Every year, ~200,000 candidates apply to McKinsey, but only ~2,000 of them end up getting an offer. That's a 1% success rate. Candidates usually don't know this, but the most competitive step in the recruiting process is the cover letter and resume screening. That's where more than 60% of candidates get eliminated.
So how do you craft a management consultant resume that gets you interviews at McKinsey, BCG, and Bain?
Because here’s the thing: consultant resumes are actually VERY different from CVs for other professions.
So, let's step through the consulting resume basics and writing tips you should be aware of. Plus, we’ll review 5 REAL CV examples that landed candidates interviews and jobs with McKinsey, BCG, Bain and other top firms.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Let’s get into it.
Before crafting a consulting resume that will get you multiple interviews, you first need to understand what top consulting firms actually look for in a candidate.
There are two versions of the truth when it comes to this topic: the official version on every firm's website, and the unofficial one that they are less willing to talk about.
As we have already mentioned in our case interview guide, all top consulting firms broadly look for the same skills. This is particularly apparent when comparing the skills McKinsey, BCG, and Bain list in their job description requirements.
Top consulting firms tend to all be interested in candidates who exhibit the following:
The first objective of your resume should be to highlight relevant parts of your experience that demonstrate these skills. Each bullet point in your resume should specifically target one. And overall, your bullet points should be balanced across these four categories.
For instance, let's assume that there are 20 bullet points in your resume. Broadly speaking, 5 of your bullet points should show your strength in problem-solving and 5 should show that you deliver impact when you are part of teams. Another 5 should show that you are used to taking initiative. And yet another 5 should show that you can lead teams.
Doing this will take you a long way in crafting a successful application. Trust us, it works both for entry-level and experienced hire resumes. But unfortunately, there are also untold truths about consulting CVs that you need to be aware of.
If you meet the above qualifications, then great! But it would also be helpful if you keep in mind the following ‘unofficial’ preferences that top consulting firms rarely put in their job requirements. They’re as follows:
First, your resume screener will be looking for big brand names when going through your CV. If you went to a target school (e.g. Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, etc.), that will definitely help.
If you did not attend a target school then your best chance of getting noticed is to have worked for companies that are big and well-known.
You might be wondering why consulting firms value big-brand universities and employers so much. To be frank, top consulting firms are snobs when it comes to academic and professional pedigree. This is obviously slightly unfair, but there are a couple of reasons things work that way.
First, it's easier to sell Junior consultants to clients if they have an impressive background. When a client asks "Who will be on the team?" Partners like to be able to answer "Melissa just joined us with a bachelor's from Oxford and an MBA from Harvard" or "Bukayo joins us after 3 years leading a team at Google." That makes it easier to justify the high salaries consulting staff get paid.
Second, consulting firms receive a LOT of applications every year. McKinsey, for instance, received about ~200,000 resumes each year. They can't interview everyone and need a pretty efficient way to get to a manageable number of candidates they can interview. Big brand names are a shortcut. They want to hire high-achievers and assume that if you went to a top school or worked for a top employer, you are a high achiever.
This can feel very frustrating and unfair if you don't have big brand names on your resume. In these situations, it does not mean you won't be able to make it into consulting. It just means that unfortunately, it will likely be more work for you than for other people. You will have to network more, consider working/doing an internship at big brand names first, and maybe apply to consulting firms multiple times. But you can still do it.
One of the questions we often get about consulting resumes is: "I have a 3.X GPA from University Y. Will I make the cut-off?" To be clear, there's no official GPA cut-off in the US, or grades cut-off in other countries.
Your resume will usually be reviewed by a recent graduate from your university who works at the firm. They will score your resume on a number of dimensions, one of which will be your grades.
Finally, one important aspect of consulting resumes that's not discussed often is languages. Only a few job posts (mostly openings for positions in regions where English isn’t the primary language) explicitly require proficiency in languages other than English.
But even if you’re applying to an English-speaking firm, speaking multiple languages fluently will boost your chances of getting an interview.
Indeed, most consulting firms operate a global staffing model. If you are based in the London office but speak French and Spanish, that means your firm will be able to send you on projects in the UK, France, and Spain, but also North and South America and many countries in Africa. Your value to the firm will therefore be much higher than if you only spoke English.
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Before we start on how to write your consulting resume, let's take a look at samples of what you should be aiming for.
Unlike in other articles on this topic, these are all real resumes that got real candidates job offers at top global consulting companies. Note that we’ve anonymised most of the resumes to protect the resume owners’ privacy.
This resume got the candidate an interview (and later an offer) at McKinsey, which is where he's now working. (Please note that we've changed the names of the companies to protect the candidate's privacy).
T his is a seriously high-quality resume. Here's what Jacob does particularly well:
This is the resume that got “Henry” (not his real name) a consultant role at McKinsey.
