If you've been looking for a consulting resume complete guide, we've
got it for you, both in writing on our website and here
on YouTube. We've got a great overlay of what makes
an awesome consulting resume. And we should know, we edit the most
resumes in the industry every year. We edit hundreds, and thousands, of
resumes a year and we've edited more and more as the years go by.
So as we edit these resumes we get really great insight into what makes
somebody successful on the job and what doesn't.
As a hint, we're really good at helping people that even don't think they have a
chance get in the door. So there's a lot that
you can tweak in your consulting resume. What should it
be? And what should it look like? Here's where we're going to start.
I'm just going to lay down the law on what a consulting resume is, then we're going to
talk about 10 consulting resume tips. I'm just going
to boom, boom, boom those. Then after we do that, we're going to
walk through the ways that different consulting firms view resumes.
And finally, we're going to end with common resume mistakes that you
definitely should avoid. I'm Jenny Rae Le Roux, the Managing Director
of Management Consulted, and I'm an ex-Bain consultant. When I was
thinking about going through this process,
I kind of hashed together my resume and thank goodness somebody took a look at
it before I applied to McKinsey and Bain and other top firms. And one of the
great things that I learned as I was going through this is that a McKinsey
resume is actually really similar to a Bain resume,
but a consulting resume is different than a regular resume.
So as I walk through this introduction, I just want to make that super clear.
First of all, the format of a consulting resume is different
than a regular resume. When I think of a regular resume, I think of a vanilla
resume in the worst sense of that word. And what I'm talking
about here is that the resume conforms to a very similar
format across firms. Now the good news is that firms that are
more open and cool than consulting with jiving with the times
might accept resumes that all look super different, but consulting firms want to
be able to page resume, page resume, page resume, look
through them and compare them really quickly to one another. They don't want
infographic resumes. They don't want things that are
different. They don't want to link to a video about you. No, they don't want those.
They want a very standard straightforward resume.
One that will look like a pretty, best-in-class resume.
And if you want something to proxy it off of,
MBA resumes are the closest to consulting resumes.
Firms expect this format. In addition, they're so competitive that they're
viewed for one minute maximum, if somebody is doing a detailed reading of
your resume. 5 seconds is more the likelihood.
So it has to be absolutely perfect, because in 5 seconds,
I can pick a mistake out, but I might not be able to get to the
meat of everything else unless I take a little bit more time, so it's got to be perfect.
We don't have any glaring mistakes and
we'll talk through what some of those can be.
There are a couple of key areas that you have to include in a consulting resume.
They are, number 1, that you have a strong academic background and you need
to have an education section that talks about this. It will
indicate in there that you have intellectual
curiosity and a strong work ethic which is measured by your GPA.
Tragic right? Your GPA does matter when it comes to consulting resumes.
If you don't have a good GPA, we take it off.
In addition your SAT scores, they also matter.
And SATs or GMAT scores if you're at the MBA or PhD level, or
GRE scores if you're a master's level student.
In those situations those also will be a part of your academic background.
The second thing that's important are impressive work experiences. And no,
we don't mean consulting work experiences. We mean experiences that
have brand names on them, that are
quantifiable in terms of your work and your achievements, and demonstrate
your ability to work independently and accomplish something of meaning
for a business or an organization. If they are quantifiable, it will feel real.
So we make sure that there are numbers
all throughout these. In addition, there need to be at least
two experiences, and ideally three to four.
Finally, interesting extracurriculars. As a leader in your community, they are
looking for you to demonstrate things that go beyond
your normal work scope, demonstrating a desire to be involved in communities and
your leadership ability will be super critical.
So as long as you have interesting extracurriculars, it's going to
really be powerful as you're working through
this part of your resume. So in summary, education is one part,
experience is one part, and then leadership is another part.
Finally, the final section of the resume we recommend you putting in,
not everybody does but we really highly recommend it, is a personal section at
the bottom. That's where you include languages that
you speak, other extracurricular activities,
and most importantly, the final line of the resume which is called interests.
Interest is where you highlight how interesting you are with
things like shark cage diving, or lavender making, or things where you do,
you know, makery crafty cool interesting things that somebody would want to have
a conversation about. It doesn't have to be any one type of thing.
It's just that the uniqueness of you really needs to pop
in that interest section. Now on to our consulting resume tips. We've got 10 of
them and I'm just gonna bam through them. So tip number 1 is that you've got to
include the sections that I talked about before. And as a recap, it's education,
professional experience, leadership, and activities,
and then personal at the bottom, which includes your skills and interests.
