This is part 2 of my 2 article series on why I left McKinsey.

In article #1, I explained why I left and dove into what I perceived to be McKinsey and the consulting industry’s shortcomings.

Below, I’ll dig into why I loved working there and the general benefits of a management consulting background.

As I said before, I wouldn’t trade my McKinsey years for anything. Many fortunate people face the choice between an MBB (see consulting lingo if you’re like “huh?”) and prestigious companies in the financial services industry (from Goldman Sachs to mid-market private equity, from well-known venture capital firms to prestigious corporate management programs).

9 times out of 10, I recommend MBB.

The reasons below explain why.

1. Benchmark for what it takes to be a great business leader

This was probably my biggest learning from McKinsey.

I came into the company pretty confident in my abilities, and frankly, was used to putting in 80% effort and still doing well at most things.

I was quickly disabused of that notion at McKinsey – not only were the people very smart, but also hard-working and socially savvy.

Of course, there’s some variation in abilities at the top consulting firms, but in general, I’d say the benchmark was set pretty high for good performance. I quickly realized I had to work very hard in order to be successful, and I realized the benchmark I needed to reach to be considered a strong business leader.

That knowledge is invaluable, and it’s something I carry with me today.

2. Valuable training in the HOW and WHAT

By HOW, I mean the approach to solving business problems and creating value as a business leader.

Examples include:

• Hypothesis driven problem-solving: the benefits of quickly determining a potential solution set, and utilizing data to iterate on this answer until its crisp and accurate
• 80/20 principle: how to be efficient with your time and your information to arrive at answers that are “good enough”
• Data-driven decision making: the importance of empirical findings and a fact-based approach. As one wise man said, “If you don’t have any facts, we’ll just use my opinions”

By WHAT, I mean specific tactics and tools that are valuable in any business situation. Examples include:

• Things like the “Influence model” (which teaches you specific ways to exercise leadership and build influence) and the “Skill/will matrix” (which is a quick way to understand organizational culture and how to improve employee performance)
• MECE (“Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive”) – most of you have heard of this by now, but it’s a good mental fact-check to make sure you’re thinking comprehensively and in an organized fashion
• Issue trees – a way to disaggregate large, ambiguous problems into smaller chunks for work-assignment and problem solving purposes

The list goes on.

3. Alumni network

I’ve mentioned this several times as a key asset of the top firms, and I’ve reaped its benefits multiple times in my career already. In particular, I wouldn’t have joined shopkick without reaching out to Cyriac Roeding, its CEO and a McKinsey alumni. And I wouldn’t have contacted Cyriac (and in all honesty, he may not have responded) if I didn’t first hear about him through the McKinsey Alumni newsletter.

In addition, even in the startup world – which is underrepresented as an exit opportunity among consultants – I’ve bumped into many McKinsey alumni and its a special experience that we all share.

4. Credibility and signaling

One of the “laziest” benefits is just having a name like McKinsey on your resume. Similar to getting into an Ivy League school, it lends you instant credibility in all sorts of things – personally relevant moments for me include in the job hunt, in finding startup investors, in business development and partnership opportunities.

There are several reasons for this but the primary one is signaling. McKinsey has already done the due diligence on my background and abilities and given their OK. Other companies can leverage this.

5. Client skills

One of the key benefits of consulting – far more than any other business occupation – is the client interaction. You’ll work directly with client counterparts, and in some cases you may even lead client teams!

You’ll add a valuable bullet to your resume and build valuable long-term skills. In addition, you may develop client relationships that will last beyond your tenure. It’s not uncommon for consultants to jump directly to a client in a permanent role (more on exit options).

6. Firm relationships

Stronger than any client relationships will be your relationships with fellow consultants – especially those of your class. One of the most valuable things I took away from my McKinsey years are these relationships, because everyones’ gone on to do some very amazing things.

Some have started companies; others work at the top private equity and venture capital firms; still others are at all the top business and law schools.

They’re successful – and not only do they provide motivation for you to continue working hard – but are great friends.

In addition, you’ll develop great relationships with your team leaders (aka engagement managers/project leaders) and partners. I still keep in regular contact with several of them and they’ve been invaluable for career advice and business contacts.

7. (Some) domain expertise

Becoming an expert in X industry or Y function generally doesn’t come until many years into your consulting career.

