The One-Page Investment Banking CV Template (With a Line-by-Line Example)

You need a CV that gets you past the first screen at a bank, and you need it to fit on one page. Good news: there's a standard format that almost every successful IB applicant uses, and once you know it, building yours takes an afternoon.

Below you'll get the exact template, the formatting rules, how to write each section, and before-and-after bullet examples you can copy the logic from. Stick around for the checklist at the end before you hit submit.

Why Banking CVs Look the Way They Do

Investment banking recruiting runs on volume. Analysts, associates and HR teams go through a big stack of applications, often between live deals, so they skim.

That's why banks reward a plain, predictable format. When your CV looks like everyone else's in structure, the reader's eyes go straight to what matters: your school, your grades, your experience, and your numbers.

A few things this means for you:

• One page, no exceptions for students and junior candidates.
• No design flourishes. No colors, icons, columns, skill bars or headshots (for US and UK roles).
• Substance over style. A boring layout with strong bullets beats a beautiful layout with vague ones every time.

The Template

Here's the layout. Copy the structure, then fill it with your own content.

                          FIRSTNAME LASTNAME
        City, Country | +1 555 123 4567 | [email protected] | LinkedIn

EDUCATION
University Name                                              City, Country
Bachelor of Science in Economics, Minor in Mathematics       Expected May 2026
- GPA: 3.8/4.0 | Dean's List (all semesters)
- Relevant Coursework: Corporate Finance, Financial Accounting, Econometrics
- Honors: [Scholarship or award]

EXPERIENCE
Firm Name                                                    City, Country
Summer Analyst, [Group]                                      Jun 2025 - Aug 2025
- Action verb + what you did + how/with what + result (quantified)
- Action verb + what you did + how/with what + result (quantified)
- Action verb + what you did + how/with what + result (quantified)

Firm Name                                                    City, Country
Intern, [Team]                                               Jun 2024 - Aug 2024
- Bullet
- Bullet

LEADERSHIP & ACTIVITIES
Student Investment Club                                      City, Country
Vice President                                               Sep 2023 - Present
- Bullet
- Bullet

SKILLS, CERTIFICATIONS & INTERESTS
Languages: English (native), Spanish (fluent), French (conversational)
Technical: Excel (financial modeling, VBA basics), PowerPoint, Capital IQ
Certifications: [Course or certification]
Interests: [Specific interests, not "reading" or "travel"]

That's it. Four sections, reverse chronological order inside each one, everything aligned.

Formatting Rules That Actually Matter

Small formatting slips signal carelessness, which is exactly the trait banks screen against. Lock these in:

• Font: Times New Roman, Garamond, Calibri or Arial. Pick one and use it everywhere.
• Size: 10 to 12 point for body text, slightly larger for your name.
• Margins: roughly 0.5 to 1 inch. If you need margins smaller than that to fit, you have too much content.
• Dates and locations: right-aligned, same format every time ("Jun 2025 - Aug 2025", not "June 2025 - 08/25").
• Bold: firm names, school names and section headers. Don't bold random words in bullets.
• File: save as PDF, named something like Firstname_Lastname_CV.pdf.

Pro tip: use tab stops or a borderless table to right-align dates. Hitting the space bar until things "look" aligned always breaks when someone opens the file on a different machine.

Section by Section

Header

Name, phone, email, city. A LinkedIn URL is optional but useful if your profile is clean and up to date.

Skip the full street address, the photo and the "Curriculum Vitae" title at the top. Use a professional email, ideally your university one or a simple firstname.lastname address.

Education

For students, education goes first. It's often the first filter a screener applies.

Include:

• University, degree, major/minor, expected graduation date
• GPA or grade: in the US, many banks use GPA as an early filter, and leaving it off usually makes readers assume it's low. In the UK, list your predicted or achieved classification (First, 2:1) and often your A-level results.
• Honors and scholarships, if you have them
• Relevant coursework: 3 to 5 courses max, finance and accounting heavy
• Study abroad, as a sub-line or separate entry

Once you're past your first year or two of university, high school can usually go, unless it's academically notable or you're a first-year with little else to show. If you went somewhere selective or had standout results, a single line is fine.

