Private buyers
The CV is an essential part of how we communicate details about you as a buyer through to the sell side advisers. The sellers will wish to know as much about you and your background as possible, in order that they can report back to their client and give them the comfort that you are a serious and credible option. Only by having as much information as possible about any buyer can they do that.
The window to your experience, relevance and suitability
The CV is the primary document in terms of providing the background information about an individual. This document should include a comprehensive career history and the various roles occupied over the years, along will key skills, sectors of experience and in particular, any experience within mergers and acquisitions including any businesses where there is a current directorship/equity shareholding. This aspect is particularly relevant in the context of buying a business. A seller will be more interested in a prospective buyer if they have already owned a business or been a shareholder in one, whether a minority or majority holding and also, whether the buyer has had any previous experience in buying and selling businesses. That is not to say that, if you haven’t got this type of experience you won’t be taken seriously as a buyer, it’s more a case of the seller looking at a prospective buyer’s background “in the round” and taking a view as to their relevance and therefore, credibility based on the full picture.
What do I need to show on the CV ?
The key areas for inclusion include the following (in no particular order):
- A profile summary consisting of a few key sentences, normally situated at the top of the CV outlining key experiences. This summary should give sufficient detail such that, if the reader didn’t read any further down the CV, then they would be able to position the person exactly as to seniority, functional discipline(s), sectors, size of business and any specialist expertise.
- Job roles
- Achievements – it is crucial to quantify each of these where possible
- Duties and responsibilities
- Sectors
- Size of company – turnover/ebitda (as long as this is not confidential information), staff numbers
- Language skills
- Address / mobile / email address
- Specialist expertise
How long should the CV document be ?
There is no right and wrong answer here but essentially 2 pages to a maximum of 3 pages is the norm. There should be lots of bullet points covering the achievements and duties/responsibilities and a lot of white space so that individual paragraphs and sections stand out and are easily legible.
Should I leave any gaps or miss out any information ?
Definitely not. The CV needs to show the full picture otherwise questions will be asked which can cause ambiguity and this can potentially lead to the seller losing interest in an individual buyer.
What else can I use to demonstrate my experiences ?
After the CV, the other main way of finding out about a person is via their Linkedin profile page. This a way of a seller “checking you out” before agreeing to progress you as a potential buyer. If you have a Linkedin profile, Valius encourage you to include this on the Valius buyer profile summary page, which is sent across to the sell side advisers when you progress any specific business within the BuyerHub business search facility. This summary gives the sellers and their advisers the information they need to properly assess you as a prospective buyer.
Valius can assist you with the construction of your CV. Please contact us at support@valiusgroup.co.uk for a discussion on this.