There are several reasons for this, the primary one being that until you develop meaningful client relationships, you’re most valuable as a utility infielder (essentially a person who can wear many hats).

However, sometimes you can dive quite deep into a particular area and find that, even after several years, you’ve become a de facto firm expert on that particular topic.

On one of my projects, I lead the implementation of a barcode scanning technology that systematically tracked and assessed how employees spent their time. This was a new data-focused approach to identifying inefficiencies and streamlining tasks.

Once this technology was proven to deliver client value, I suddenly became the “barcode expert”. In my final year at McKinsey, I spent a considerable fraction of my time parachuting into projects as a consultant (to consultants, yeah yeah) on how to incorporate this technology.

While this is somewhat unusual, even junior consultants can develop expertise in an industry (eg, pharmaceuticals) early. Functional expertise (eg, expertise at long-term strategic planning) is more rare.

8. Entrepreneurial…as big companies go

The top consulting firms can be entrepreneurial environments. If you have a particular passion (say, education in sub-saharan Africa), firms like BCG will generally do what it can to provide you that opportunity.

In my years at McKinsey, several of us were very interested in creating opportunities to essentially do “consulting for startups”. While the idea never got off the ground, this was primarily because of a lack of effort on our part. My feeling is that while McKinsey may not have given us free reign, they would have provided support and guidance to make it happen.

I say “…as big companies go” because ultimately, big companies simply can’t marshal resources, pivot ideas, and seize opportunities as quickly as startups can.

They are subject to their own processes and inertia. It’s key for their very survival.

9. Optionality

I’ve touched upon this in previous articles on consulting exit opportunities.

I believe preserving optionality is the most important thing that any young professional can do

McKinsey helped me do that incredibly well – after leaving, I could have pursued any number of professional and/or educational opportunities. And even years after leaving the company, I can leverage the name to re-open some of those doors if I choose to (for example, if for some unexplainable reason I became very interested in corporate strategy it wouldn’t be too hard to line up the right interviews).

Preserving optionality is important early in your career because you simply don’t know what’s to come. As confident as you are that you’ll be the next Steven Schwarzman or Jeffrey Immelt or Geoffrey Canada, these things can change rapidly – whether in your control or outside of it.

Leaving doors open is the smartest way to arm yourself.

Now you know why consulting’s so great :) And click here if you haven’t read part 1 on why I left.

This is my 2 article series on why I left McKinsey.

One of the most frequent questions that I get is why I left McKinsey. Until now, I’ve been hesitant to address this in-depth – mostly because I didn’t feel it was relevant for what I was doing with Management Consulted, but also because I didn’t want to be perceived as a naysayer.

However, I think my story has valuable lessons for people entering the field, and for those that are currently working at a top firm.

In article #1, I’ll explain why I left and dive into what I perceive to be McKinsey (and generally speaking, the consulting industry’s) shortcomings for me personally. That’s important to keep in mind.

In article #2, I’ll dig into why I loved working there and the general benefits of a management consulting background.

I enjoyed my time at McKinsey, and wouldn’t have done it any differently. I actually tried leaving the company earlier than I did, but am glad in hindsight that I was persuaded against it.

There were 3 main reasons why I left – my entrepreneurial bug, a lack of interaction with customers/end users, and the service-oriented nature of the business.

Let’s dig into each of these.

1. An entrepreneurial bug

The interesting thing is that in school, I didn’t consider myself entrepreneurial. There were several half-assed attempts to start the occasional student group or business idea which never got far.

Instead, I was very much an “organization guy” – spending years at various organizations to achieve leadership positions in everything from SURJ (an undergraduate research publication) to student government.

I think a lot of people in life figure out what they want to do as a series of “anti-experiences”. In my case, working at several big companies (Google, Credit Suisse, McKinsey) taught me that I definitively did not want to work at a big company as a long-term career.

There were both mature reasons for that (the slow pace, the inefficient work processes, the lack of created value going into my own pocket) as well as immature reasons (having the occasional uninspiring boss, the 7am wake up times, the business casual dress code).

Regardless, my “anti-experiences” convinced me to start a company. That’s how I caught the entrepreneurial bug.

