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Resume: Inputs and Suggestions
Nylonathetep
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello Members of the Forum:
I've just finished writing my Level 3 CFA exam and is ready to get into related field of Investment/Security Analyst. I've applied to the few postings available but so far I haven't heard anything back. I figured my resume needs some more polishing and cleaning up. ( My grammar is pretty weak actually.)
Any advice on how to improve this resume is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
I've just finished writing my Level 3 CFA exam and is ready to get into related field of Investment/Security Analyst. I've applied to the few postings available but so far I haven't heard anything back. I figured my resume needs some more polishing and cleaning up. ( My grammar is pretty weak actually.)
Any advice on how to improve this resume is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Objective
Seeking an opportunity wherein I can utilize my knowledge and skills, and provides me ample opportunity to apply all my experience I gained over time, to grow and to contribute in the most effective manner by being a contributing and an effective team player. The ideal position would also further my personal development by working in a finance related field to complete my CFA work experience qualification.
Education
2014 Awaiting results for Certified Financial Analyst (CFA) Level III Exam
2007 Canadian Securities Course (CSC)
1999 - 2003 University of XXXX
Bachelor of Administrative & Commerce Studies
Area of Concentration: Finance, Administration & Economics
Skills Summary
Technical: MS Office Suite, Bloomberg, Interactive Data, CMS, IAS, InvestOne
Adapt quickly to changes, ability to learn quickly, and be able to contribute to each new employer in a short period of time
Detail-oriented, have education and job experience that requires analytical skills
Employed in multiple fast- paced work environments that has tight deadline and are required to delivery consistence performance under pressure
Good organizational and time-management skills. Prioritizing between various assignments while still able to complete daily workload.
Effective communication in English and Cantonese
Experiences
2008 – Present Investment Fund Accountant
XXXX
Responsible for all accounting records, including journals, cash receipts/disbursements, bank reconciliations for 5 varying types of mutual funds including Money Market, Multi-Manager, and Active Management Funds. Able to learn new funds quickly and handle additional funds as circumstances required.
Investigate and reconcile daily transactions: Stock splits/dividends, mergers and acquisitions, spin offs, bankruptcies from Bloomberg to ensure security’s position is correctly reflected into the fund and the Net Asset Value of each fund sent to clients and media is accurate. Personally prevented potential losses when recognizing incorrect entries posted into accounts.
Prepares financial statements, audit and year end valuation packages, financial reports, fund distributions and preparation of T3 income distribution factors.
Performs Net Asset Values under a tight daily deadline; analyzes and provide support for the increase or decrease of the Net Asset Value of a fund.
2004 – 2007 Customer Service Representative
XXXX
Processes customer’s transactions in an efficient and accurate manner in a high traffic branch while delivering consistent customer service experience to each customer.
Provide solutions to customer’s problems and concerns while adhering to branch’s protocols. Dedicated to building relationship with customers and provide ongoing enhancement of their overall banking experience.
Responsible for balancing cash deposit/withdrawal with the branch’s daily activities in a centralized teller cash system at the end of the branch’s business hours and deposit overnight cash into the branch’s security vault.
Respond to the customer's banking inquiries; identify opportunities to promote and advise on XXXX products and services while assisting in the sales referral process.
2003 – 2007 Case Coordinator/Accounts Receivable/Accounts Payable
XXXX
Handle enquiries from Insurance Agents. Maintain liaison between Agents, Insurance Clients, and Medical examiner regarding their Insurance medical examination.
Prepare monthly financial reports: Aging of Accounts Receivable, Bank Reconciliation, Monthly Expenditure Report, Invoicing, and other related information as required.
Others
Volunteer Work: Sick Kids Hospital Telethon, All Saint’s Church Spring Concert
Cameraman Assistant for XXXX TV Program Production: “XXXX”, and “XXXX”
Interest: Basketball, Go/Weiqi, Reading, Creative writing
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-Reworked account onboarding account process to help reduce time and increase customer satisfaction
Also, given that it's finance, numbers are always good. You prevented potential losses, but how many? $5 or $5 Million?
Think of it as invitations to conversation in your interview; would you lead with "I did financial statement preparation" or "I took ownership of statement preparation for an entire region" etc.?
Condense your skills, as you basically say you're adaptable and can work in a fast paced environment 3 times.
It's hard to list the specifics on the stuff I put on that resume, especially about potential losses that was actually prevented. Other stuff is just basic run-on-the-mill task we do everyday. I just took that off from my job description. However I'm sure I'm able to list other stuff that I did for that job. It just means I'll need to rework the whole thing again.
Maybe I should be more specific about my skills instead? I feel they are different and could be elaborated on, or I'm just not getting that point across clearly?
For me personally, I roll my eyes a bit when I see self-descriptions of the worker, especially in a skills section. Things like "Detail-oriented, have education and job experience that requires analytical skills" should be clear from your job descriptions. The exceptions here are your computer skills and languages. YMMV.
Same goes for things like "Able to learn new funds quickly and handle additional funds as circumstances required." Give an example of a task that you did that demonstrates the quality you are trying to convey.
If you feel that you must do this kind of thing, then replace your objective (I'm not a fan of objectives, either) with a positioning statement. Something like "Fund Accountant with 10+ years of work experience" and then bullet out some of the things that you think are awesome about yourself. Be prepared to back up anything you say on there with concrete examples if they come up in an interview! (That's true of anything on a resume but especially boasty things like what you would put in a positioning statement)
"Investigate and reconcile daily transactions: Stock splits/dividends, mergers and acquisitions, spin offs, bankruptcies from Bloomberg to ensure security’s position is..." There's a verb missing here that makes this read extremely awkwardly.
