Consulting Resume 2026: Six Bullets Rewritten in Full

What the first reader of a consulting resume can check

A CV reader can verify three things without leaving the page: whether a number is internally consistent, whether a bullet names an outcome or a duty, and whether the document is laid out the way the firm asked for it. Everything else waits for the interview.

That is a narrower list than most advice implies, and it is narrow for a reason. Consider what OC&C's graduate application actually receives. The firm's London Associate Consultant vacancy opens its process with "1) CV Submission - Please remove name & contact details. (No cover letter required)". The reader has no name, no email, no covering narrative, and no phone number. They have the sections and the sentences.

Then read what the same vacancy says about who reads it first: "As part of our CV screening process, we use an internally developed AI tool to support our recruitment team in reviewing applications. The tool supports, rather than replaces, our recruitment process. Some CV screening decisions may be made using the tool without prior individual human review, subject to appropriate safeguards and human oversight, however, final recruitment decisions are made by people."

The firm also says it screens continuously: "Please note, we screen our applications on a rolling basis & will therefore review applications as we receive them." An application sent in mid-September is read in mid-September, against whoever else arrived that week.

Three criteria at OC&C, five different ones at KPMG

There is no shared list of CV criteria across firms, and the two most explicit published lists overlap on nothing.

Read the first two rows against each other. Curiosity, extracurricular interests and commercial awareness are OC&C's terms. Leadership, teamwork, communication, organization and client-facing skills are KPMG Canada's. Neither list contains a word from the other. Any page telling you the six things consulting recruiters look for is averaging two incompatible published lists and several unpublished ones.

BCG Switzerland's row is the one people misread. Its instruction to keep it to one page with a clear structure sits under cover letter guidance, and the CV paragraph names four sections without giving a length. The personal interests section is asked for by name there, and it is one of OC&C's three criteria, which is worth knowing if you were planning to cut it for space.

Six bullets rewritten, with the arithmetic in the open

Each pair below turns a responsibility into a result. The left-hand version describes a job that any successor would describe the same way. The right-hand version carries a figure and shows the step that produces it, so a reader can check the claim rather than take it.

1. Finance, month-end close. Before: "Responsible for managing the monthly close process." After: "Cut the monthly close from 9 business days to 4, roughly 56% shorter, by moving three reconciliations ahead of the accrual review." The math: 9 minus 4 is 5 days saved, and 5 divided by 9 is 0.556, so roughly 56%.

2. Procurement, supplier spend. Before: "Assisted with vendor management and contract renewals." After: "Renegotiated 14 of 60 supplier contracts and cut annual spend by $210,000 against a $3,500,000 base, a 6% reduction." The math: 210,000 divided by 3,500,000 is 0.06, so 6%.

3. Operations, shift scheduling. Before: "Led weekly team meetings for a 12-person shift." After: "Rebuilt the roster for 12 staff and cut monthly overtime from 180 hours to 108, a 40% fall, with no change to output." The math: 180 minus 108 is 72 hours, and 72 divided by 180 is 0.4, so 40%.

4. Tutoring, an unpaid role that still counts. Before: "Tutored undergraduate students in mathematics." After: "Wrote a 6-week problem set used by 40 students; the group's mean score rose from 62 to 74 out of 100, roughly 19% higher." The math: 74 minus 62 is 12 points, and 12 divided by 62 is 0.194, so roughly 19% in relative terms.

5. Student society, treasurer. Before: "Treasurer of a 300-member student society." After: "Cut event cost per attendee from $18 to $11 across 9 events and 640 attendees, saving $4,480 on a fixed budget." The math: 18 minus 11 is 7 dollars per attendee, and 7 multiplied by 640 is 4,480.

6. Marketing, a project you only supported. Before: "Supported a market research project on adjacent segments." After: "Sized 3 adjacent segments and recommended one; it produced $1,200,000 of first-year revenue on a $4,000,000 base, a 30% addition." The math: 1,200,000 divided by 4,000,000 is 0.3, so 30%.

Pair six is the hardest kind and the most common. You supported something rather than owning it, and the honest rewrite names what you personally did, which was the sizing and the recommendation, and then names the outcome of the choice that followed.

The honesty rule, in the words three firms use

Quantified bullets beat vague ones, which creates an obvious temptation. Three firms write down what happens next, and they word it three different ways.

McKinsey puts it in a table of AI uses on its interviewing page. "Polishing your resume or practicing interview questions" is marked encouraged. "Exaggerating or creating achievements that aren't yours" is marked not allowed. The boundary is drawn on the act rather than the tool, and both rows sit in the same table.

IBM sets a disclosure threshold on its application process page: "Candidates are encouraged to disclose significant AI assistance in submitted materials. Minor edits (grammar, formatting) do not require disclosure." It bans using a model "To generate entire resumes, cover letters, or responses without personal input", and adds that "Violation of this policy may result in disqualification from the recruitment process."

Slalom words it in a way that removes intent from the question: using AI on a resume is acceptable, but "Misrepresentation, intentional or otherwise, can lead to disqualification."

And Deloitte names the mechanism that catches an inflated figure. Its US interview tips page says "it's important not to make stories up. Your interviewer will know the difference, especially when they ask follow-up questions." That is the reason the arithmetic above is written out. A number you can derive in one step survives the follow-up. A number you rounded up in the hope nobody would multiply it does not.

A genuine 6% you can explain beats an invented 40% you cannot, and the six examples above are all modest on purpose.

The complete consulting resume template, every line of it

One page, plain text, no columns and no graphics. Replace the bracketed parts. This is the whole thing.