In addition, at the top of the page there should be a piece of it which I don't
consider content but it's just critical to have,
which is your name and contact information. Ideally they do want to see
your address on there. They want to see your phone number, and
they want to see your email. Linkedin is optional.
Tip number 2, use consistent formatting throughout your consulting resume.
Your font size needs to be the same, your bolding needs to be the same, your
margins need to be the same. You would be shocked at how many resumes we look at
where this is not consistent. So ultimately,
consistent formatting - deal breaker if you don't do it well.
Number 3, you need to fill up 1 entire page but
not have more than 1 page. So when you fill up that first page, it
will look like it's full but still readable. What does that mean?
Entries of no more than 5 lines in an individual entry on the page,
some white space around it, but a full looking page that's like
wow, I just want to take a few more seconds than 5
to look through what this person accomplished. When you go into 2 pages,
guess what they're gonna read? Page number 1. So fill up one entire page.
Tip number 4, use strong action verbs
for your bullets, and as you're going through these strong
action verbs, make sure that you vary them.
Those strong action verbs could include things like "led, managed,
organized, oversaw." Don't do things like "I believe I did a good job." So strong
action verbs are going to really matter, and again vary them in each one of the bullets.
You should use no more than 2 instances of any action verb, and
ideally only 1. Tip number 5 is that you need to
focus on measurable results. The focus on measurable results is a
really, really critical part of what you do.
Because it ties not just the actions that you took but also the outcomes of
those actions. Tip number 6 is add as many numbers as
you can everywhere, and at a minimum the numbers need to be
one per line. Here's our rule when we're editing a
resume, if there's no number in the line, try to add it. If somebody can't add it,
delete the line. Those are your 2 binary choices.
In every single line, there must be a number. Try it yourself.
Do your resume with numbers and then delete all of them and see how much
harder it is to read something when there's no numbers involved.
So add as many numbers as you can everywhere, and a minimum
of one number per line. Tip number 7, start building your resume right away.
If you wait, you're likely to make more mistakes and miss out on some of
the nuance as you're going through the networking
process and building into things that people are asking you about or
highlighting in your background. Tip number 8, get
your resume reviewed by others. Do not do this alone.
We're happy to review it for you. We'll always tell you whether it's good enough
or not, you can just send it to us by email
team@managementconsulted.com and you can just say, "Hey is my resume
good enough or do I need an edit?" We'll tell you if it's good enough. Great!
If it needs an edit, we'll tell you - we'd love to work with you on that edit
if you decide to go forward with one. Tip number 9, submit and send your
consulting resume as a PDF. It's absolutely critical that you don't
send it as a Word document. People have different sizes and shapes
of Word, different programs, you want to make sure you don't have any
mistakes that come through - so PDF. Check the PDF once you've PDF'd it to
make sure your margins and everything is on there,
and then send it off. And then finally, Tip number 10, this should go without
saying but I'm going to say it anyhow. Double, triple, quadruple check your
resume. If you, especially if you don't get
outside opinions about whether it's good or not,
double, triple, quadruple check. Put it to bed overnight, wake up in the morning,
look at it with fresh eyes. Make sure that you walk away from it and
take another look at it. I'm not talking about finagling 1 word
here or there. I'm talking about just taking a step back
and looking at the big picture and making sure that the formatting and the
style and the balance of your overall resume is correct.
Now there are a couple of different ways that consulting firms
view resumes, and I just want to walk through those.
First, consulting firms expect that high quality management consulting
candidates will have high quality management consulting resumes.
The firm's pedigree does not matter. Every single one of them is charging
a lot of money and a lot more than they'll pay you to a firm to do work
that matters to them, so they want to make sure that when they pop you in
front of a client, you're not going to make a mistake.
This is considered to be the ultimate open book test.
You have an unlimited amount of time to build experience and write about it, so
you better darn well ace the test. That's the first thing.
The second thing is that McKinsey, Deloitte, etc. and other
firms, the main difference between them is not
the resume that you need. A McKinsey resume and a Deloitte resume
are going to be super similar. The main difference is that McKinsey is
just more competitive because they have a similar number of applications, but
fewer spots. Same resume, different stakes.
Additionally another thing that you need to know about consulting firms is
that outstanding candidates differentiate themselves primarily in
one way - stronger brand name professional experiences.
