Plus, as I’ve said in almost every review: you may not always like what you hear, but it's better to hear it from me and fix any issues raised than be in the dark and let your top-choice employer use the same issues as the reason to reject your CV.
One of the biggest areas where many of you could level up is in how you present your CV—both in terms of layout (trust me, poor layout can hurt you more than you realise) and how you describe your experiences. Too many of you are listing tasks as if they were job descriptions. For example, you might write something like ‘conducted extensive market research across a range of industries’ under the experience section. Okay… but what did you achieve from that research? That’s what graduate employers really want to know. Instead, you could say something like, ‘conducted market research that directly contributed to identifying two new clients, generating $2m in revenue.’ This adjustment reframes the same experience in a more impactful way, which could dramatically transform your CV and be the difference between a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ decision.
This newsletter already has some great posts outlining what makes a strong CV (such as this one and this one), but since many of you are still not describing your experiences in a compelling way, it’s clear that a template might be the missing piece you need—so I’m here to deliver!
Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m happy to keep giving this advice individually (that’s why I’m here, after all). But I realised a lot of you could benefit from having a visual example of the best practices I’ve been recommending. Hence, this template is designed to help you:
Follow key best practices on how to format a CV to ensure you make a strong first impression, and
Describe your experiences with achievement-based points that tell a compelling, impactful story about your candidacy.
So, I trust you’ll find this template instrumental as we work on improving your CV!
This template was specifically designed for Analyst roles, but even those applying for Associate roles could use the same guidance because, to be frank, some of the Associate-level CVs I’ve received can’t even compete with an Analyst-level CV—let alone other Associates. 👀 (I did promise I’d be candid, right?! Lol.)
I’ve uploaded the CV template in two formats: Microsoft Word—so you can easily edit it to reflect your achievements—and PDF—so you can preview just how sleek it’ll look when you send it to your top-choice graduate employers!
To ensure you fully understand the strengths of this template and how to apply them to your own CV, I’ll be hosting a Q&A session. I’ll walk you through the template, highlight its key features, explain how it conveys a ‘story’ about the candidate, and show you how to use it to guide the telling of your own story. Of course, I’ll also be there to answer any questions you have in real-time. I highly recommend you attend—it’s going to be super helpful! For more information about this session, meet me in our subscribers-only chatroom in a new thread posted today for premium and platinum subscribers (use the button below to enter the chatroom).
Now, a quick note on access to the template:
Premium and (the higher level) platinum subscribers can download it for FREE
Click here to check if you’re eligible for a FREE upgrade—which most of you will be, even if only on a temporary basis.
For my free subscribers, you can still access the template with a one-off payment, but honestly, the price is greater than the price of even the highest membership level (platinum). So, the maths is not mathing. An upgrade is cheaper. But, if a one-off payment is really what you prefer, no problem—just shoot me an email (contact@keepdingghost.com) and I’ll sort it out!