Are you wanting to be considered for the best roles in the wealth market? Then you need to stand out from the competition and a CV is your first opportunity to create that lasting impression and open doors to progress your career.
As with most things, the way you should write CV has changed over the years, leading to a lot of confusion not only to what to add but how to best present yourself. The simple answer is less is more, as you don’t want imperative information to be lost amongst a sea of words.
Below we have put together some tips for you on how to craft a great CV, enabling you the chance to put your best foot forward as you hunt for your next dream position:
Professional Summary: Begin with a compelling, but brief paragraph covering your professional summary with personal touch. This is a good section to highlight your key experiences, skills, and achievements (bullet point in additional section if too many). Include:
- Technical experience
- People Skills
- Standout achievements
Work Experience: Create a well-structured list of your relevant work experience, starting with your most recent employment first.
Start with a summary sentence on the role and then provide a bullet-pointed snapshot of your core skills and abilities, emphasizing financial skills, business acumen, and relationship-building.
- For Advisers or anyone client facing, don’t forget to showcase your ability to provide personalised wealth management services and advice to clients. For instance, you could mention:
- If you’re providing independent or restricted advice
- A brief breakdown of the portfolio of clients you are managing (or supporting Advisers to manage), the collective assets under management – include any transferable, if applicable. Type of clients, how many and location (i.e. if they’re UK domicile, non-dom or fully International).
- What financial products you are working with including Pensions, ISA’s, VCT’s, EIS’s
- Managing, training and developing team members
- What Platforms you have experience with and other relevant experience like completing suitability reports etc.
- Showcase competency of going above and beyond in the role, highlighting your technical and people skills
Next should be your education: List your educational background, certifications, and qualifications. Any diplomas relevant to wealth management should be at the top.
To finish some people like to add an additional personal paragraph here, highlighting who you are outside of work. These are optional and not necessary, but certainly worthwhile adding i you want to showcase extra-curricular activities that may make you stand out, such as you’re a volunteer / Non-executive for a non-profit / charitable organisation and/or have achieved personal goals that are worthy to note, ie ran the marathon, climbed Mount Everest etc.
And finally, make sure you keep it concise (2 sides of A4 pages or less) and use clear section headings and bullet points for readability.