So they'll have the academics good or
great, but the main thing that they have that
gets them in the door - strong brand name professional experiences.
If you don't have that experience and you want to build a
resume for the future, make sure that you go get it. It's really important.
In addition, they're looking for across the firms,
regardless of the firm, that you can communicate a number. So that rule there
must be a number in every line, it's a rule that we have no
no matter what the firm is. If it's McKinsey or LEK,
if it's an LEK resume or a PwC resume.
All of those, those matter for making sure you have numbers in every line. So you're
going to use basically the same resume across firms,
which is awesome. Finally all consulting firms are looking
for this magic person that feels like theirs.
So if you get a recommendation from somebody that you're networking with
from a great resume that we've already edited and they say change something,
modify one thing, do it, without fail do that thing.
But in general, that's just because they're trying to be helpful
modifiers not because it makes the resume
unequivocally better or worse. I'm gonna end with a couple of
common resume mistakes to avoid so that you can make sure that this checklist
is ticked off for you. Number 1, just grab a template that you found online
and use it because it looks cool. (No) It's got to have the sections that I
talked about before. It needs to be balanced, it needs to look professional.
If you're going to get a template, you better get a Harvard MBA template, but
get a template that makes sense for this industry.
Second mistake, see it all the time - go over 1 page.
I know, I know, your experience is better than everybody else's and they should
want to read 2 pages about you. They don't.
1 page - hard and fast rule - U.S., international, everywhere. Even if the
firm says that they'll read your 2-page resume. They still
don't want to. Number 3, do not use super small font or super small margins.
Both of those are examples of ways that you cannot focus.
You need to be able to focus your story to fit within the 1 page,
in a readable font. Remember some of the people that will look at this are a
little bit older than you. Be kind to them/us.
Next, make sure that you do not have any typos or grammatical errors.
If you do they will throw you out. It is really easy when I was reading 450
resumes or when somebody's doing that today, for them to say "oh gosh,
I need 50 of them - this is an easy pass."
Don't make that mistake. Number 5, do not use different types of fonts.
Stick with 1. It does not add color, it adds distraction - not good.
Number 6, if you lack specific details and have generic bullets
without numbers, you will fail in the resume screening process.
You might have incredible experience, but you are not communicating it vividly
in their mind. Number 7, want to make a mistake, just rely on
yourself, just hang out by yourself and get no outside feedback.
You all need career service professionals, friends, and us.
You need people in your corner to take a look at your documents to make sure that
they're ready to go. Number 8, oh this one is so painful
for me to even talk about, just include high school information on
there. You know what that message is, you peaked in high school. Don't put high
school information anywhere on your resume. If you are an
adult, don't put it on there. Are you an adult? Yes, so don't put it on
there. Cool? Great! Number 9, do not have
conspicuous gaps in your education and work experience.
If you do, take out the months so that the gaps feel like they're less long.
If you left somewhere in September of 2010 and started somewhere else
in October of 2011, you ended the one in 2010 you started the next one in 2011.
if you ended in 2010, you begin in 2012 just started in 2012 so make the gaps a
little bit less conspicuous. If your gaps are longer, we
need to talk, because there are probably things that you were
doing during your gaps that we could count as experiences.
If you all are thinking about taking family leave or doing something else,
please keep one little bitty side thing going,
a little consulting project here or a little
board member role here, or an entrepreneurial gig where you're
advising somebody here, like a once a day, once a week, once a month, once a year
type of thing. But put it on there so that you can keep some continuity in
your resume. And then finally, number 10 if you want to really screw
yourself up, just exaggerate or lie.
The firms do, at the end of the process once they've extended you a hiring role,
feedback on your previous experience. They will do a background check they'll
do a federal background check if they need to.
They're going to find out if you lied. So there's
nothing in the resume that is worth lying for.
If you need to position something differently, that's different than lying.
So if you need to explain what something was,
then that's not lying, but if you tell a factual
non-truth - that is a lie. And we definitely definitely never condone that.
And it's going to bite you in the end. In conclusion, if you want an amazing
consulting resume, you've got a little bit of work ahead of you, and we're
really good at taking bad resumes to great and good resumes to
great. We super super duper love to help and we can do that through a free
resume review or through our resume editing service
which is incredibly popular. If you're interested in more information,
reach out to us - team@managementconsulted.com,
on social, or on our website at managementconsulted.com