What this page is for
A consulting resume in 2026 has one job: earn a first-round interview from a fast human screen. Ladders' 2018 eye-tracking study found recruiters spend an average of 7.4 seconds on the first pass. Ownership, a number, and judgment have to be visible in a glance.
Do not start from a decorated internet template if your school already gives you a file. Use Penn, Yale, Harvard, or MIT. Put better bullets in it. CoachNed grades the content. It does not replace the career-centre layout.
Human screen, not ATS theatre
| Screen | Where you see it | What gets you through |
|---|---|---|
| Human, 7–15 seconds | MBB, most Tier 2 strategy firms | One page. Steal-able bullets. No objective. No skill bars. |
| ATS then human | Some Big 4 and corporate pipelines | Still one page. Keywords do not save empty bullets. |
Start from a real template
| Source | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Penn undergraduate resume templates | Clean education-first layout. Cut anything that does not prove impact. |
| Penn sample consulting resume | Section order and when test scores help. |
| Yale College resume templates | Conservative, screen-safe format. |
| Harvard College resume and cover-letter guide | MBA and experienced hires. Tighten the narrative. |
| MIT sample resumes | STEM, master's, PhD, technical-to-consulting. |
| Your profile | Start here |
|---|---|
| Undergrad business, econ, liberal arts | Penn or Yale |
| Undergrad from finance, clubs, internships | Penn sample consulting resume |
| MBA or experienced hire | Harvard guide |
| Technical, master's, PhD, research-heavy | MIT samples |
Section order
- Header: name, email, mobile, city. LinkedIn if it is not a mess. No photo, no objective, no skill bars.
- Education: school, degree, date, GPA if it helps in that market. One line of coursework max.
- Experience: reverse chronological. 3–5 bullets on the recent role, 2–3 on the one before. Internships count.
- Leadership: one real ownership story. Languages with a real level. Nothing about Microsoft Office.
Follow the boring career-centre look: one font, dates on the right, margins that print. No columns, no icons, no colour bars. Make only four changes to the source file: strongest section first, tight enough for one page, drop dead sections, rewrite bullets.
Bullet formula
Verb + what you owned + scale + number + so-what
Example: Rebuilt the contribution tree for a 40-store grocer, isolated £1.8m in a private-label SKU the client was about to delist, and presented the keep-recommendation to the CFO.
That bullet has a verb, a tree, a number, and a decision. The next bullet should not repeat 'presented'.
If you cannot find a number, use a clock, a count, or a rate. 'Four people, ten days, still hit the date' is a number.
One-page example
Fictional candidate. Steal the shape, not the biography.
Amira Chen · London · amira@email · +44 7xxx
Education — London School of Economics · BSc Economics, 2026 · First. Relevant: industrial organisation, applied micro. Consulting society case lead.
Summer analyst, Northstar Retail (London), 2025
- Built a banner-level contribution model for 40 stores; found £1.8m in a private-label line slated for delist; CFO kept the SKU.
- Ran a 6-week promo test in 12 stores; lift was 4% with a 90bp margin hit, so we killed the national rollout.
- Wrote the Monday pack for the steering committee (8 slides, one decision a week).
Research assistant, LSE, 2024–25
- Cleaned a 120k-row scanner dataset and estimated own-price elasticity for 30 SKUs; used it in a working paper, not a class problem set.
Leadership — Case lead, consulting society: 16 first-years through a 6-week drill plan. 9 got first-round interviews.
Additional — English, Mandarin (home). French B2. UK driving licence. Nothing else.
Before and after
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Responsible for analysing sales data and presenting insights to senior stakeholders. | Cut the weekly sales pack from 22 slides to 8 and put the £0.4m miss on page 1, so the commercial director stopped hunting in the appendix. |
| Helped the team with market research for a new product launch. | Sized TAM for a battery add-on at 1.2m UK households and killed the launch when SAM could not clear £8m at a defensible price. |
| Led a diverse team to deliver a successful project. | Ran a four-person analysis under a 10-day clock; two people had never opened Excel. We still hit the steering date. |
| Assisted with financial analysis for senior leadership. | Built a one-page margin bridge that showed a 2-point drop was £17m, not 'mix', and put it as slide 1 for the CFO. |
| Worked cross-functionally to improve processes. | Cut the weekly ops huddle from 45 minutes to 15 by moving status to a pre-read; on-time ship rose from 82% to 91% in six weeks. |
By profile
STEM / PhD
Translate the method into a decision. 'Estimated own-price elasticity for 30 SKUs; used it in a working paper' beats 'applied advanced econometrics'. One line of methods. One line of so-what. MIT samples are the right container.
Finance / PE / IB
They already know you can build a model. Show a call you forced: killed a deal, changed a price, found the miss in mix. Do not list every live deal as if the logos were the achievement.
Undergrad, thin internships
A society, a lab, a store, a family business counts if you owned a decision. Case lead for 16 first-years with 9 first-rounds is a consulting bullet. 'Member of consulting society' is not.
What gets punished
- Adverbs instead of numbers
- 'Various', 'multiple', 'several'
- Team achievements with no 'I'
- GPA theatre when the rest of the page is soft
- A second page 'because I had a lot of internships'
- Columns, icons, colour bars, a photo, an objective
Rewrite worksheet
Circle three empty bullets on your current page. Rewrite them here.
Bullet 1
Empty line, copied
Verb
What you owned
Scale
Number
So-what / decision
Rewritten line
Bullet 2
Empty line, copied
Verb
What you owned
Scale
Number
So-what / decision
Rewritten line
Bullet 3
Empty line, copied
Verb
What you owned
Scale
Number
So-what / decision
Rewritten line
Final checklist
- One page. Dates aligned. One font.
- Three bullets a partner could steal.
- Education first if you are a student.
- No objective, no photo, no Office.
- Then run it through the CoachNed grader. One free review.
After the page is tight, write the cover letter. A pretty letter on a soft resume still dies in the portal.