Oh, it also didn’t hurt that I loved technology, and in particular, the web. I wrote my first HTML website in 6th grade, and would often stay up at night reading HTML training manuals (don’t mention this to my future girlfriend).

2. Lack of consumer focus

Management consulting is at its core B2B. It may touch consumers indirectly (for example, when you’re consulting for a large consumer-packaged goods company), but your primary focus is delivering value to other companies.

This in itself is not a bad thing, but my passion is in working with consumers…and in most projects, we rarely interacted with them, if at all.

On one project, we needed to understand the behavior of small and medium-sized businesses (in particular, restaurants) and their purchasing behavior – so we spent a lot of time interviewing restaurant owners and managers and talking about their customer experiences.

On another project, we were helping a large yellow-book advertising business streamline their debt collection practices – so we spent a lot of time analyzing call-center employees and their interaction with customers.

That’s about as close as I got.

3. Consulting is a service, not a product

I use these terms loosely, but the key distinction to me is whether the outcome is repetitive or incremental.

For example, a barber is in a service industry – each outcome (the completed haircut) is repetitive. Facebook is a product business – the “Newsfeed” feature that was released is incremental and builds upon the existing Facebook website.

Consulting at its core is a service business. Every project is in many ways a new beginning – you go through the same process to pitch potential clients, scope a project, recruit a team, and solve the problem(s).

The output is remarkably similar across projects – generally a mixture of Microsoft Word memos and Powerpoint decks of findings delivered in presentations to client executives.

In fact, a favorite partner of mine once said, “we’re masters at reinventing the wheel”.

In addition, because you are an advisor and not responsible for execution, sometimes your work may be totally ignored – a .ppt file stored in some company intranet folder to be referenced 5 years later when the new CEO asks for a review of strategic options (“Oh, I remember we hired McKinsey a long time ago…let me see if I can dig up their stuff”)

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t incremental aspects of the business – many of which I touch upon below (such as the accumulated knowledge base, the client relationships, etc).

However, what I like about being in a product business is its primarily incremental nature – it’s like building your own house and then renovating it over time.

With consulting, I felt as if I were renting an apartment, decorating it to my tastes, and then moving on 6 months later to a new apartment only to begin the process again.

These are the 3 main reasons. Of course, there are small nits – sometimes, I felt like a kid running around acting like an adult – it was tough pretending I knew something about life insurance marketing when I’d been on the project only one week, sitting across from executives 15 years my senior who had spent their professional lives focused on the problem.

There are always the engagement managers who manage workload poorly, the clients who have unpredictable and poorly defined demands, etc

But these are all small problems that aren’t unique to consulting, and weren’t the main contributors for my exiting McKinsey and moving on to start a company.

Hope that helps clarify. Please see part 2 (when it’s out) for reasons why I loved McKinsey, and why I would do it all over again.

Anything I said not make sense? Anything you disagree with? Please comment below!

Here are the companies which we have 2011 management consulting compensation data:
-A.T. Kearney
-Bain (post-MBA)
-BCG (undergraduate and post-MBA)
-Booz & Co (U.S. and Dubai)
-L.E.K. (post-MBA)
-McKinsey (undergraduate and post-MBA)
-Mercer (undergraduate and post-MBA; includes all areas – human capital, actuary)
-Oliver Wyman (Financial consulting)

This is for fulltime jobs that start in the Fall of 2011.

For A.T. Kearney…

Signing Bonus: $5,000
Base: $65,000
Performance Bonus: up to $13,000 (20% of base salary)
Profit Sharing: up to $6,500 (up to 10% of base depending on firm performance)
- – - – -
Total compensation: up to $89,500

Retirement & relocation: Firm matches 25% of your 401(k) contributions up to 6% of your pay. Relocation assistance depends on the distance between your office and your school residence. 0-50 miles = $3,000, 51-800 miles = $5,000, and 801+ miles = $10,000.

*Our source also noted that in their contract, A.T. Kearney explicitly states that the base salary will not be increased until January 2013, which is approximately 1.5 years after starting fulltime. Interesting!