Here’s what we think makes this resume stand out:
The below resume belongs to David, a consulting interview coach on our platform (currently a hiring manager at Revolut for the Global Strategy Team). It's the resume that got him into BCG in 2020.
Here's what we found interesting about David's resume:
This is the resume that got “Theo” an associate role at BCG. BCG recruiters have used this particular resume in university workshops as an example of what to aim for so it’s an excellent model to study.
Here are the highlights that we think make Theo’s resume attractive to recruiters:
This resume earned the candidate, let's call him “Suresh”, a role at Bain.
Here's our feedback on this resume:
Now that you’ve seen a few stellar examples of consulting resumes that work, let’s take a look at this consulting resume template. Use it as a basis or reference point for writing your consulting resume.
A word of advice: a lot of people use this template so be careful about how you use it. Take inspiration, but be sure to write every sentence from scratch.
Just a few notes about the template:
Before we take you through the step-by-step process of writing your consulting resume, here are the 9 things we’ve learned after having reviewed hundreds of CVs over the past few years. Our expert coaches, Cody (top tech recruiter, ex-Google now at LinkedIn) and Candace (career and resume expert) also weigh in with their insights.
Consulting recruiters have to review tons of resumes daily. Keeping your resume to one page is one way to make the job easy for them. But we know condensing your entire lifetime's achievements in ~500 words is difficult.
The key is to select the right achievements and to describe them in a way that makes it clear you would make a great consultant. It takes time and a few iterations to get it right, so start earlier rather than later.
The best consulting resumes have 5 sections: Personal information, Education, Work experience, Extracurricular achievements, and Additional skills.
One of the most common mistakes we see in CVs is to not have an "Extracurricular achievements" section. This is a BIG mistake as this is a section you can use to showcase some of the skills that consulting firms look for such as leadership and entrepreneurial drive.
"Design features like pictures, columns, photos, etc. can prevent ATS systems from correctly scanning your resume," says Candace.
Using a special format with a slightly funky font is tempting. You might think it could help you stand out. But it won’t. Most, if not all, companies now use Applicant Tracking Systems or ATS to pre-scan resumes. So your fancy resume might not even make the ATS cut.
Let’s say your funky resume somehow managed to pass through the ATS. You still won't get extra points for it. At best, your CV screener will think: "Okay, I've never seen this format, but why not?" At worst, they will think: "Who is this person? They don't get it!"
The content of your resume should stand out, not its format.
You should also avoid including your photo in your resume unless it’s specifically required. This goes against employment and discrimination laws in most countries, and is another potential problem for ATS systems.
"Us recruiters are lazy. Don't make us dig around for the key info, we want to see if you meet the job requirements in the first 10 seconds!" says Cody.
A good way to make a good first impression in 10 seconds is by using keywords in the form of action verbs that resume screeners are either consciously or subconsciously looking for. ALL your sentences should start with an action verb that highlights one of the soft skills the firms are looking for.
For instance, you should have bullet points on leadership that start with: "Led a team of 10 people. " And bullet points on problem-solving which start with: "Solved one of the toughest engineering problems. "
These action verbs are important because they are at the beginning of sentences. If you use the right ones, your resume screener will immediately think: "Okay, this person has the right skills. Let me look at their CV in more detail."
“This advice is for many careers spanning many industries, we have to tell our story through data and numbers. Words can tell a story but numbers tell it way better," says Cody.
Consultants are obsessed with quantifying things. When you become a consultant, a big part of your job is to crunch numbers to back up ideas you present to clients. If your idea is not backed up by numbers, it's just a point of view. If it is backed up by numbers, it becomes an argument and has more gravitas.
For instance, if you were awarded a scholarship to study abroad you should write something like: "Awarded Entente Cordiale Scholarship to study in the UK (2 scholarships for 1,000+ applicants)" This will make you stand out much more than if you had just written: "Awarded a competitive scholarship to study in the UK."
This is particularly important if you have written a Ph.D. or Master's thesis. Your resume screener won't be familiar with your field. And they won't take the time to Google anything they don't understand. It is your responsibility to dumb things down sufficiently for them to be understandable.
A good test for this is to ask a friend or sibling to highlight anything that they don't easily understand in your resume. If you find them scratching their head to make sense of a sentence, it is too complicated. Simplifying things is hard work, so you should start this process early.
As mentioned in the first section of this guide, McKinsey, BCG, Bain and other top firms are looking for skills that are very specific to consulting. A lot of those skills are actually SOFT skills such as leadership, personal impact, entrepreneurial drive, etc.
If you have a standard resume that you use for other jobs, you will most likely have to adapt it to showcase the specific soft skills consulting firms look for. If you don't do this, you run the risk of your CV being overlooked as it's not tailored enough to consulting.
