Management Consultants CV reviewing process

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Pooja

This week’s blog talks about how Management Consultants review resumes of the applicants. It explains who is behind the resume review process, how the process proceeds and how you’re CV can avoid denial.

Let us first understand that the Management Consultants resume screening process is like a mystery for applicants as you will only know if you have been accepted or rejected. In the rarest cases there may be a generic feedback on why you did not get the job, but the advice will never be detailed and pertinent.

Who is behind Reviewing the Resume?

For a management consultation job post, a team of analysts, associates and managers are present for reviewing the resume. The review team will consist of at-least 3 to 5 people who will first go through your resume individually and then again in groups. It is important to note that most of this team might be graduates of your school itself (undergraduate, graduate or MBA). The final decision of whether to call you for the interview is taken by this review committee. The resume review process is mainly handled by the junior’s in the company but the interview process and offering the job is in the hands of the seniors.

The CV Reviewing

Each member of the team receives a bundle of resumes, which can vary from 30 to 300. Many a time’s covering letters could be excluded from this pack, thus it is important to focus your energies and frame your CV in a way that it falls in the top-notch category. Remember that Consultants spend one whole minute reading your resume which is double the time of that spent by bankers on a finance resume (30 seconds). Still one minute is really fast, placing premium on attention-grabbing bullets; concise, results-oriented experiences; clean formatting and styling. Once the individual reviewing process is done it is followed by reviewing each resume as a group, comparing notes and sharing insights. It is here that the decision of Selected or Rejected is made.

How to beat the Rejection?

If your CV is successful in demonstrating good academic grades along with significant work experience in the field and is highlighting your strong leadership skills and hard-working abilities through some of the tasks undertaken in the past, then the job could be in your favour. Overall, what the review team generally looks for is how good you can fit into the management consulting job and whether u can prove to be successful in your ventures. However there is no specific benchmark or cut-off as the selection process could vary from company to company.

Tips to build a good Consulting Resume.

In general your CV should include:

A top section with your personal details.
A section explaining your educational background, interest, skills and activities so that it best suits your job profile.
Your relevant work experience information along with the details of the position, location, time period.
Focus on 1 or 2 impressive achievements.
Use of bullets rather than paragraphs.
Try converting it into PDF format to avoid any formatting errors.

Finally, keep your resume and covering letter preferably one page long.

To read more on Management consultants please check:

http://interviewbay.com/blog/an-insight-into-the-world-of-a-strategy-consultant-part-i

If your CV is good enough to beat the competition and the resume review process, then the next step for you is awaiting a call for the interview.