German Consulting Lebenslauf 2026: No Photo, One Language

The consulting Lebenslauf photo instruction, from a Munich firm

The convention people arrive with is that a Lebenslauf carries a photograph. One firm publishes the opposite, and it is not a firm you can dismiss as an outsider to the market. Roland Berger's application FAQ says: "For us, your personality and qualification are what counts. Hence, please don't include a photo in your application documents."

Note the scope. It says application documents rather than CV, so the instruction covers the cover letter and anything else you attach.

The same answer sets out what the firm does want: "Your application should include a detailed resume and a cover letter, explaining why you'd like to join us and how you'd be a perfect fit for the role in question. In some countries, diplomas, certificates and references will be requested as an integral part of your application."

Two contents named for the letter, and a third document category flagged as conditional. The phrase to plan around is "an integral part of your application." A candidate who has not scanned their degree certificate and references before applying is a candidate who will be scrambling.

What the firm does not publish is which countries request those extra documents, or how many references. Both are unpublished, and the page names HR in your target office as the place to ask.

The language rule for a consulting Lebenslauf, and the trap in it

Only one firm we could read publishes a language rule for this market, and it is more restrictive than it first appears. McKinsey's application FAQ carries this question and this answer: "When applying for roles within Austria and Germany, in what language should my attachments be written?" and "We accept attachments in both English or German. Please submit only one version in your application."

Read the second sentence twice. The permission is generous and the limit is strict. Both languages are acceptable. Submitting both is not.

The instinct for a bilingual candidate is to hedge by attaching an English CV and a German one, which the firm has explicitly ruled out. Pick one, and pick it on the basis of the posting language and the office you want rather than on which one you polished last.

That rule covers Austria and Germany by name. It says nothing about Switzerland, which shares the language and is a separate market, and the firm publishes no equivalent line for it.

The firm's other document rules apply on top: attachments in PDF or Word, nothing password protected, and the cover letter listed as an optional attachment. The last of those is worth holding next to Roland Berger's requirement in the previous section, because the two firms disagree about whether a letter is needed at all.

What four firms publish about the consulting Lebenslauf in Germany

The row that changes a week of preparation is the Roland Berger hints and tips line. The firm writes: "If you're aiming to start as a Junior Consultant , please prepare a two- to three-minute presentation about yourself for your personal fit interview."

That is a deliverable with a duration, published in advance. It belongs in the same preparation bucket as the CV rather than in a bucket labeled soft skills, and it is the item candidates discover on the day.

The Porsche Consulting sequence, with its clocks

Porsche Consulting publishes its application process in four stages, with two durations attached.

1. A telephone interview with HR. The firm says "It usually takes about 30 minutes" and frames it in both directions: "Use the interview as an opportunity to see if Porsche Consulting is a good fit for you. And we'll do the same."
2. An online test for young professionals. Its words: "In addition to your personality, we place great importance on how structured and analytical you are. So as a young professional, you'll do an online test for us. It usually takes about 45 minutes."
3. An interview with managers from your subject area, followed by a case. The firm says what it is looking for: that you "proceed in a structured manner" and that "your enthusiasm for consulting work comes across."
4. A final interview with your potential supervisor, framed around team fit, with an explicit invitation to ask questions.

Two pieces of advice on the same page are attributed by name to members of the firm, and both are actionable. One says "The most important thing is your CV. Talk it over in advance with someone you trust and get some feedback on how meaningfully and compellingly you've presented your story." Another says "Enrich your application with tangible project experience! This will show your applied skills. We look forward to hearing more about this in the interview."

The second one tells you how the document is used downstream. A project line on the CV becomes an interview question, so put on the page the projects you can talk about for five minutes.

Two response times, from the same firm

Here is a contradiction worth publishing rather than resolving. Roland Berger states its response time twice, on two pages of the same careers section, and the two statements differ.

The application FAQ says: "Our recruiting team reviews each one carefully. You should expect to hear from us within three weeks."

The hints and tips page says: "Our recruiting team will be in touch with you within about two to four weeks of receiving your application."

Three weeks against about two to four weeks. The honest reading is that the firm's own expectation is roughly three weeks with a fortnight of tolerance either side, and that neither number is a commitment. What it means practically is that chasing at day fifteen is early and chasing at day thirty is reasonable.

