Hi I'm Jenny Rae the Managing Director of Management Consulted and I'm here today
to talk about consulting resume pitfalls. I'm going to do this in two ways:
I'm going to walk through a before and an after resume that we reviewed
and that we edited, and give you some of the insights on how we applied
some of the insights that we've shared with you, and then I'm going to highlight
three key areas that we see as common pitfalls to help you avoid them.
So first, the before and after. This before and after is for an undergraduate student that we
edited their resume. The before version had problems with all three of the areas
that we've covered – the format, the anatomy, or the structure, and the wording.
And on the left-hand side you'll see some of these things. For the format, his
format had very large margins, but no white space in between the actual
entries. So we made sure to address that when we went through the edit. On the
right-hand side you'll see that we have 0.5 inch margins that are equal all
around, as well as white space in between each one of the entries. We did some more
with formatting as well – we looked at the font, and we said his font had too many
different font sizes, and the fonts weren't clear enough in order to
understand. So we picked one of our common fonts and we put the document into that.
On the left hand side you'll also see, in terms of structure, that there are
two key areas that both focus on the leadership. One of them is called
leadership and development, the other is called campus and community involvement.
And in the consulting world the two of those are the same things. Those are
leadership experiences. So, what we did is we went through and after recreating
each one of the entries into a format that made more sense, was more clear, and
had white space in between it – we began to do some rearranging. And we didn't
only touch those two sections, we actually went to the experience section
as well, because we discovered that in the experience section there were some
things that we believed were more like leadership, and in a leadership section
there were things that we believed were more like work experience. So, we made
sure that we rearranged them in a way that made the most sense. We included two
key leadership experiences and four key work experiences. We highlighted those
with great detail, and the remainder of everything else that previously had been
highlighted, we reduced to bullet size format. We put some of them in the bottom
in the personal section, and some of them in the top under the university
experience. That way we were really able to highlight the more important brand
name experiences, without losing track of some of the key leadership experiences.
The final thing that we did was we looked at every word and every line of
the resume. And as we did this we recognized that there was a lot of
context missing, so we didn't necessarily understand what was happening in each of
the roles that this person was playing. And in addition we also recognized that
there were a lot of numbers that were missing. Quantification is important,
throughout the document we need to see a number in every line. So it's essential
that we went through, and we identified where some of those missing areas were,
and we worked with the client to make sure that they were able to fill in
these missing areas. In total we were able to make a complete transformation
of their resume, and the overall effect is that, even though there seems like
there's a little less on the resume on the right-hand side the, effect is more
powerful because it's much clearer and easier to see exactly what he brings to
the table. There are three common pitfalls on top
of these things that we've just talked about that we'd like to highlight for
you today. And these are just questions that we get all the time that it's
helpful to answer here. One of the questions is that we have two page, one
page, and then any other page numbers of resumes. Anything longer than a two-page
resume really is not appropriate for consulting. Even if the consulting firm
says don't worry about it, send in a long resume. It does not to your advantage to
send them a three, five, seven, or even a fifteen page resume – which we have
received in our editing process. The core focus here is really under making sure
that you highlight what some of the key examples are that you bring to the table,
and not necessarily everything that you've done. You want to dedicate the
most experience to the things that will be the most important to the consulting firm.
If you are an undergraduate – whether you're in the US or international – it's
less common to have a two-page resume, it's more likely that you will only have
a one-page resume. If you have an advanced degree or, if you have more than
five to ten years of work experience, then it can be also an appropriate time to
have a two-page resume. Our goal though is that, unless you've had
substantial, and it repeated multiple experiences at different jobs, that you
try to focus on the one-page resume for consulting. It will be more advantageous
for you throughout the entire process. The second thing that's important is
that you focus on the format of your resume. And the format for consulting
resumes is never skills based. The consulting firms are not interested in
seeing the same types of things that you did for different jobs, they're
interested in hearing everything in a story – which is why chronological format
is important, and actually it's reverse chronological in each section. So what I
mean by that is that, they don't want to see necessarily that you have this
skill that you employed with this job, and this go to employment this job – they
don't wanna see all of those group together. They want to see in the context
of the job, and the performance in the time that you were there, exactly what
you're doing. So just make sure that you focus on some of those core things.
The third and final piece is that you want to remove irrelevant experience from
your resume. A lot of people feel beholden to telling the whole truth, and every
part of the truth – and that's not necessarily the way that the resume goes.
Of course, you can never lie or misrepresent anything on your resume ,
but there are times where it's appropriate to simply remove experience if it
doesn't convey the right type of attitude or the right type of mental image.
For example, if you are working in a highly unprofessional environment,
let's say at a summer camp – an experience that is valuable, it may have
taught you some leadership skills but just doesn't convey the images that you
want them to be imagining – you might want to actually remove that from your document.
In addition, if you worked in food service anywhere, those can be
common rules that will remove from the document. The really key focus here is on
the relevant experience that you bring to the table. And it's not becoming as
common to fill every gap on your resume – a lot of people are taking time, a few
months or even a year, to travel in between jobs. So it's not necessarily
important to explain every single step along the way, you just don't want to
leave huge gaping holes. If you're a student, in fact, you have no holes to
explain because the main thing that you're considered to be doing full-time
on your studies – everything else is kind of alongside your studies as well.
So, just make sure if you're picking the experience that puts you in the best
light and really conveys what the consulting firms are interested in seeing.
So across the board, we know that we'll probably answer a number of
questions and leave you with others. We invite you to visit us at our website
managementconsulted.com – and feel free to submit your questions, or even work
with us on a resume edit or a resume review. We'd love to answer your personal
questions, and in the meantime if you have multiple questions that you can get
answered on the website, we invite you to visit all of our free resources that are
available to you 24/7. Thanks again for joining us at managementconsulted.com