Experience

This is where you win or lose. Each role gets:

• Firm name, location, title, dates
• 2 to 4 bullets, most important first
• Concrete numbers wherever honest numbers exist

Your most relevant roles get the most bullets. A boutique M&A internship deserves four. A summer job at a café gets one or two, focused on whatever is transferable (responsibility, handling money, managing people).

Leadership & Activities

Student investment clubs, sports teams, societies you run, volunteer work. Banks like leadership and commitment, so emphasize roles where you held a title, ran something, or stuck with it for years.

Treat these like jobs: same format, same quantified bullets.

Skills, Certifications & Interests

Keep this tight, usually two to four lines.

• Languages: be honest about levels. "Fluent" means you could do an interview in it.
• Technical: Excel, PowerPoint, and any data tools you've actually used (Capital IQ, FactSet, Bloomberg, Python). If you list Bloomberg, expect "What did you use it for?"
• Certifications: relevant modeling courses or exams like CFA Level I if you've passed or are registered.
• Interests: be specific. "Marathon running (3 completed)" or "Cooking regional Italian food" starts conversations. "Reading, travel, music" does not.

How to Write Bullets That Get Interviews

Use this formula for every bullet:

Action verb + what you did + how or with what + result or scale

Here's what that looks like in practice.

Before:

Helped with financial analysis for clients

After:

Built a comparable companies analysis of 12 mid-cap software peers to support valuation for a $150M sell-side mandate

Before:

Responsible for the investment club's portfolio

After:

Led a 6-person team managing a $50K student fund; pitched 4 equity ideas, 2 of which were added to the portfolio

Before:

Worked as a waiter

After:

Served 80+ covers per shift in a high-volume restaurant; trained 3 new hires on POS and order workflow

Notice what changed: a strong verb, a specific task, and a number that gives the reader a sense of scale.

Strong verbs to start bullets

• Analysis: analyzed, modeled, valued, evaluated, researched
• Output: built, drafted, prepared, produced, designed
• Leadership: led, managed, organized, launched, coordinated
• Results: increased, reduced, grew, secured, delivered

Avoid "helped," "assisted," "responsible for" and "involved in." They hide what you actually did.

A note on deal numbers

If you worked on live deals, describe them without naming confidential clients. "Supported a $200M sell-side process for a healthcare services company" is standard. Only cite deal sizes you're allowed to share and genuinely know.

What to Cut

If you're over one page, start deleting here:

• Objective or summary statements. The role you're applying for is your objective.
• "References available upon request." Everyone knows.
• Soft-skill lists like "team player, hard-working, detail-oriented." Show these through bullets instead.
• Weak bullets. A role with two strong bullets beats a role with five filler ones.
• Old, irrelevant activities from early high school.

Mistakes That Get CVs Binned

• Typos and inconsistencies. One misspelling in an industry obsessed with accuracy is a real problem. Read it out loud, then have a friend read it.
• Two pages. For students and junior candidates, this signals you can't prioritize.
• Overstating your role. "Led the acquisition of..." as an intern will get picked apart in the interview.
• Inconsistent tense. Present tense for current roles, past tense for finished ones.
• Creative templates. Columns and graphics can also confuse applicant tracking systems that parse your CV.

Your CV Is Your Interview Script

Here's the part people forget: every line on your CV is fair game in an interview.

The classic opener, "Walk me through your resume," is built on this page. And interviewers love to pick one bullet and dig in. If you wrote "Built a DCF model," you need to be able to explain how you projected free cash flow, what discount rate you used, and why.

So for each bullet, prep a 30-second story: the situation, what you did, and what came out of it. If you can't talk about a bullet comfortably, rewrite it or remove it.

Final Checklist Before You Submit

• Fits on one page with readable margins and font size
• Sections in order: Education, Experience, Leadership, Skills/Interests
• Reverse chronological order within each section
• Dates and locations right-aligned and formatted identically
• GPA or grade included (if it helps you)
• Every bullet starts with a strong action verb
• Numbers in as many bullets as honestly possible
• No typos (read aloud, plus a second pair of eyes)
• You can talk about every single line for at least 30 seconds
• Saved as a PDF with a clean file name

Build it once using this template, then tweak it for each application. A clean, tight, one-page CV won't land you the offer on its own, but it gets you into the room, and that's where the real work starts.