"Personally prevented potential losses by recognizing incorrect entries posted into accounts." (italics are my change) should be its own bullet.
"Prepares financial statements, audit and year end valuation packages, financial reports, fund distributions and preparation of T3 income distribution factors." Should be Prepare (everything is first person). That happens a bunch later so look through for that in the rest. Personally, I think the serial comma is useful (so one after fund distributions). And you don't need the "preparation of" before T3 because you're already talking about the things you prepare.
Honestly I feel like I've wasted my years as a Fund Accountant. It's not like I didn't learn anything, but the job is a 9-5 routine desk job and there isn't much in terms of accomplishing anything distinct.
Grammar is probably my biggest weakness at this point. I'll try to rework a second draft and see how things go.
Thanks guys for all the help once again!
A 'Personal Summary' section in the same place is much more useful. Summarize your skillset and what you can contribute to the job you're applying for; it gives you an opportunity to frame your experience and emphasize why you would be a good fit for the job.
Fix up your grammar -- you're putting some things in first-person ("{implied 'I'} prepare") and some things in third person ("{implied 'He'} prepares"). Use first person, it's your resume. You're also putting lots of past things in present tense. "Processes customer’s transactions" ---> "Processed customers' transactions" (note the corrected possessive apostrophe placement as well).
For experience under each position, rework the bullet points to be more about your accomplishments, less about your responsibilities. "Handle enquiries from Insurance Agents." ---> "Handled over 50 daily inquiries from insurance agents."
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I say don't bother with a Personal Summary section. That's what a Cover Letter is for.
Get rid of the 2003-2007 job entry, and fill out the Present Investment Fund Accountant more. Surely there's more you did. Add specific projects, or how you've helped certain clients more, or things like that. "Increased many clients' portfolios by 500%" or something.
Remove the "Able to learn new funds quickly and handle additional funds as circumstances required." That's just extra space and full of BS, unless you regularly get new funds in the places where you're applying. In which case you should rephrase it since it would be an essential part of the position you want.
Your resume should be changing regularly to match the new job for which you are applying, so having a standard template isn't bad, but having responsibilities that don't apply aren't worth the ink that's used to print your resume. So if the job for which you are applying requires learning new funds regularly, then definitely attach that, but rephrase it so that it doesn't just sound like filler.
Keep it simple and concise, and you'll have fewer opportunities to confuse your reader.
And less listing off skills like a laundry list and more showing how you've demonstrated those skills.
Example of content that needs some grammer/style attention:
If you're unable to go through and correct on your own, I suggest looking up some local job search services who will sit down with you and fix up your resume/cover letter. Your local library may have a free one. It's not that, as you say, your grammar is "weak." It's that your resume looks like it was put together by a spam bot.
This is my progress so far:
So basically I scrapped the Objective, and just left my technical and language skills in the Skills Summary section. (That part probably still needs a bit more work, or I'll just move all that stuff to the Other section in the back like I did in my very very first draft)
Chances are I'll need to write a cover letter and put some of stuff in the Skill Summary list in there.
I've edited the Job description part, hopefully cleaned up all the grammatical mistakes and added an accomplishment section underneath:
I also corrected the grammatical mistakes on the Customer Service Rep job description as well, but left most of it as is.
This is still a work in progress and I'm sure I can condense it into something more readable. I'm sure I can have better wording in describing some of those accomplishment and task but I only get to work on this during my off hours.
Figgy: It is probably true. I've been taking ideas and lines out of sample resume from friends and already had multiple people looked into my resume.
Responsibilities include:
-Accounting records and journals
-cash receipts/disbursements
-bank reconciliations for varying types of mutual funds including
--Money Market
--Multi-Manager
--Tactical Balanced Fund
Why aren't these listed in the others?
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http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/29658201/#Comment_29658201
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I've read over your link and it conforms with my experience: I got my current job via Agency as well and I guess they cleaned up my resume a bit and got me the job. I guess I got lucky back then and threw enough Keywords in there to catch their attention the first time and I was hoping it'll work the same way now. Got aboard the company via Contract, kept getting extended and eventually fully hired.
Definitely check job boards provided by the CFA program as well. I'm kinda tired but will come back to this with specific comments. One that comes to mind is list the size of the funds you were accountant for. Numbers make things feel more real.
For example:
Investment Fund Accountant responsible for 5 funds totaling USD 1 billion, covering small cap commodities, banking, and xyz industries.
Went from accounting for 1 fund to 5 funds within XX years
Promoted from Junior analyst to Analyst within xx years
Responsible for maintaining NAV information disseminated to media and investors.
ETC. Provide concrete examples with dollar figures attached. You've only been on the accounting side until now, so you need to present yourself as an old hand that is sophisticated and knowledgeable about the industry.
You also need to network REALLY hard. Go to CFA events, open houses, etc. If you are applying for jobs at predominantly English companies, you need to greatly improve the quality of the English within your resume.
- 100% Sure CFA have regulations on how one refers to him/herself... it's in the code of ethics which we study ever year. My wording is fine but I changed it anyways to CFA Level 3 candidate instead along with the date I passed CFA level II exam instead.
- Good catch on the Fund of Funds. I corrected it.
I feel right now that Networking just trumps everything as I'm not getting even phone calls or interviews from all those resumes I sent out. Unfortunately my networking skills is almost non-existent.
I'll keep an eye out on those CFA events. I've never paid any serious attention to them before. Anyone here cared to share their experience on these types of networking events?
I haven't been promote ever since I got here. I was hoping being a candidate in the CFA program could land me a better job instead of begging for a promotion.
Just keep trying I guess.