Retirement Contribution: 10% of base + 5.7% of bonus

For Booz & Co in New York… (Dubai numbers in parenthesis; key difference is Dubai has no income taxes and a wonky housing market)

Signing Bonus: $10,000 (Dubai: $5,000)
Base: $60,000 (Dubai: $62,000)
Performance Bonus: up to $12,000/20% of base (Dubai: up to $9,300/15% of base)
Relocation/Housing Allowance: $5-15,000 (Dubai: $20,500 for housing + $5,000 for relocation)
- – - – -
Total compensation: up to $96,800

Retirement: $6,000/10% of base + up to $684/5.7% of bonus

For Boston Consulting Group…

Signing Bonus: $5,000
Base: $72,000
Performance Bonus: up to $16,200 (22.5% of base salary)
Profit Sharing Retirement Fund: up to $4,400 (expected to be 5% of sum of base salary and performance bonus)
- – - – -
Total compensation: up to $97,600

Retirement: BCG also contributes 15% of your base + bonus into your 401(k) retirement account, with $0 required contribution.

For Mercer…

Signing Bonus: DNK
Base: $60,000 based on 40 hour work week
Performance Bonus: no bonus, instead paid time and a half for all hours over $40 = approximately $45/hour
- – - – -
Total compensation: Variable

Retirement & relocation: DNK

For McKinsey…

Signing Bonus: $5,000
Base: $75,000
Housing: $5,000
Performance Bonus: none for BAs
- – - – -
Total compensation: $85,000

Retirement & relocation: 12% of total annual compensation

For Oliver Wyman (Financial Consulting)…

Signing Bonus: $10,000
Base: $75,000
Performance Bonus: up to $15,000 (20% of base salary) for your first year, and 40% of base salary for your second year (guaranteed)
- – - – -
Total compensation: $100,000

Retirement: Do not know about 401(k) contributions or retirement funds.

*Our source also shared that Bain’s numbers are very similar, a total of approximately $97K take-home in your first year, including the signing bonus

Some more niche roles…

• Accenture Systems Integration: $66,500 base + $1,500 relocation expenses
• Deloitte Consulting Human Capital: $70,000 base + $10,000 signing bonus
• Deloitte Consulting BTA (IT Consulting): $70,000 base + $10,000 signing bonus
• Milliman Actuarial Consulting: $60,000 + bonus of up to 25% of base

For Bain…

Signing Bonus: $20,000
Base: $125,000
Performance Bonus: up to $39,000 for your first year
- – - – -
Total compensation: $184,000

Retirement: 401(k) contribution up to $7,400

According to my Bain post-MBA source:

Deloitte’s offers were very similar, except they had MUCH higher signing bonuses ($40k + $10k for signing early + pay for 2nd year of b-school). This was for folks who interned there, so the latter two parts of the bonus might not apply otherwise.

That means Deloitte covered your second year of bschool tuition for signing – wow!

For BCG…

Signing Bonus: $20,000
Base: $135,000
Performance Bonus: up to $40,000 for your first year
Relocation: $2-5,000 depending on distance
- – - – -
Total compensation: at least $197,000

Retirement: up to $9,000/5% of bonus+salary is put into retirement fund, no contributions required

Our source also noted that project leaders at BCG (approximately 2-3 years out of bschool) were paid $185,000 base.

For L.E.K….

Signing Bonus: $25,000
Base: $135,000
Performance Bonus: up to $25,000 for your first year
Relocation: $5,000
- – - – -
Total compensation: at least $190,000

Retirement and profit sharing: up to $30,000 (not sure of split between 2)

For McKinsey…

Signing Bonus: $20,000
Base: $125,000
Performance Bonus: up to $40,000 for your first year
Relocation: $2-5,000 depending on distance
- – - – -
Total compensation: at least $187,000

Retirement: up to $19,000/12% of bonus+salary is put into retirement fund, no contributions required

Please note that BCG and McKinsey post-grad/MBA salaries are almost identical, despite McKinsey having a $10K lower base due to a $10K higher retirement contribution.

For Mercer…

Signing Bonus: DNK
Base: $85,000
Performance Bonus: up to $17,000/20% of base
- – - – -
Total compensation: at least $102,000 (does not include signing bonus)

Retirement & relocation: DNK

Some perspective

Compared to 2008 consulting salary levels, it’s about a 25-30% increase over 3 years…which is actually somewhat muted given the poor economy over the past few years.

I would love to share compensation data if you have it for other firms/seniority levels. I will directly update this post as they come in. Thanks in advance!

