Wanting to transition into consulting: Curious about my resume strength

Hi there,

1) How to strengthen my profile (w/o an MBA)

Your profile is fine to transit to consulting. It would also be important to see how you structured your CV. There is a specific format consulting companies look for.

One of the most important factors to land an MBB invitation is having a referral. You have not mentioned if you have any, if that’s not the case I would look for one.

Overall, to get a consulting invitation, you will need to work on 3 things: a great CV, a great Cover and a referral.

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(1) CV

The key elements they will look for and that you can optimize are:

• University brand
• Major
• GPA
• Work experience
• Experience abroad
• Extracurriculars and volunteer experience

Red flags include:

• Low GPA
• Lack of any kind of work experience
• Bad formatting / typos
• 3-4 pages length
• Lack of clear action --> results structure for the bullets of the experiences
• Long paragraphs (3-4 lines) for the bullets of the experiences with irrelevant details
• Long time gaps without any explanation

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(2) COVER LETTER

You can structure a cover into 4 parts:

1. Introduction, mentioning the position you are interested in and a specific element you find attractive for that company
2. Why you are qualified for the job, where you can report 3 skills/stories from your CV
3. Why you are interested in that particular firm, with additional 1-2 specific reasons
4. Final remarks, mentioning again your interest and skills

In part 2 you can write about experiences that show skills useful in consulting such as drive, problem-solving, leadership, teamwork and convincing others.

It is important that in part 3 you make your cover specific to a particular firm – the rule of thumb is, can you send the exact same cover to another consulting company if you change the name? If that’s the case, your cover is too generic.

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(3) REFERRALS

This is probably the most important point, assuming your CV is structured fine. To find a referral, you should follow three main steps:

1. Identify the people that can help you (most of the time, the best bet is Alumni of your university)
2. Write to them a customized email
3. Have a call and indirectly ask for a referral

As general tips:

• Don’t use LinkedIn for your communication – emails work better. You should target 30% conversion for your messages; if you are not achieving that, there is space for improvement
• When sending emails, your goal should be to organize a call, not to ask questions – you can then use the call for the questions
• You need to close the call with an indirect request for a referral – don’t leave that to chance. There are specific ways to phrase it

You should prepare three main things before the call:

• Your own pitch. 3-4 lines should be enough
• 3-4 questions on the personal experiences of the person. Avoid to ask questions about the company
• A closing question for the referral. It should be an indirect request to avoid being too pushy

You can find more information on networking and referrals here:

▶ How to Get an MBB Invitation 

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2) My chances of getting an interview/ offer with top firms (MBB)/ 2nd tier firms/ B4 

Interview: depends on the points in 1)

Offer: depends on your level in the case and fit parts – we have no data points on that so we cannot answer. You can find some tips on how to prepare for that here:

▶ How to Prepare for a Consulting Interview

Good luck!

Francesco

There's good material in there. Entrepreneurial drive, some spikes in hot topics… So a well crafted resume, decent networking (shouldn't be too hard given your profile that you can use to discuss your own expertise) should provide you with a chance.

There are really two questions here: (1) is your resume strong enough to get past the screening phase, and (2) is your story compelling enough to impress an interviewer.

The answer to the second question is clearly yes: interviewers screen for leadership, entrepreneurship, and impact, and you can spin your story to hit against all three of these dimensions.

The answer to the first question is less clear, but I think you've got a good shot at clearing the bar. The key here is emphasizing your impact and connecting your experience to relevant consulting skills.

Ultimately, it will come down to (1) how much you perfect your narrative and (2) getting a bit lucky. 

Would be happy to chat about how to best position yourself if helpful.

You have many very good elements on your track record that would be interesting for a consulting firm. I think it comes down to how you tie them together and what your rationale is for wanting to be in consulting now. It seems like you've spent quite some time as a founder pursuing your own visions and kickstarting new things. 

Why do you want to still be an employee going forward (even considering Tier 2 consulting firms) rather than keep running your own shows? That would be a question I would want to hear your answer to if I met you in an interview.

You've done a lot of interesting things! I think that the question for you is how you can create a coherent narrative which ties together what you've done with where you'd like to go next (consulting!). As you want to do consulting - go for it now! Worst case you don't get the role and you can do something else to help to strengthen your profile, but there is no point in waiting if you already know what you want! Life is too short. 

Good luck!

Hi there - I would say that your CV is strong with some very relevant experience as firms are trying to break into the fintech space particularly. 

I am happy to do a full CV review. I have also been working with a couple of non-traditional clients and helped them build their CVs to secure an interview. Please reach out if you would like me to take a look. 

Hi there,

I believe we are currently speaking at the moment :)

But, yes, as I stated in our chat, you absolutely can transition into consulting!

Flautists, Pianists, Dentists, English majors, etc. all get into consulting. Your resume/background lends itself well to be modified for consulting applications (paired with networking of course)