You may think writing a management consulting CV is straightforward, but mediocre CVs are the norm and don’t do the applicant justice.
The most important advice is to have clarity on the type of job you are hoping to get. A proper career plan is a great start! Everything on your CV should be built around this.
The key to writing a good CV is to understand how candidates are selected for an interview, either by an executive search consultant or an employer. A useful approach is to put yourself in the position of someone reviewing your CV and for the job and career you want.
Always remember that the primary purpose of a CV is to get you an interview.
Contents
- Apply the Seven Second Rule to your CV
- How long should a Management Consultant CV be?
- CV Visual layout – the basics
- Content of the CV
- The relevance of keywords in your CV
- Pitfalls to avoid and common errors
- Accuracy and honesty in your CV
Apply the Seven Second Rule to Your CV
Can someone favourably assess your career history, qualifications and strengths within seven seconds of opening it? In particular can someone determine your relevance for the job you applied for in this time?
Many CV reviewers make an initial decision very quickly and research suggests this can be seven seconds.
A line manager is struggling to review some CVs between client meetings; the recruiter (internal OR external) may have 30 minutes to review 50 (80? 100?) advertisement applicants. At Prism, in a busy week, a consultant can be receiving 400 CVs or more.
Therefore for better or worse, a decision is made very quickly and the reviewer will not read every word in this scan, or indeed ever. They might have hundreds of applicants’ CVs to consider. It is therefore important to keep this in mind and to present information in an effective and accessible way.
Not convinced? Here’s an external view!
The Seven Second basics
1. The CV should definitely be maximum three pages for an experienced executive and ideally two.
2. Presentation matters. Avoid poor format, tiny font size, confusing layout, big blocks of dense text or, conversely, overuse of bullet points.
3. Ensure there are job-relevant keywords and phrases . Assume a human will read your CV but be aware that this might not be the case, and that software may be used which looks for certain keywords.
4. Employers, dates, roles and whether they were contract or perm need to be crystal clear. Unknown firm? Explain what they do. Concurrent roles? A gap? Weird or unhelpful job titles? DON’T fib but make it simpler if possible.
5. Prioritise recent experience. The last five to seven years of your CV will be critical in determining whether you get to the next stage. Is it easy to see what jobs you have held AND why you are suitable?
6. Do not assume your persuasive cover letter will be read: it certainly won’t be if you fail the Seven Second CV test. All relevant information must be on the CV.
7. For the same reason don’t put key information in densely packed “summary” or “introduction” sections of your CV. The reviewer will want to easily see what you’ve done and when and will probably first look at the Employment History section. Other parts of your CV may never be read.
8. Any typos? While reviewers won’t check every word unfortunately typos can leap off the page! Check, check, and check again. Do not rely on spell-check. Ask someone else to read it: a fresh pair of eyes can often help, especially if you know this isn’t a strength of yours. NB MS Word by default doesn’t check capitals.
9. Don’t forget LinkedIn: most people will look you up if they are potentially interested in you. In particular, it must be up to date and similar to your CV!
How Long Should a Management Consultant CV Be?
We canvassed colleagues recently regarding their CV “hobby horses” and overlong CVs were towards the top of the list. The worst we have seen recently was 30 pages!
CV length is seen as a test of ability to summarise key information and many roles require this skill. Certainly, a long CV makes it much more difficult for the reviewer to pick out the key points amongst a mass of other information.
Also important is what sort of career you’re in. In mainstream line roles even people far on in their careers might be fine with two pages, or at most three.
For management consultants or people in project-based and /or client-facing roles it is acceptable to have slightly longer CVs to enable the reader to get the measure of your experience. This needs to enable the reviewer to assess clients, projects and capabilities.
However listing assignments is not an invitation to copy and paste every project you’ve ever done in great detail!
Often problems arise because a candidate updates a CV with the latest job or assignment but fails to edit earlier roles and projects, so the CV gets longer and longer.
Also some view the CV as a definitive statement of everything they have ever done: that is NOT the purpose of a CV.
In summary:
- For consultants at the early to mid-stages of their career: one or two pages.
- For the more experienced and senior experienced consultants a CV length of two to three pages is ideal
Any longer is overly daunting and will almost certainly be seen negatively.
CV Visual Layout – The Basics
- Avoid large blocks of text
- Make sure your style and content is readable by use of bullet points or short paragraphs
- Avoid acronyms as these can confuse and annoy the reader
- Ensure your font is consistent throughout the document.
- Company logos and complicated boxes or creative layout often get lost or stripped out when a CV is uploaded to a recruitment system. Or render the CV impossible to read
Content of the CV
Decide what job you want, as part of your career plan, and put yourself in the shoes of the person recruiting for that role. Tailor your CV, even if quickly, for each specific role.
1. Name, contact details and introduction
Keep this simple, with a telephone number, email address and approximate location. If you think your location may be negative make clear your willingness to work flexibly/in the location of the job you have applied for.
Add a LinkedIn URL and make sure it works!
If required state your nationality/right to work: if you’re abroad or much of your career is overseas it may be assumed you need sponsorship
2. Career summary
Include a ‘Career Summary’ and/or key skills at the front of the CV if you wish but limit this to a maximum of c25% of the page.
Don’t assume people will read it, so don’t include anything in this section which is not readily viewable in the rest of the CV.
