How to Tailor Your CV for Finance and Banking Jobs

Finance and banking employers are exacting. They expect precision in your CV — both in language and in data — and they use specific terminology that signals whether you understand the industry. Generic CVs rarely get past the first round in highly competitive finance recruitment.

The Finance CV Baseline

Before tailoring, your finance CV needs to be technically sound:

Education prominently placed (investment banks, in particular, filter by institution and grade)
Accurate and verifiable numbers throughout
No spelling errors — finance employers view these as a proxy for how you will handle data
Clean formatting, no design flourishes

Tailoring on top of a weak base does not work. Get the foundation right first.

Sector-Specific Language

Finance is not a monolith. Investment banking, commercial banking, accounting, asset management, financial planning, and fintech all have different vocabularies. Your CV needs to reflect the specific sector you are applying to.

For investment banking: deal value, M&A, DCF modelling, capital markets, pitch books, deal execution

For accounting: P&L, balance sheet, variance analysis, management accounts, audit, IFRS, FRS 102

For asset management: AUM, portfolio construction, risk-adjusted returns, alpha generation, Bloomberg

For fintech: payments infrastructure, open banking, API integration, regulatory compliance, FCA

Read the job description carefully and match the language it uses — not a generic finance vocabulary.

How to Quantify Finance Experience

Finance CVs must be quantified. Vague descriptions carry little weight. For each role, aim to include:

Deal or transaction values you worked on
Portfolio or fund sizes you were responsible for
Revenue, cost savings, or efficiency improvements you delivered
Number of clients, entities, or accounts managed
Audit portfolio size or complexity indicators

If you managed a team, include headcount. If you managed a budget, include the figure. Finance employers know what these numbers mean and they will notice when they are absent.

Regulatory and Technical Skills

For regulated finance roles, include relevant qualifications and certifications prominently: CFA, ACCA, ACA, CPA, FRM, CISI qualifications. If you are studying towards one, note that too with your expected completion date.

Technical skills matter: Excel (and at what level — pivot tables versus VBA versus Power Query is a real distinction), financial modelling platforms, accounting software (SAP, Oracle, Xero, Sage), trading platforms, data tools (SQL, Python, Power BI).

How CVCircuit Helps

CVCircuit's tailoring tool extracts the specific terminology from any finance job description and maps it against your CV. This is particularly valuable in finance, where the difference between "financial reporting" and "management accounts" can determine whether you pass the ATS filter.

Build your CV free at CVCircuit and tailor it precisely for every finance application.