How to write a CV for consulting applications
Consulting firms want to see structured thinking, evidence of impact, and intellectual range. The CV needs to reflect all three.
What consultancies are screening for
At the graduate level, most strategy consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and the tier below them) use CVs primarily to decide who gets a case interview. The CV just needs to be good enough to get you there.
What they're looking for in the CV:
Academic strength (grades, university)
Evidence that you can work on complex problems and drive outcomes
Leadership or initiative in at least one context
Some indication that you understand what consulting actually involves
Structure, in order
1. Education, with grades, at the top
Same as banking. Degree, university, classification, immediately visible. Consulting firms, especially at the top tier, are still highly grade-conscious. Include your A-levels if they're strong.
If you've taken any quantitative or analytical modules (statistics, economics, operations research, computer science) these are worth listing briefly because they signal the numeracy that case interviews require.
2. Work experience
In reverse chronological order. Unlike banking, consulting doesn't require finance-adjacent experience. What matters is whether your bullet points demonstrate structured thinking and tangible impact.
The consulting bullet point formula: action verb + what you did + scale or method + result.
Weak: Helped improve a client's sales process.
Strong: Redesigned the sales tracking process for a 15-person team, introducing a weekly pipeline review that increased conversion rate from 18% to 27% over one quarter.
Notice that this could come from almost any work context (a part-time retail job, a student society role, a summer internship).
Consulting is also more tolerant of non-finance experience than banking. A summer working in a hospital, a charity, or a tech startup, framed around problem-solving and outcomes, is entirely relevant.
3. Virtual internships and online courses
Consulting-specific virtual programmes exist and are worth doing. Forage has simulations with McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte, and others. These give you structured exposure to the kinds of problems consultants work on and give you something specific to reference in cover letters and interviews.
List a completed virtual programme the same way you'd list any other experience. One or two bullet points describing what you worked on is enough.
Beyond virtual internships, any structured analytical training is worth including (data analysis courses, Excel or PowerPoint advanced training, project management certifications). Consulting is a skills business and evidence that you invest in developing yours is noticed.
4. Leadership and extracurricular activities (the most important differentiator)
This section matters more in consulting than almost anywhere else. Consulting firms genuinely value evidence of leadership, entrepreneurship, and initiative outside the classroom, partly because client-facing work requires it, and partly because the culture selects for people who do things rather than observe them.
Positions of responsibility in student societies, founding or running anything, coaching or mentoring, competitive sports at a serious level, all of these are relevant. Write them as you'd write work experience: with a clear description of what you did and what the outcome was.
A word of caution: don't just list memberships. "Member of the Consulting Society" is close to meaningless. "VP of Events, Warwick Consulting Society, organised six industry panel events with 200+ attendees and managed a £3,000 budget" is a completely different claim.
5. Volunteering
Include it, briefly. Two or three lines. As with banking, sustained involvement is more impressive than one-off participation. If your volunteering involved any kind of project coordination, teaching, or leadership, frame it that way.
6. Skills
Programming (Python, R, SQL), data tools (Excel, Tableau, Power BI), languages. Keep it brief and honest. If you list Python, be prepared for a technical question about it.
The structural difference from banking CVs
The main difference between a consulting CV and a banking CV is emphasis. Banking values exposure to financial environments and commercial settings. Consulting is more interested in evidence of structured problem-solving regardless of context. This means your bullet points need to do more work, because the context itself is less immediately legible to the reader.
Every bullet point on a consulting CV should answer the question: what was the problem, what did I do about it, and what happened?
What trips people up
Impact-free bullet points. "Worked with the team to analyse data" is not a consulting bullet point. What data? What was the analysis for? What did you do with the findings?
Listing responsibilities instead of achievements. Your CV should describe what you accomplished, not what you were supposed to do.
No leadership evidence. If there's no section of your CV that shows you taking initiative or leading something. Join something, run something, organise something. Then write it up properly.
Inconsistent formatting. Consulting firms notice this because attention to detail and clean communication are core to the job. Your CV is an early signal of both.
One final point: the case interview is the real filter for consulting, and the best case interview preparation starts with understanding what the job actually involves. A CV that gets you into the room is only the beginning.
