Crafting a Standout Equity Research Resume

A great resume won’t magically get you equity research interviews (If you don’t have the “right” school or work experience, still need to network with a strong stock pitch), but a bad one will hurt your chances. This is your first impression—make it count.

Personal Information

1. Don’t need to put down your physical address. Just city, state, and zip code is fine.

2. Email address: get one that is firstname.lastname@domain.com (or something along that line). It's fine to use your school's email address, as long as it shows your full name and you have access after graduation.

3. If your name sounds international, put down your visa status so you don’t waste time with employers who don’t sponsor.

4. Good habit to save your resume with your first and last name as file name.

Results, not job description

Too many job seekers think their resume is about them—it’s not. Your resume is for your future employer. They don’t care what you did—they care about the impact you had on your manager, team, and company.

99% of my clients’ resumes read like job descriptions, with barely any numbers.

How many of you have bullet points on your resume like “I did some analysis,” “I created this document,” or “I presented in front of people”? If you’re already in research, do you list things like “I built models,” “I wrote a few initiation reports,” or “I talked to buy-side clients and equity salespeople all day”?

These are just tasks—not results. The first step is to rewrite every bullet point from “what you did” to “what you accomplished.”

• You built models to monitor business performance to help clients catch inflection.

• You wrote initiation reports to save clients time and help the firm market the issuer which hopefully helped the stock trade well and made the company management happy.

• You talked to clients and salespeople to market your analyst’s research which hopefully translated to II votes.

How do you make it more impactful? Two ways. First, quantify. Second, use Google’s XYZ format: Accomplished [X], as measured by [Y], by doing [Z]. Quantification makes things feel more tangible, which is also why contents with made-up percentages (such as 69%) get views.

Quantification is especially important for equity research resumes because the profession is judged on output, not effort.

Hedge fund PMs can talk about all the trades they made or how many names they researched in a year, but they’re measured by one thing: alpha generation.

Same goes for sell-side senior analysts. It’s not about how many reports they wrote in a year—it’s about how many paid client touchpoints they had, the dollar value of deals they influenced, and the II votes they won.

Your resume should reflect that. Focus on results, not just tasks.

Ask ChatGPT for Help

You must be wondering: But how much impact can I really have as a junior employee? The answer: more than you think—especially if you use ChatGPT (not sponsored by OpenAI btw) to your advantage.

ChatGPT can help you:

• Reframe your resume to be more results-driven (such as into Google XYZ)

• Brainstorm ways to quantify your impact

• Maximize word-to-information ratio

• Vary your verbs (you should never use the same one twice in a resume)

• Proofread for clarity

• Match your resume’s keywords to job descriptions for ATS optimization

I’m not positioning myself as a resume guru, but plenty of career creators on YouTube can show you how to use AI to level up your resume.

Everything on Resume Is Fair Game in an Interview

If it’s on your resume, be ready to be asked. Even the books and hobbies you list at the bottom can become interview questions. I’ve seen candidates stumble because they are unprepared.

So either don’t lie/exaggerate, or lie convincingly by practicing.

Core Equity Research Skills

Your resume should make it clear that you can contribute on a research job:

1. Financial modeling & data analysis – Ideally, three-statement models, but even general modeling skills like pivot tables and working big data sets are valuable if they help drive business insights.

2. Sector expertise – Whether it’s energy, transportation, or another industry, hands-on operational experience can be a differentiator (if you worked in HR or IT, not so much)

3. Verbal and written communication

Other key skills:

• Cross-functional collaboration - you should have that experience if you work at a corporate job

• Resourcefulness (autonomously find information, or colloquially, ability to figure sh*t out)

• Project management (managing deadlines)

For sell-side research roles, add:

• Sales

• Process improvement

• Event planning

Leadership experience isn’t a bad thing but the profession is highly individualistic, so your resume should emphasize the skills above instead of your leadership skills.

Education Section

If your GPA isn’t above the industry cutoff, leave it off—no need to draw attention to a weak number.

Don’t put "MBA" after your name. It’s not a designation, and the people who do that are usually from non-top-25 programs. Same goes for credentials that don’t carry weight in equity research. CFA, CPA? Sure. FRM, CAIA? Correct me if I’m wrong, but neither involves financial statement analysis. Financial modeling certificates? Probably not a game-changer, but they at least show relevant technical skills, so those can stay.

