Consulting 101 — Part 3

A series of articles on landing a consulting job after an undergraduate degree

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this article which gives an introduction to consulting, drop by there first! In this article, I will talk about the CV making process end-to-end, which is the most important aspect to getting shortlisted and one step closer to getting hired for a consulting job.

Contents

1. What?
2. How?
3. Where?
4. To-Do’s

What are consulting firms looking for in a CV?

From my experience, consulting firms are mainly looking for the following things while shortlisting students apart from a clearly structured and impactful CV—

• Proof of excellence regardless of domain, be it academics, extracurriculars or internships, anything that shows you excelled in that particular event is a plus point
• Ability to excel in a high-stakes environment — positions of responsibility (PoRs) come into handy here to showcase leadership, initiative, and results achieved in a short time under a huge amount of pressure
• A tendency towards consulting — While non-traditional CVs are also shortlisted, it helps to showcase some interest towards client facing roles like consulting by taking part in business events and competitions and activities which require communication such as debate

Common sections of a CV

The common word used to summarise these is called a ‘spike’; something that sets your CV apart from 100 others. This could be anything from a 9+ CGPA to a research paper, an internship at FAANG, winning a prestigious competition such as Hult, or a niche extra-curricular activity like playing the bagpipes (that I incidentally can do xD). The trick is to identify your spikes, and section your CV such that each section has one spike so that it actually moves the needle in your favour. In general, 2–3 spikes are required in order to have a chance at being shortlisted.

How to go about making a CV?

There are a plethora of resources online about how to go about making a CV, but I will focus on taking it a step further and making it specific to consulting. This is how I went about deciding what to put on my CV —

1. Listing down everything I had done since my school years (including exams like KVPY and Olympiads)
2. Deciding which of these things were impactful in a quantifiable manner, and which ones would go on my CV
3. Identifying spikes among all these things (such as a Microsoft intern, a Student Placement Coordinator PoR, etc.)
4. Sectioning my CV such that each section incorporated at least 1 spike
5. Listing down sections by top -loading the biggest/most important spikes
6. Making my CV accordingly

Some good resources for CV making —

• Previous year CVs of students who got hired by MBB from IIT Kharagpur itself — 2021 CV folder for reference
• Workshop resources for CV making conducted by Communique, IIT Kharagpur, Lean In, and other societies on campus
• CV making Demystified by Divyam Sharma is a very well-structured and exhaustive resource of to-do’s and don’ts while CV making
• Resumes and cover letters by Harvard for action words and verbs to use
• Tips on resume building

Where to make your CV?

I used Microsoft Word to make my CV but there are other sources as well, including but not limited to —

• Latex by Overleaf
• Microsoft Excel
• Figma
• Canva

Most of these platforms have readymade CV templates that can be edited, but require time and effort as compared to MS Word. Ensure that your resume is parser friendly by testing the pdf version of it on an online parser so that recruiters don’t miss out on an unreadable or badly formatted resume that is submitted on the careers site.

To-Do’s

Some important things to keep in mind while making a consult CV —

• Play to your strengths — ensure that the most impactful things are top loaded and given the most attention.
• Get your resume reviewed — reviews are the most important thing to do post CV — making. I got my resume reviewed by 15 people before making an acceptable version of my resume that was sure to get shortlisted by MBB. Reviewers can be close seniors, people in your professional circle, prior selects of MBB and employees in your target firm. While you don’t need to incorporate every suggestion you receive, it gives you fresh perspective on your CV from multiple unbiased sources.
• Try to use impactful and different action words in each line of your CV, reduce repetition, communicate a different quality in each section, and ensure that every single line on your CV is actually making an impact. For eg., a PoR description of 4 lines can have 2 lines depicting teamwork, 1 showcasing leadership, and 1 mentioning the initiatives you have taken for a holistic and impressive description.
• Analyse resumes of people in your peer group and try to extract nuances you can apply to make your own resume better, and also get a sense of your chances of a shortlist
• It goes without saying that your CV should be grammatically perfect, with no spelling, wording or date errors. Consultants are expected to have an exhaustive attention to detail and even one such error is a grave mistake on your part.

This was my reviewed and final CV when I applied for consulting roles in my final year of college. I hope this gives an extensive qualitative and quantitative method to go about CV making. In the next part of this series, I will talk about the most dreaded part of any job application process — the interviews. Read on here!