What do you guys think – is this fair compared to other careers and industries? It still lags banking pretty significantly…

Management consulting resumes are a frequent topic here.

For one, about 50% of reader emails are related to resumes. For two, you can’t land a consulting job without a good one.

While we’ve covered resume topics like key tips, tactical errors, and even how consultants read resumes, today’s post will be a comprehensive “catch-all” to address frequent reader questions.

We’ll cover:

• How to write a consulting-targeted resume from scratch
• Advanced tips in building an eye-catching resume
• Strategic mistakes that will derail your resume from getting the fullest attention
• The skills, experiences, and specific keywords that consultants and recruiters look for
• 10 “tactical” tips in composing your consulting resume

Finally, due to the 100s of questions received on this topic, we’ll have an honest discussion about what it really takes to get an interview at places like McKinsey, Booz, and more.

It’s a long article, so get ready for some scrolling!

How to build a consulting-targeted resume from scratch

If you don’t have a resume, your first step is to check out example resume templates.

In general, all resumes/CVs should include:

• A header section with personal information
• Sections for work experience, educational background, and miscellany interests/skills/activities
• Bulleted text as opposed to text paragraphs
• Key information on each experience such as your title, the location, and length of time involved

In addition, most consulting resumes do not have a lead “summary” or “objectives” section as is common in international CVs. Two reasons:

1. Your summary and objectives should be communicated clearly through your achievements
2. Resume readers are busy – a summary section adds little additional value

Finally, 99% of consulting resumes are one page long. Same goes for the cover letter!

If you have more than 5 years of experience, or have switched industries abnormally often, 2 pages is ok. Anything longer than that is recruiting suicide.

Advanced tips in building an eye-catching resume

Put yourself into a recruiter’s or a consultant’s shoes. At most, you have 5 minutes to review the resume. That’s actually pretty generous – average review time is probably more like 2-3 minutes.

You need to make a decision about whether this person deserves an interview in that timeframe.

You have very little time…so:

1. You focus on the candidate’s 1-2 most impressive achievements
2. You hope it’s in PDF…so you can avoid annoying formatting issues and document-opening errors

You need to determine whether you deserve an interview…so:

1. You look for the specific consulting skills that are needed in the job (more on that below)
2. You read the Interests/Hobbies section because, let’s admit, it’s the most interesting part!
3. You do an overall review of the resume’s professionalism, paying attention to alignment, grammar, and typos

Now take those steps, and think about how you can improve your resume from the consultant’s perspective.

Strategic mistakes that will derail your resume from getting the fullest attention

We’ve discussed common resume mistakes before.

Here, we won’t be discussing tactical errors like using “Justify” alignment. Instead, we’ll talk about resume-wide strategic errors.

Strategic error #1: Focusing on education without sufficient backup

It’s a bad idea to dedicate half your resume to your educational background if you don’t have the big school name or the technical/graduate degrees to impress readers.

This hurts because with only 2 minutes to review your resume, you don’t want 90 seconds of that time to be focused on your Bachelor of Arts degree from University of North Dakota (no offense).

Strategic error #2: Throwing everything but the kitchen sink

This is not new advice, but with resumes less is more. Less is much, much more.

Every recruiter and consultant can tell you about the outstanding resumes they’ve seen that were barely one page, at 12-point Times New Roman font, with 1″ page margins.

Why is this?

Because you enjoy reading them more. You can quickly analyze the key skills and successes. And most importantly, you remember them better. When it comes to resume review time, you immediately know the candidate’s story and strengths.

Finally, it shows a degree of professionalism and self-confidence to execute such a strategy.

While you don’t need to be that bold, the worst thing you can do is list 20 bullets under each job, 9 different hobbies, and 15 skill certifications.

Ask yourself this question: if a resume reviewer will only remember 5 things about my resume, what are they? Then put them front and center. Everything else is, more or less, window-dressing.

Strategic error #3: Lack of self-promotion, when your achievements can’t promote themselves

It’s great that you’ve been a software engineer for 10 years. But will a string of technical jobs at Oracle, Salesforce, and Intuit be sufficient to attract BCG recruiters?

Highly unlikely.

In this situation, you’ve got to sell yourself loud and clear. Cover letter aside, you only have your resume to impress a reader enough to be considered “strategy consulting material”.

