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Hey {{first_name}} 👋!
I've reviewed hundreds of CVs from students and graduates trying to break into finance.
Most of them have the same problems.
And the frustrating thing is that none of them are hard to fix. They just require someone to tell you what's actually wrong, rather than giving you generic advice about "tailoring your application."
So that's what this email is.
The 3-second screen
Before we get into the mistakes, you need to understand how your CV is actually being read.
Recruiters at bulge bracket banks and top asset managers aren't sitting down with a coffee to carefully read your CV. They're scanning it. For about three seconds. And in those three seconds, they're making a binary decision: pile A (potential) or pile B (no).
That means your CV isn't competing on content alone. It's competing on clarity, structure, and whether the right things hit the eye immediately.
Most CVs fail before they're even read.
The mistakes I see constantly
1. The education section is buried
If you're a student or recent graduate, your degree is your primary credential. It should be at the top. I still see CVs where education is halfway down the page, below a long work experience section that consists of one summer retail job and a university society role. Recruiters want to see your university, your degree, and your predicted or actual grade within the first glance. Put it first.
2. Bullet points describe duties, not outcomes
"Assisted with financial analysis" tells a recruiter nothing. What did you analyse? What was the output? What decision did it inform? Every bullet point should follow a simple structure: what you did, how you did it, and what resulted from it. "Built a discounted cash flow model to value a target company as part of a simulated M&A case study, presenting findings to a panel of three senior bankers" is a completely different signal.
3. The CV is trying to cover everything
One page. That's it. I don't care if you've done a lot. Ruthlessly cut anything that doesn't directly signal that you're a credible finance candidate. Your Duke of Edinburgh award from Year 11 is not relevant (unless you’re really struggling to fill up space). White space is not wasted space. A clean, tight CV reads as confidence. A dense two-pager reads as someone who doesn't know what matters.
4. Generic skills sections
"Proficient in Microsoft Office." Every single candidate writes this. It’s not the end of the world, but if you say something specific, like you built a financial model in Excel or produced a data analysis in Python, that wins all day long. Skills sections should be short, specific, and verifiable.
5. No evidence of genuine finance interest
This is the one that surprises people. Recruiters want to see that you've done something that signals you actually want to work in finance. That could be a relevant course, a personal investment portfolio, a finance society role, a competition, a reading habit. If your CV looks identical to someone applying to a marketing graduate scheme, that's a problem.
What to do this weekend
Print your CV out. Put it face down. Flip it over and give yourself three seconds. What did you actually see?
Then go through each bullet point and ask: does this demonstrate impact, or just activity?
Then cut anything that isn't directly relevant to a finance role.
If you want a cleaner starting point use my Goldman Sachs CV templates. They're built around what actually gets candidates interviews, not generic graduate advice.
And if you want your CV reviewed directly, as many times as you need, with specific line-by-line feedback, that's something I do inside Finance Fast Track. There's also a 30-day CV and application challenge that takes you from a blank document to a submission-ready application, step by step.
Fix the CV first. Everything else in the application process depends on it.
Speak soon,
Afzal
P.S. The most common response I get after a CV review is "I wish I'd done this six months ago." Don't be that person. This weekend is plenty of time to fix the worst of it.
Keep at it.
Afzal
P.P.S. Whenever you're ready:
Career Guides (get £20 off at checkout with code ‘FFT20’)