For context, his name is “Harvard University” who graduated from DeVry

If you’re listing coursework (as most of us didn’t attend Wharton for undergrad), make sure it’s relevant:

• accounting (financial, managerial, corporate finance)

• fundamental research (valuation, financial modeling, business drivers)

• strategy (Porter’s Five Force type class)

• economics (micro, macro, game theory)

• market history

If you took a class with a legend—like Damodaran at NYU (only if you went to NYU) or Greenblatt or Bill Ackman at Columbia (back in the day, John Griffin at Columbia)—call it out. It’s fine to list one quantitative class, but don’t flood your resume with every advanced math course. At the end of the day, equity research is about arithmetic, not dealing with coffee mug and donut.

If you worked on an investment-related project, competed in a stock-picking challenge, or started an investment club, don’t just mention it—quantify it. Instead of saying, Analyst at [student fund], say, Selected from 100 applicants after a case study and interview. Made two pitches that returned X% (or would have returned X%.)

If you were a college athlete, list it—Wall Street loves athletes for their competitive drive. Again, show impact - what did you accomplish on the team?

If you went to the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting (or another big one like Markel’s), did you write an article? Meet key people?

If you’ve posted research online that you are proud of, include the URL.

And if you’re a full member of VIC or SumZero, flex it. But just having a viewer account? Leave it off.

Formatting

Your resume should be one page. I am not writing this article for very experienced professionals, so yes, none of you should have a two-page resume.

You don’t need a summary statement. If your resume isn’t already telling a compelling story, a generic paragraph at the top won’t fix that. “I am a hard-working, team-oriented professional with great attention to detail,”¹ tells me absolutely nothing.

Always send your resume as a PDF. Word documents can look different depending on the recipient’s version of Word, and you don’t want formatting issues making you look sloppy.

Get into the habit of saying more with less (not just on resume). For example, use active voice: “I did X” (3 words) instead of passive “X was done by me.” (5 words) Again, use ChatGPT for help.

Use consistent font. Don’t overuse bolding. Make sure things align.

Search for double spaces and replace them with a single space.

Make sure there’s spacing between job experiences—too crammed, and it’s hard to read. If your resume doesn’t fill an entire page, adjust spacing so it fits neatly.

If a bullet has just one or two words hanging onto the next line, reword—there’s always a way to make it fit.

No bullet should be longer than two lines. Also, remember that recruiters aren’t always finance experts—if you use industry jargon, define it the first time you use it.

Stick to a conversative resume format. Finance is an old-school industry—it hasn’t changed much, and flashy templates won’t help.

Finally, be consistent. If you write out “January” in one section, don’t switch to “Jan” elsewhere.

Skills & Interests

List core skills: Excel, Bloomberg, and equivalents. If you know Python, VBA, or SQL, include them—but keep in mind they won’t set you apart.

Interests: Your interests section should be memorable. “Reading” is a great interest (I’m definitely biased in favor), but every investor reads. Pick something more specific and non-controversial. Sports teams aren’t hobbies (playing sports is) and can be polarizing—mentioning the Green Bay Packers on a Chicago-based job application might not be the best move. And again, be specific. Instead of just “reading,” say “reading 18th-century Latin American history.” Specificity is a route to impact.

Books: I’ve always included a few books on my resume. Listing lesser-known, high-quality books can spark conversation. It can also help align you stylistically if your prior firm had a different investment approach. For example, if you worked for a deep-value firm, you can’t change that fact—but you can include books from Phil Fisher, Peter Lynch, or Chris Mayer to show you’re proactively adapting to a different style. Just make sure you’ve actually read them and can discuss the book content intelligently. While it won’t completely change how you’re perceived, it signals that you’re actively preparing for a style change.

Still unsure about the competitiveness of your resume?

What resume tips helped you during your research job search? Comment below, I might add to this list!

Resources for your public equity job search

Check out my other published articles and resources:

• Fund Profiles

• Investing

• Book Reviews

• Career

• Who is who in finance and business

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1. Plot twist: attention is misspelled with one t as “atention”