Highlight your biggest achievements. Exaggerate a little when quantifying impact. Use words like “managed” and “developed” often.

Identify precisely what skills consultants are looking for, and rewrite your resume to display those skills.

Regardless of your career and industry, you can exhibit the same parallel skills that are employed by Bain consultants every day.

Research and analytics? Check.

People leadership and project management? Check.

Client sales and relationship management? Check-plus.

The skills, experiences, and specific keywords that consultants and recruiters look for

Consultants are generally looking for the following skills and experiences in resumes:

• People management and team leadership
• Client interaction – both sales and relationship building
• Technical and quantitative analytics and research
• Proven-track record of success at prior jobs as demonstrated by promotions and increasing responsibilities
• Quantifiable individual and team-oriented results

This will vary by academic background, years of work experience, and so forth.

To demonstrate the above, great key phrases include: directed teams, led meetings, managed clients, proposed and implemented, increased performance by, reduced costs by…

You get the idea.

Further reading: Insider secrets to Bain recruiting

What it really takes to land an interview at the best firms

We’ll avoid a discussion of specific accomplishments, because with consulting hiring, there are exceptions to every rule.

Hundreds of Princeton graduates are rejected sight-unseen by Bain Consulting every year, while a University of Wisconsin grad was able to secure a first-round McKinsey interview.

As a broad rule of thumb, the following will help differentiate your resume from the rest of the pile:

-A top-tier educational institution (undergraduate or graduate)
-A prestigious role at an industry-leading Fortune 500
-Starting a venture-funded company
-Doing something truly world-class (such as receiving a Marshall fellowship, publishing research in Science/Nature)

Without one of the above, you’ll need to focus on the following:

1. Make your cover letter and resume air-tight
2. Network at every available opportunity. As Ramit Sethi likes to say, great networkers build relationships before they need them
3. Consider graduate educational opportunities that will “upgrade” your candidacy
4. Search low and high for boutiques and regional consulting firms that have more idiosyncratic hiring rules
5. Start your own consulting shop!

That said, here are the 10 very specific tips to apply when writing a consulting-ready resume:

1) Read your resume for typos. Then read it again. Then have a friend read it. Then read it again. It is critical that there are no mistakes of any kind – grammar and spelling both. While you think mistakes can be overlooked, the funny thing about consultants (and this applies to other industries as well) is that once they find a mistake, it’s all they remember.

Last year, I was doing a resume review and noticed someone had mispelled “consulting” into “consluting”. While the rest of the resume was good, I didn’t forget this typo – and when we were on a resume review call, the team lead brought it up, and you know what? Everyone else on the team had noticed it too.

2) Align everything and space everything equally. Everyone’s seen those left-by-the-road-to-die resumes, the ones with horrible spacing issues, 3 different font sizes, looking like it came out of the printer crooked. While that is an extreme, proper spacing and alignment make a resume more visually appealing and are indicative of an attention to detail that are critical to any consultant’s early success. One of my mentors during the recruiting process put it best when he said:

“If someone’s resume doesn’t have properly aligned columns, it tells me that they either don’t care or don’t pay attention to detail. And if they don’t pay attention to detail, then how are they going to build a model that has the right numbers? Or a presentation that’s ready for the client to see?”

3) Put your name in a large font. This is often overlooked, but do not put your name in the same font size as the rest of the resume. If your resume is typed in standard 12 font size, I would recommend a name at least 24 font size. Why? Because recruiters/interview screeners can churn through 200-300 resumes within 3-5 hours (giving 1-2 minutes per resume!). The last thing you want is for them to mentally think “hey, this person is fairly qualified”, move on to the next resume, and then forget your name.

This is just for safety purposes. Most screening processes compile resume scores in Excel spreadsheets, and this systematic process ensures your resume won’t be overlooked even if your name is.

But there are many application situations where this will be helpful – think boutique firms, random resume drops, headhunters, etc. You want your name to stand out so people connect you with your qualifications.

4) Make sure your contact info is updated and you check your email frequently. I’ve heard horror stories of applicants for financial service jobs submitting resumes with emails that bounce, phone numbers that are disconnected, and so forth. While the firm may eventually get in touch with you, a first impression is set and you’ll get off to a bad start. Use your primary email address and a working phone number.