The same FAQ supplies the numbers that matter more. The process takes "around six to eight weeks (from submitting your application to signing the contract)" and the firm says "you should apply four to six months before your ideal start date." Since the same page says there is usually no fixed hiring period, that lead time is the only calendar you need.

The consulting Lebenslauf checks, since nobody publishes a page count

No German page read here gives a Lebenslauf length, so the checks that remain are mechanical. All five are published.

1. Photo removed from every attachment, per Roland Berger's instruction.
2. One language version only, per McKinsey's rule for Germany and Austria.
3. PDF or Word, nothing password protected, per the same FAQ.
4. Certificates and references scanned and ready, since Roland Berger says they are requested in some countries as an integral part of the application.
5. Every project line on the CV rehearsed as a five-minute answer, since Porsche Consulting says it will ask.

A sixth check applies if you are using a portal that parses your CV. BCG publishes that education dates are the field most often mangled by parsing and that inaccuracies there can affect an application, which is covered with the other portal mechanics in the UK consulting CV guide.

What no page read here supports is the tabular, signed, dated Lebenslauf of older German convention. Nobody in this set asks for a signature, a date line, or a particular layout. If a posting asks, do it. If it does not, the published instructions above are the whole list.

Four things still unpublished

Each of these belongs to a firm, and each is left open here.

1. A page count for the German market. No firm in this set publishes one.
2. Which countries request diplomas, certificates and references. Roland Berger says some do and names none.
3. Whether the CV itself should be in German when the posting is in German. McKinsey's rule permits either language and takes no view on which to pick.
4. Application deadlines for German offices. One firm says it has no fixed hiring period. Another keeps its dates in a browser-rendered tool that four access routes did not open.

Two of the four have a named address. Roland Berger tells candidates to contact HR in the office they want to join. Porsche Consulting publishes an FAQ alongside its process page. Both are faster than another guide.

A fifth gap is worth naming because it is the one most often filled with confidence elsewhere. No firm in this set publishes anything about grade thresholds for the German market, and the German grading scale runs in the opposite direction from the ones most portals were built around. Roland Berger says only that you "excelled at school and university," which is an adjective rather than a number. Where a portal asks for a grade point average and your transcript gives a German scale figure, the McKinsey portal setting for schools that provide non-numerical results is the closest published workaround, and it lets you type the grade into a comment field instead of forcing it into a scale that does not fit.

None of that is a threshold, and we are not going to supply one. What it does give you is a way to complete a form honestly rather than abandoning it or converting your own grades with an unofficial formula.

Where the hours actually count

The document is an afternoon. The 45-minute test and the case are the parts that get scored, and our own weights say what our drills measure: Coverage 45, then Separation 25, Depth 20 and Concision 10. Those four weights are ours, set by us and read from our own code, and no firm publishes a rubric of its own.

For a German-market process specifically, two items deserve the time. The timed online test rewards arithmetic under pressure, which is what the math drill measures. The two to three minute self-presentation rewards leading with the answer, which is what our synthesis weighting scores first. The structure drill covers the case itself, both run without an account, and the method page explains each weight. Our six case simulators are not live yet, and no drill here teaches business content.

Adjacent pages: the two published UK routes are in the UK consulting CV guide, the Dutch process is in the Dutch consulting CV guide, and the letter question, where these two firms disagree, is in the consulting cover letter guide.

What changed on this Lebenslauf page, and when

30 September 2026. This replaces a 238-word page that described the classic German Lebenslauf conventions, including a photograph, and cited nobody.

The photograph advice was the worst of it and it is now reversed on evidence. A Munich-headquartered strategy firm publishes an instruction to leave the photo out of the application documents, so a page telling candidates to include one was pushing them to break a published rule at that firm.

Also removed: a stated page count and a claim that the document should be in German. Neither had a source. The language question now carries the only published rule we could find, which permits either language and forbids submitting both.

Added in this version: the Roland Berger document list with its conditional certificates, the McKinsey one-version limit read closely, the two to three minute self-presentation as a dated deliverable, the four Porsche Consulting stages with their two published durations, the contradiction between two Roland Berger response times published rather than resolved, the six to eight week process and four to six month lead time, and five mechanical checks in place of a length nobody publishes.