3. Employment history
This is the meat of the CV. The layout is important to make the key information stand out. List jobs in reverse chronological order. Where you have had multiple roles with the same employer use an overall heading/dates then, below, your jobs within that employer also with dates, which will show career progression. If the employer is not well known then a short one or two-line introduction to the company should be included.
For each job, a summary sentence or two, then add several key achievements, ideally in bullet point format.
Also, for management consultancy CVs list key projects/clients/assignments within the body of the role or employer:
- major clients you have worked on: you don’t need to name them but do need to describe them.
- the nature of the role or assignment and results delivered
- your role on the project
A maximum of 3 or 4 lines on each project and a maximum of about 6 projects per recent role. For earlier roles a one line summary of each major project might suffice. Generic descriptions of type of work undertaken is not advised: the reader will want to see specific project examples.
Try and avoid overlapping dates if at all possible as this can be very confusing for the reader. Also, make sure you check your dates: errors make a bad impression and could be viewed with suspicion.
Make sure past roles are in the past tense.
4. Balance of information – how much to include
Your most recent employer and jobs should take up most space on your CV because your recent career is of most interest to a prospective employer. As a rough rule of thumb, the most recent third of your career should account for up to two-thirds of the employment section. For the more experienced candidate, be aware that detail of experience and roles more than 10-12 years ago is of limited relevance to a CV reviewer.
Subject to the observation re tailoring, below, ensure that each job section broadly reflects the balance of your time in the role: if 30% of a job is concerned with business development and sales then that should be reflected on the CV.
5. Academic and other qualifications
When they are good, put them in, if not, don’t! Always include tertiary and major work-related qualifications, especially if you are aware they are sought after skills. If you have a 1st or 2.1 degrees, say so!
6. Age
If you are concerned that recruiters may be deterred by your age, remove degree dates and qualification dates and also consider omitting jobs before a certain date: a CV must be truthful but there is no obligation to list every single role. The Equality Acts, of course, make it unlawful for employers to discriminate against job applicants because of age but it would be naïve to pretend it doesn’t happen, so make it difficult for people to do so.
7. Interim or freelance work
Make clear any roles which are interim: if you have several consecutive freelance projects you should list them under an overall header which makes clear you were/are self-employed.
8. Gaps
Gaps on a CV can be a concern so a helpful device here might be to use whole years rather than months when listing employment dates so gaps of a few months are less obvious.
If you have recently left a job don’t be tempted to leave your CV stating “20xx to date”. When an employer/recruiter finds out at best they will think you are sloppy and at worst that you were trying to mislead them. In any event, being available for interview and employment at short notice can be an advantage so it’s best to be open.
Career breaks are fine but need a brief sentence of explanation rather than an unexplained gap.
9. Extra-curricular: hobbies, interests, family
This is not essential but if included should be short. It is surprising, perhaps, how often an employer picks up on this section of a CV. The key consideration is unambiguous: “does this information make me more or less attractive to an employer?” Therefore only include points that may enhance your employability: obvious examples might include team sports, significant achievements, school governor etc. Unusual is probably fine: but quirky is not!
The Relevance of Keywords in Your CV
Increasingly employers and some recruiters are using their applicant management systems and AI to screen applicants for suitability based on keywords and phrases.
This sounds daunting but needn’t be because a human being does the same thing!
Make sure that your CV contains the skills the job states it requires ideally by ensuring that the specific words and phrases are clear and obvious in the CV. However stuffing the CV with keywords is definitely not a good idea.
This is a big topic in its own right and how you can use keywords effectively and their importance to your job search is explained in our blog ‘Why Keywords are crucial for your job search’ . This looks at their relevance for CVs, LinkedIn and job boards.
Pitfalls to Avoid and Common Errors
- Management consultancy CVs sometimes pull out projects and put these in a separate section but most reviewers will want to know when the experience was gained and this presentation does not provide that information.
- Don’t list too many ‘Key Skills’. Any more than 5 are just ‘skills’!
- Use spell check but also always proofread several times. Also ask someone else to do so too: it’s easy to become word blind on a document you have read many times. If there are mistakes employers will assume you lack attention to detail and are careless. If you can’t get your CV right you won’t get a client report right.
- Your CV should be consistent with your LinkedIn profile (dates, job titles etc.) as invariably the latter will be looked at.
- Make sure it’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS) friendly: not just keywords but layout and structure. Some CVs or parts of CVs are “images” which can’t be read by an ATS. The result is that these applications never even make it onto the system.
Accuracy and Honesty in Your CV
Management consulting job candidates should ensure that their CVs are accurate. Lying on a CV is not unknown and it is actually fraud and a criminal offence. Not a lot of people know that.
An obvious risk is that a candidate won’t get away with it:
- Lots of employers and recruiters have databases that go back for many years.
- People have long memories and it’s a small world
- Some reference checking is just two recent employers, but much is a lot more searching so uncovers incorrect dates and job titles for example.
- If a CV is different from LinkedIn that can be a red flag to an employer. Also, if a candidate has no LinkedIn profile or a very brief one that is always a concern too
The CV is of course a marketing document. It is entirely acceptable to present oneself in the best light and avoid drawing attention to less helpful aspects. However to alter dates or fabricate employment experience is not a good idea.
Prism Executive Recruitment has additional resources on our website to support your job search, from interview preparation to handling classic interview questions. Investing in your CV is a major step toward securing your next big consulting role—so take the time to make it shine.
Remember: Your CV’s primary purpose is to get you an interview. Everything else is secondary. Good luck crafting in a powerful Management Consultant CV!
