The managing director resume,
and which managing director you are.
Managing director describes two unrelated jobs. In an investment bank it is a senior revenue-producing rank with a book behind it; in the UK, India, Australia and much of the Gulf it usually means the person running the company, often a statutory director on the board. A resume that leaves this unsettled is read against the wrong standard.
Two jobs, one title
The ambiguity is not a curiosity of language. It decides which metrics belong on the page, which recruiters open the file, and whether the title is read as an ascent or a plateau. In banking, MD sits above executive director and below the partner-equivalent ranks; there may be two hundred of them in one institution. In a UK or Indian operating company, there is one, and everybody reports to them.
Two further distinctions sit underneath. Group managing director is not the same as managing director of a subsidiary, and the second is often the more demanding job with a fraction of the authority. And in India the appointment is statutory: a managing director is appointed by the board under the Companies Act, with duties and personal liabilities attached. That is a materially different position from a job title, and it should be stated as one.
Which MD, in the role line. “Managing Director, India — wholly owned subsidiary of a Swiss group, reporting to the Group CEO” or “Managing Director, Leveraged Finance — 11 producers, $46m in fee revenue”. Either settles it in eleven words.
Whether the appointment was statutory, and for which years. A board appointment under the Companies Act, or a directorship on the register at Companies House, carries obligations a job title never does.
What you could commit without asking: capital, hiring, price, market entry, contract signature. This is what separates a country head with a mandate from a country head with a reporting line.
Whether you carried a number or carried the company. Both are managing directors. They are recruited by different people, paid on different curves, and confusing the two vocabularies makes the page unreadable to either.
Metrics, by which reading applies
Choose the set that matches your seat and drop the other entirely. A resume carrying both — deal credit and plant utilisation, a revenue book and an attrition rate — reads as somebody who has not decided what they are.
Producer reading: credited revenue across three consecutive years, gross and net of splits. One peak year invites the obvious question about the other two, and the question gets asked.
Producer reading: origination against execution. How many mandates arrived because of you, and how many clients were inherited on promotion. Everyone claims origination; a count of new relationships settles it.
Producer reading: what you built beside the book — producers carried, juniors promoted to director, revenue per head against the desk average. A producer who does not build is a different hire from one who does.
Company reading: revenue and operating profit with the starting position and the market context beside them. A business growing 8% in a market growing 14% has lost share while appearing to succeed.
Company reading: cash, not only profit. Net debt, the working capital cycle, and whether growth was funded internally. A managing director answers for solvency in a way no functional head does.
Company reading: what you did with the board and the shareholder — a plan approved, a capital request won, a dividend policy set, a joint venture renegotiated, a regulator or ministry handled. Functional resumes have no vocabulary for this part, and it is often the job.
Where MD resumes lose the reader
The failures are specific to the title, and all three come from assuming the reader shares your definition of it.
Letting the title speak. “Managing Director, 2018–2024”, with no entity size and no note on the appointment. A reader with sixty seconds guesses, and a guess always resolves downwards.
Borrowing the wrong vocabulary. A country MD writing in deal-desk language, or a banking MD listing headcount and process improvements. Each reads as an application for the other job.
Claiming the company's performance whole. “Grew revenue from $120m to $310m” across six years, in a market that tripled, with two acquisitions funded by the parent. Separate what you decided from what the market did and what was bought.
Three lines, rewritten.
The same fact, made checkable. Every figure is illustrative of the shape an evidenced line takes — nothing here is invented on your behalf.
The claim on the left is not wrong. It is simply unreadable as evidence: nothing in it can be checked, compared or priced. The version on the right makes the same statement in a form a search partner can act on.
Managing Director responsible for the overall management and P&L of the India business.
Managing Director, India — statutory appointment under the Companies Act, reporting to the Group CEO with a local board of five. $140m revenue, 1,900 people, 3 plants and 210 distributors. Committed hiring, pricing and capex to $2m alone; anything above went to the group board.
Managing Director, Investment Banking. Consistently ranked among the top performers in the region.
Managing Director, Industrials M&A. Credited fee revenue of $18.4m, $24.1m and $21.6m over three years, around 60% of it net of splits. Nine mandates came from clients I brought to the firm; four were inherited. Two of my three VPs made director in that period.
Turned around the business and returned it to profitability within two years.
Took the business from a $6m operating loss to $9m profit in 26 months on flat revenue. Closed the two smallest plants, moved 40% of volume to contract manufacture, and cut the range from 180 SKUs to 62. Revenue stayed flat because I stopped chasing the volume that caused the loss.