FIRST LAST
City, Country · [email protected] · +00 000 000 000 · linkedin.com/in/handle
[Remove this whole line if the firm asks for an anonymized CV]

EDUCATION
[University], [City]                                        [Month Year to Month Year]
[Degree and subject]. [GPA or classification]. [Test score, if you want it read]
[Scholarship, prize, or ranking, one line, only if it has a name]
[Relevant coursework, one line, only if it is quantitative]

[Second school, same shape]                                 [Month Year to Month Year]

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
[Employer], [City], [Your exact job title]                  [Month Year to Month Year]
· [Verb] [what you changed] from [figure] to [figure], [percent or amount], by [the single step]
· [Verb] [scope: how many people, accounts, sites, dollars] and [the outcome, with a figure]
· [Verb] [the decision you personally made] over [the option you rejected], [why, in a clause]

[Employer], [City], [Your exact job title]                  [Month Year to Month Year]
· [Same shape, two to four bullets]
· [Same shape]

[Employer], [City], [Your exact job title]                  [Month Year to Month Year]
· [Same shape, two bullets is enough for an older role]
· [Same shape]

LEADERSHIP AND ACTIVITIES
[Organization], [Your role]                                 [Month Year to Month Year]
· [Verb] [what you ran, with its size] and [the result, with a figure]
· [Verb] [the thing that was still broken when you left, and what you did about it]

[Organization], [Your role]                                 [Month Year to Month Year]
· [Same shape, one or two bullets]

ADDITIONAL
Languages: [Language] (native), [Language] (professional), [Language] (basic)
Technical: [Tool], [Tool], [Tool]
Interests: [Three specific things, named precisely enough to ask a question about]

Three notes on the shape. The languages line is there because BCG Switzerland names language skills as one of its four sections, and most American templates omit it. The interests line is there because OC&C makes extracurricular interests one of its three criteria, so cutting it costs you against one third of that firm's published standard. And the contact line carries its own deletion instruction, because OC&C asks for the CV without a name.

Bullet counts: two to four for a recent role, two for an older one. The template above holds eleven bullets in total, which fits on one page at eleven point type with normal margins.

How long a consulting resume runs, and who says so

The honest answer is that the firms disagree, so the invitation and the job posting outrank any general rule.

1. OC&C publishes "CVs should be 1-2 pages long." That is the only explicit range we read from a strategy firm.
2. KPMG Canada publishes "Be concise. Try to keep your resume to one page." The verb is "try", which makes it guidance rather than a limit.
3. BCG Switzerland publishes no CV length. Its one-page instruction belongs to the cover letter.
4. Nobody we read publishes a bullet count, a font size, or a margin.

So the sequence is: read your posting, then the firm's application page, then default to one page if neither says anything. A second page is defensible when the posting allows it and you have enough dated roles to fill it with results.

One more published number worth carrying. IBM says it receives "over three million job seekers applying to IBM each year", and its recruiters advise a separate tailored version per posting rather than one document sent everywhere. IBM is not a strategy firm, and it is the only employer in this set that publishes an application volume at all.

Seven mechanical failures, checked in ten minutes

None of these are about content, and all of them are visible to a reader in the first few seconds.

1. Tense drift. Past roles in the past tense, the current role in the present, and no mixing inside a single bullet.
2. Dates that do not line up. Right-aligned, one format throughout, and no unexplained gaps longer than a term.
3. A job title you invented. Use the title on your payslip or your offer letter, because it may be verified.
4. A number without its base. "Cut costs by 15%" is unreadable without knowing 15% of what.
5. A PDF that reflows. Export to PDF, then open it on another machine before sending it.
6. Your name still on an anonymized CV. OC&C asks twice for it to be removed, and leaving it is a process failure.
7. A second application at a firm that allows one. KPMG Canada states "You can only apply to one position each recruitment cycle", so a wrong first choice is the whole cycle.

Read the page aloud once at the end. A bullet you stumble over is a bullet an interviewer will ask you to explain, which is fine if the figure is real and fatal if it is not.

Where a consulting resume stops

The document gets you a slot. What happens in that slot is graded on different things, and our own weights are ours rather than any firm's. The structuring rubric in our code scores an answer Coverage 45, Separation 25, Depth 20, Concision 10, read from src/lib/grading/rubrics.ts. No firm publishes a scoring sheet, and none of the four quoted above comes close.

If you want a resume file rather than a block of text, Harvard's career office publishes a bullet-point resume template in Word, Google Docs and an accessible version, free and without an account. It is a general template rather than a consulting one, which is why the section shapes above matter.

For what comes after the document, how an answer is assessed carries the weights themselves, the free tools hold drills for structure and math with no account needed, and behavioral and fit practice lists the signals a fit interview tests. What none of it does: our six case simulators are not running yet, and the assessments page says so in its own words. Nothing on this site screens your CV, and no tool we sell would tell you what OC&C's internal model scores, because the firm does not publish it.

What this page cannot tell you, and who holds it

Four things, and each belongs to someone else.

Two numbers we deliberately do not print. The first is how long a reader spends on a CV. Six seconds, thirty seconds and one minute all circulate, and every version we traced leads to a recruiting-software vendor or a content aggregator rather than to a firm. No consulting firm we read publishes a reading time, so there is nothing here to quote.

The second is the share of applicants who clear the CV screen. No firm in this set publishes one, and estimating it from headcount arithmetic would be a fabrication dressed as a statistic. If a page gives you that percentage, ask which firm published it.