Personal Financial Advisor Resume Examples in 2023

Personal Financial Advisor Resume Examples

Years of Experience

Tips for Writing a Better Personal Finance Advisor Resume

Integrate your relevant finance and non-finance background

To write a great financial advisor resume, you’ll need to first take the full measure of your relevant background. Follow these two steps:

Step 1: For each job in your work history, brainstorm and write down your answer to the question: What are you most proud of about this experience? Write down memories as they occur to you, and don’t worry yet whether the details are relevant or well-organized. Resist the urge to complete this step in any structured or linear way. The point here is just to generate plenty of positive information you can then review more critically.

Step 2: Now with everything in front of you, go through and remove any details that don’t speak to your target job. Evaluate each detail one by one, always answering the same key question: Does this overlap with the duties you’d like to have in your next financial advisor position? When in doubt, move the detail to another document so it’s out of your current writing process.

If you follow this process diligently, you may find yourself deleting irrelevant details from your past financial advisor jobs, while identifying and keeping relevant details from your non-finance jobs. This is good. It’s a sign you’re figuring out how to (a) focus your directly related finance experience and (b) show the value of other chapters in your work history.

Quantify your financial advisor experience

When you give specific numbers and results, hiring managers can better grasp the scope and impact of your work. Within each bullet point of your Experience section, see if you can include answers to the questions “How much?” or “How many?” If you don’t know the exact number, you can use the tilde (~) symbol to indicate an estimate or average.

Strike the right tone to describe your work as an advisor

For nearly any piece of regular writing, it’s important to choose language that sets and maintains a clear tone or “voice”. That rule applies equally to your job search documents. Here’s a quick overview of the voice you should aim for on each one:

• Resume: formal, forthright
• Cover Letter: engaged, confident
• LinkedIn Profile: friendly, personable

To achieve a forthright voice on your resume, use simple sentences and straightforward accounts of your experience. Keep this advice in mind especially when writing your Profile section, since you may be tempted (or think you need) to use terms like “Exceptional” or “Outstanding at” when a more modest yet direct phrase like “Skilled at” is better.

Common Key Skills for Personal Financial Advisor Resumes

You can improve your resume by adding keywords.

That’s because most hiring companies now use an applicant tracking system (ATS), which scans each submitted resume for keywords relevant to the job opening at hand. When the ATS scans a resume with many relevant keywords, it flags the document for the hiring manager.

To make your resume ATS-friendly, add a keyword-rich “Skills” or “Expertise” section to your resume (as in the examples above). Here are some common keywords for personal financial advisors:

Common Action Verbs for Personal Financial Advisor Resumes

One of the most common resume mistakes is using too few verbs. When you repeat the same generic verb (say, “Manage”) several times, it distracts the reader and fails to show the dynamic nature of your work. The following list will help you mix up the verbs on your personal financial advisor resume:

How to Align Your Resume With the Job Description

One thing that’s unique to each job posting is the description of the hiring firm. You can enhance your resume by tailoring it based on any details about the firm that resonate with you. Follow these four steps:

Step 1: Jot down a few notes on the type of work environment you like best. For instance, you may prefer an environment that’s:

• Client-focused
• Collaborative
• Forward-looking
• Process-oriented
• Quality-focused

Step 2: When you find a job posting that intrigues you, look for any details about the hiring firm or its work culture.

Step 3: Compare those details against your preferred work environment, and highlight any overlap.

Step 4: Add a line or two to your Profile emphasizing that similarity. For example, say you prefer a work environment that’s client-focused and you find a posting that says “We are an organization that places customer satisfaction at the center of every decision”. You can then add a Profile line such as:

This simple exercise can make your resume more accurately show why you’re a great fit for the role as well as why the hiring manager should call you for an interview.