Loan Officer Resume Examples, Formats, Templates [+Tips]

Regardless of who you are, humble employee or humble employer, loans are an indispensable part of the business. This makes loan officers - the people who help you get a loan from banks, mortgage companies, and credit unions - pretty important in society (and pretty well compensated too, with an average annual salary of $182,341!). 

So, how can you make your loan officer resume stand out from the crowd? First, you should probably know that there’s much more to loan officers than just declaring someone eligible for a loan, as the job responsibilities for this position include: 

• Evaluating loan applications by reviewing financial documents, assessing risk, and making informed decisions.
• Interacting with customers in consultations and communicating loan conditions.
• Ensuring that all loans are accurately prepared, adhere to regulations, and are meticulously recorded.

In other words, loan officers need to have a background in financial analysis, great customer service, sharp negotiation skills, and keen attention to detail. And they need to reflect all of this on a professional loan officer resume. Don’t worry, once we’re through with this article - which comes complete with 5 stellar loan officer resume examples - you’ll be ready to smash that “Submit Application” in no time.

How to Write a Loan Officer Resume

While the structure of a loan officer resume format depends on your experiences and the type of resume template you choose, your resume should still include a resume profile, work experience, education, and skills section, with a possible certifications section if relevant. 

Let’s see how they all contribute to creating a professional loan officer resume with this step-by-step guide.

1) Resume Profile

Let’s address the elephant in the room: what is a resume profile? This is a blanket term for your loan officer resume summary, objective, and header, and not in that order. Essentially what this is is your first shot at grabbing the hiring manager’s attention, which means that you need to follow these instructions to a tee in order to get your proverbial foot in the door (or past the ATS, but more on that later). 

First, let’s talk about the resume header. This is a short title that clearly conveys who you are and what skills or specializations you have up your sleeves. It can be simple, stating a current position or intended position (which is advisable for entry-level applications and fresh graduates), or it can be a bit more detailed by highlighting a strength and a quantifiable achievement. 

Check out the following resume headers for more inspiration.

Second, we’ve moved on to the loan officer resume summary. A resume summary is a 2-3 sentence paragraph that whizzes through your career achievements and expands upon your resume header. In this section, you can highlight your sublime loan officer resume skills, relevant loan experience, and any exceptional achievements.

Here are some stellar samples to make your loan officer resume summary pop!

Lastly, we’ve got the loan officer resume objective. Resume objectives (AKA career objectives) are little more than a sentence that outlines your motivations for applying, career goals, and outlook. They’re a nice touch for experienced professionals and a compulsory add for those writing a resume for loan officers with no experience. 

So what makes a good objective for a loan officer resume?

2) Work Experience

Now onto the most important section of your loan officer resume - no, really. Ensure your resume dazzles the hiring managers by:

• Using Keywords From the Job Description
  Knowing how to choose the right keywords isn’t difficult, but it is mandatory if you want any hope of getting the job. That’s because hiring managers are looking for these magic words to see if there’s a match with the JD. It doesn’t have to be a 100% match, and it would be weird if you copied and pasted everything into your loan officer resume, but you do have to include enough to make you the right fit. 

• ONLY Using Action Verbs
  Action verbs are key to a great resume by bringing the focus to what you, yes you, did and achieved in a confident manner. You can choose any verb you want, but we recommend using one of 30 action verbs in the table below as these are specifically tailored for loan officer resumes. 

• Quantifying Your Achievements

In addition to conveying your confidence, you also need to give credibility to the achievements stated in your loan officer resume. This is most commonly done by quantifying your results, so by adding numbers and amounts. While there’s no strict format for how you should incorporate your quantifications, you can always fall back on this nifty template: Action Verb + Task + Quantifiable Result. 

3) Skills

While the loan officer resume skills that hiring managers look for vary, it’s always a safe bet to emphasize your skills related to financial analysis, customer service, negotiation, and attention to detail. Note, however, that any skills you list should be balanced, i.e. the same number of hard skills (technical skills) as soft skills. 

Not sure what loan officer resume skills look like? Here’s a list of 40 skills to choose from:

4) Education

Unlike other jobs, loan officers are not required to have a university degree in any major. At least for entry-level positions. Regardless, you should still mention any academic institution that you’ve attended. For high school graduates, the bare minimum that’s needed for this section on a loan officer resume is your high school. For fresh graduates, it’s your university (no high school necessary). 

Loan Officer Banker Resume Writing Tips

Aside from knowing how to write a professional loan officer resume, you also have to be aware of the common mistakes made by applicants…which you won’t do if you follow these tips:

Beat the ATS with the Right Format

If the company you’re applying to doesn’t review applications by hand - i.e. by person - it’s likely that they use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) which scans your resume for keywords. While this is a great tool for HR, it’s not so nice for you, the applicant, because ATSs don’t usually recognize charts, tables, pictures, or columns, which means that the style of resume templates you can choose from are limited.

Thankfully, this isn’t the case with CakeResume. With an array of stylish ATS-friendly resume templates to choose from, you don’t have to put practicality over style for your loan officer resume - you can do both!

Choose the Right Resume Format

Choosing the right resume format for your loan officer resume comes down to what your work experiences are and your progression. Usually, this narrows down to two out of the four resume formats: the reverse chronological resume format and the functional (skills-based) resume format.

The former is the most widely used format, chosen for its clear outline of work experiences, starting from most recent and onwards. The latter is the recommended resume format for anyone writing a loan officer resume with no experience because it better presents your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses.

Understand that Customization is Key

Make your loan officer resume as relevant to the position as possible by adopting keywords from the JD (that’s Job Description) and steering clear of anything that doesn’t concern the specific position. This is a resume, not a CV, after all. Not sure what the difference is? Better check out this article: key differences between resumes and CVs.

You can also customize your resume by doing your research about the company and their mission, vision, and values. This can shape your loan officer resume objective and any relevant skills and experiences you should highlight.

Remember to a Cover Letter

While occasionally optional, cover letters are a key part of your application that should not be overlooked. An extension of your loan officer resume that just about fills a page, the cover letter is your chance to expand upon what makes you the best fit for the position and the company.

Professional Loan Officer Resume Examples

Now that we’ve established all the important parts of a resume, it’s time to see for yourself what makes a professional loan officer resume. Below are five loan officer resume examples to browse, starting with a resume for a loan officer with no experience, followed by a junior loan officer resume, personal loan officer resume, commercial loan officer resume and senior loan officer resume.

Resume for Loan Officer No Experience

Junior Loan Officer Resume

Personal Loan Officer Resume

Commercial Loan Officer Resume

Senior Loan Officer Resume

FAQs

What is a Loan Officer?

Getting a loan approved is a three step, three person process that starts with loan officers. Loan officers interact with customers, providing excellent customer service to help them choose a loan and evaluate their eligibility for a loan. This is different from loan processors who check the documents made by loan officers to ensure accuracy. The last piece of the puzzle falls to underwriters, who make the final decision on whether that customer can actually get that loan. 

How to write a resume for a loan officer with no experience?

There are two steps to creating an excellent loan officer resume for applicants with no experience. First, you need to prioritize your loan officer resume objective, as this will make hiring managers focus on your haves rather than your have-nots. Second, you need to emphasize your transferable loan officer resume skills (financial analysis, negotiation, and attention to detail) using a functional resume format.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve covered all the elements of a professional loan officer resume. To really nail this resume, you need to remember to focus on your financial, analytical, and communicative skills. Education is important, but it’s not a game changer like your skills are, so keep that at the forefront of your brain when using Cake’s free resume builder to craft your loan officer resume.