For fresh college graduates and MBA grads, management consulting jobs are pretty lucrative. Earlier, we have talked about the best management consulting firms in the world to work for and the best MBA programs that produce maximum management consultants. In this post, Parinita Gupta will talk about the CV (Resume) tips for management consulting jobs.
9 Key Resume Tips for Strategy & Management Consulting Jobs
Co-authored by Parinita Gupta
If you already have your eyes set on consulting jobs, and know what your career goals are, and want to start applying for these jobs with a perfect resume, here are some tips that you can follow to make sure that your resume gets easily shortlisted for such jobs.
There are certainly millions of other articles and blogs on how to write a proper resume but writing a proper resume or a CV for management consulting jobs to ensure your selection is quite different from writing a resume for other accounts or marketing jobs.
Before you start writing the resume, there are some things you should know, that a consulting job resume reader wants since these resume readers get thousands of resumes/CVs to shortlist from per day, they spend an average of 5-6 seconds to read your resume and so they want your resume to be short and precise, they’ll scan for keywords, see through your education and qualifications and quickly jump to your experience.
So now that you know what the recruiters want, here’s how you can give it to them – Top Resume Tips for Consulting Jobs:
1. Formatting
In the header section, you must mention your name, postal address, email address, phone number, and LinkedIn profile (optional).
You must have separate sections for work experience, education, and interests, which can be given in bullets, with just three bullets except for the main entry.
In the work and education sections, use a reverse chronological timeline. Give the title, name of the organization, and period for work experience, and name of the degree, university/school, its location, and period of education. Avoid using text paragraphs in the sections.
2. Your Education Background
It is not generally advised to flaunt the GPA in your resume however in a management consulting job they will specifically look at your GPA and your academic performance so flaunting your GPA is very important especially when you’re applying for such jobs. The management job recruiters generally insist on a minimum of a 3.5 GPA, a degree from the targeted school, and highly standardized test scores.
3. The Presentation
For the management consulting jobs, they look for organized candidates and so to make sure that they have what they want, they will look at the presentation of your CV and how well it is organized and presented.
To make sure that your CV is well presented, keep a standard font and font style, consistent margins and formatting with proper divisions of each section, good grammar and punctuation with correct spellings, and maintain the clarity and the flow.
4. The Focus
As mentioned earlier, since the job recruiters are going read your resume for a mere 5-6 seconds, it’s important that you don’t deviate and keep your resume to the point and on focus.
Making too many sections and divisions in your resume or CV can prove to be harmful for your shortlisting process. If the CV has too many sections and is too confusing for the recruiter to read, chances are, they are just going to skip it and jump on to the next one. So just sticking to the “personal”, “academic”, and “professional” section is probably your best bet here for you.
5. Emphasizing
Nobody is asked to be humble on a CV a resume, but when it comes to resumes for management consulting jobs, if you have something to brag about then brag about it all the way to the house and blow the horn away. If you have any leadership skills or entrepreneurial experience or a high GPA and test scores, then make sure that you emphasize on it specifically. Highlight them or underline them, just do whatever it takes to make sure that the recruiters see that you have something extraordinary that makes you unique, or suitable for this job.
6. Keywords
It’s important that you include the right keywords in your resume. Specific jobs have specific keyword requirements. Most companies use an automated machine to shortlist resumes and they scan the resumes for such keywords, to find the best suitable candidate.
Some nouns, verbs, and skills are keywords for big consulting firms. Here’s a short list:
Nouns: Strategies; deliverables; impact; convergence; critical; emerging customer needs; life cycle; pack; segment; selection criteria
Verbs: Evaluate; facilitate; deliver; align; bring up to speed; hypothesize; drive; validate; growth plan; action plan
Skills: Analysis; creativity; breadth of experience; compelling story; strategic thinking; depth of experience; industry experience; intellectual competence; interpersonal skills; leadership
7. Prove that you deserve
You can prove that you deserve this job by mentioning your previous achievements and successes in different scenarios and the skill sets that you acquire.
Show them that you have the interest and passion for the job. Highlight your communication skills, which is important since you will be spending most of your workday interacting with team members, management representatives, and clients. Show off your soft skills.
Don’t forget to throw some light on the fun part of your personality. You will be spending a good part of your week with colleagues, so showing that you have a lighter side won’t hurt you.
Use the “hobbies and interests” section to make your personality come to life. Someone said that this is the section many recruiters look forward to, as a break from reading hundreds of resumes.
8. Legitimacy
Never lie, or brag too much, and take it over board in your resume. Always make sure that you can back up what you say about yourself in your CV/ resume, because if you can’t, you might lose the job before you even get it to begin with. Always put legitimate references in your resumes, and back up everything you say about yourself in your resume or CV.
9. Review and Proofread
It’s always good to know the first impression of your resume or CV. You can always ask a friend or someone to go through your resume and review it for any mistakes, and also give you feedback on it. That way, you can know what impression it gives to people on its first look and if it’s bad, you can always go ahead and make changes in it.
So now that you know how to write a perfect resume for management consulting jobs.
Start applying, now!
Any queries, please let us know in the comments section below!
Related Articles:
Resume Tips for College Students and Fresh Graduates
Top 4 Elements of a Great Resume
Job Search, Resume Writing & Personal Branding Tips by HR-Recruitment Professional
Author Bio:
Parinita is a full-time banking professional. Additionally, she is also a passionate blogger and digital marketer.
She mostly writes about the Banking & Finance, Technology, and FinTech sector. But, she also enjoys writing on other topics as well. You can follow her on Twitter.
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