Your resume screener will literally have looked at hundreds of CVs before they look at yours. The reality is a lot of these resumes are quite similar. So, if there's something a little bit unique that you have done, you should not hesitate to say so.
For instance, you might have worked for 6 months in a surf shop in Australia, or you might have done a 6-month unpaid internship for charity. Everything that differentiates you in a positive way should be clearly mentioned on your resume.
With the boom in AI technology and the likes of ChatGPT increasingly used by students and applicants, it's tempting to think you could get a bot to write your resume. And if you're finding it hard to get started, AI can be quite helpful in giving you examples of the sorts of phrases you should be writing.
However, rely too much on AI and you run the risk of your CV looking exactly like everyone else's and not truly representing who you are: a unique individual and (hopefully) a great consultant in the making!
Now that you’ve seen examples of what you should be aiming for, as well as some key tips, let’s go through the resume-building process.
Before you start writing or editing your resume, our tip is that you do some research.
Find the job specification, read it thoroughly, and use it to shape your resume.
Now you’re probably wondering: do you have to write a different targeted consulting resume for every company you’re applying to?
The answer is: ideally, yes. But as we’ve covered in the section at the beginning, these top companies are typically looking for more or less the same qualifications.
We looked at some of the latest job postings on McKinsey, BCG, and Bain and aggregated the data to find the most common consulting job requirements for top companies in 2024. And here’s what we found:
Minimum Qualifications
Preferred Qualifications
Common Responsibilities
If you don't want to have to tweak your resume for each specific company you're applying to, aim to base your resume around this list of requirements.
Once you’re done with your research, let’s get into writing your consulting resume!
As you’ve seen in the example resumes and the resume template, every consulting CV should be split into 5 sections:
Below are a few best practices for coming up with a layout for your resume:
Now, let’s get into each section.
In this section, you should include all the basic personal details the consulting firm you are applying for is requesting. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you put this section together:
This section should summarise the different degrees you graduated with. It should NOT include your high school experience. If you have recently graduated and only have internship experience, this section should follow the Personal information section.
But if you have already had a first job for 1+ years, you could consider swapping this section with the Work Experience section.
Here are a few tips on how to write this section:
The work experience section should include the previous work positions you have held as well as your main achievements in these roles. Here are some more important points to help you put this section together:
One of the most common mistakes we come across in resumes we receive from candidates is the absence of an extracurricular achievements section.
This section is particularly important if you have limited work experience as it's a great way to show leadership, entrepreneurial drive and personal impact. It's also a great way to compensate for average university grades or a non-target school.
The way you write about your extracurricular experiences should follow the same format and tips as for the Work experience section. Here are different types of activities you could write about (not exhaustive):
Finally, you should focus the last section of your resume on any additional skills you have.
Our recommendation here is to keep things simple and to list any foreign languages, programming languages, software experience, or project management tools that you know.
For each language, you should specify your level of proficiency. For the technical skills, you can also specify your level (experienced or expert).
Now that you have put together the first version of your resume, your next step is to ask for feedback to improve it. If you know any consultants or former consultants, don’t hesitate to reach out to them to get their thoughts.
But failing that, asking for feedback from peers is also helpful. They'll be able to cast a fresh eye on your resume and flag typos, inconsistencies, or sentences that they find difficult to understand.
This is the last step of crafting your CV and it is crucial. You should never skip this part.
When you become a consultant, one of your deliverables will be PowerPoint decks and Word documents. You’ll be expected to proofread these multiple times before handing them over to clients. So even as an applicant, you’ll be expected to do the same with your resume.
In particular, make sure to triple-check your contact details. You don’t want to miss out on an interview because of a typo in your email address.
Almost ready to send your resume? Use this checklist to make sure you’re following the best practices we’ve recommended above.
You should be answering “Yes” to every question.
Overall
Layout
Personal Information
Work Experience
Extracurricular achievements
Additional skills
Proofreading and feedback
Did you say “Yes” to every question in the checklist? Well done! If you’ve used all the tips in this article, then your resume should be in good condition and will give you a fighting chance of getting that interview.
The guide above as well as our consulting cover letter guide should go a long way in helping you craft documents that will get you interviews.
But to get your consulting resume from "fine" to "outstanding" usually requires feedback from someone who really knows their stuff - as in an ex-recruiter or manager at one of the MBB firms.
By signing up to our resume service, you can choose from our team of management consultant coaches like David, Htoo, Tiago, Shankar, and recruiting experts like Candace and Cody. They will spend an hour going over your CV with you and give you feedback on how to immediately improve your resume, including what experience to focus on, how to optimize your phrasing, formatting, etc.
Check it out and increase your chances of getting an interview at a top firm!
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