Investment Banking Internship Resume vs The Rest - Who wins?

Why will any investment banking internship resume always get priority over a normal resume without an internship?

Well, in a word ‘differentiation'. 

You see, investment banking resume piles are awash with prominent schools, sublime grades and quality degrees.  A 3.8 GPA from Wharton is great and all, but it's not a drastically unique selling proposition. There's plenty more where that came from!

What resume piles are not in oversupply of, nor by the very nature of the banking industry will they ever be, is final year college kids with bulge bracket banking internships and even boutique banking internships (or similar high quality work experience).

So if you've managed to complete one, then scrawl it in size 40 font – Copper Black styles! – because an investment banking internship resume will take you to the top of the pile every single time.

The point here is that your work section will be A+ by mere mention of a competitor they respect.

It should not surprise you then that in IB there are often two piles of resumes– one has the ‘no internship' kids and the other has the ‘mini Masters of the Universe' collection of candidates.  And if you're on the latter your resume gets interviews almost out of courtesy for this single achievement of yours.

PS  Apart from a banking internship, any experience in a relevant field will get you on the ‘mini Masters' pile. 

For example, if you are applying to FIG and you have worked at a commercial bank, or if you are applying to TMT and you worked in a tech start up or did an internship at Microsoft, you will find yourself on the experienced pile.

In other words, absent a banking internship, quality experience in an industry player relevant to the group you are applying to will work just as well.

What if you have no investment banking internship?

If you are in fact applying for summer internship programs then it's no biggie.  But you'll still want to have some work experience to write about – and I'm going to show you how to do that next.

By contrast if you are applying for analyst programs then you're going to struggle without an investment banking internship resume or other high quality internship on your resume. 

I'm not going to look at how you can turn an internship-less resume into a winning application in this tutorial, because it's a whole tutorial in and of itself. 

If this is you then keep an eye out for the Inside Investment Banking System (BETA Version just launched) launching this fall because we'll tackle it in-depth then.

Want to know how to write the perfect investment banking internship resume?

Then check out our free tutorial on it Investment banking internship resume">here.

Author: Inside Investment Banking