As a small but important detail, try to avoid outdated email domains (like AOL). Consultants pride themselves on being technologically savvy, and seeing an applicant with a name@aol.com address raises several questions, such as “does this guy still use dial-up?”; “has she not heard of gmail?”; and so forth. Remember, readers – covering all bases is the name of the recruiting game.

5) Avoid conspicuous gaps in your education and work timeline. A few months is ok. Anything longer than 6 months is a no-no. This is another situation, like typos, alignment, etc – where questions lead to more questions and peoples’ impression of your resume can take a turn for the worse. My blanket advice here is that 9/10 times, you can fill in the timeframe with something substantive (eg, nonprofit work, part-time schooling, global travel). For the 1/10 times where you can’t easily explain your situation (eg, family issues), do not mention this in your consulting cover letter. You want to downplay, not emphasize. But make sure you have your story straight and response ready, because there is a very good chance it will come up during a first round interview

6) Keep it to one page only. Obvious to some, but a very common mistake. Nothing says “I don’t know what I’m doing” faster than a 4 page resume.

If you absolutely cannot fit the things that you want to say to one page, play around with font-size, line-spacing, character-spacing (all features within Microsoft Word). But I guarantee you should be able to.

Some firms ask that you convert your resume to PDF prior to submission, or have an online submission method that automatically converts to PDF. Please check the results of both to ensure that your resume stays at one page in length.

And leave white space! Do not make your resume too “text-heavy”. Interviewers are quickly turned off by resumes that are packed with content. This will make them less interested in reading your resume AND cause them to overlook important pieces

There are exceptions to every rule as indicated above. Those with sufficient work experience and/or high job turnover can spill over onto a second page.

7) Have a line on personal interest/hobbies and keep it sensible and specific. One line only.

“Good” example:

Interests: Competitive tennis player. Avid hiker (climbed Kilimanjaro last year). Amateur pastry chef.

“Bad” example:

Interests: Likes to play lots of sports. Loves hiking mountains and has hiked Kilimanjaro in the past. Enjoys cooking.

As you can see, the “Bad” example:

#1 lacked specificity – everyone “enjoys cooking”. few can call themselves an “amateur pastry chef”. it makes you stand-out and increases the chances that reader who also likes making desserts will relate to you

#2 rambled and used flippant language – avoid the words “like” and “love”, as they can sound trite. do not turn the “Interests” line into a personal statement or paragraph

8) Focus on results. Preferably quantifiable results. Consultants are very “results-oriented”. They will be looking for similar attributes in your resume.

Instead of saying “Re-built online database to reduce errors and increase entry speed”, say this: “Constructed new online database, resulting in 50% fewer input errors and 33% more entries in an average day”

Instead of saying “Edited Human Resource interview questions to correct grammar, typos, and to tailor them for summer interns”, say this: “Optimized HR interview process by eliminating grammar and typos in questions; created the first-set of questions tailored at internship applicants resulting in 3 internship hires

Not every impact has to be quantified – but consistently focus on the impact of your work and not the steps taken, a very common mistake. This will convey that not only did you get work done, you did important work that showed clear results for your employer. High-five.

9) Do not include high school - SAT/standardized test scores are an exception. Whether you just graduated college or have 10+ years work experience, high school information does not belong on a professional resume. Place your SAT/standardized test scores in your “College” section. If there are major awards/prizes received while in high school (and this is only of the Westinghouse Science Prize magnitude), you can place them in the “College” section. An “Elks Lodge Scholarship” does not count.

10) Focus on the rule of 3 - 3 major work experiences, 3 bullets on each one. Simple “guiding principle”. Only exception is your primary job (the one experience you would like to highlight to any resume reviewer) – you should have more than 3 bullets. Have an “education” section with 3 bullets. And so forth. This rule ensures you don’t include 8 bullets for each experience, which is a sure-fire way to signal that you don’t know what you’re doing and overwhelm the reviewer with unnecessary information.

That rounds up our comprehensive review of management consulting resumes.

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This is the concluding part 2 of my series on consulting exit opportunities.

The previous post covered finance and entrepreneurship.

Graduate school (MBA, JD, masters & PhD)

Percentage: 25%

Many undergraduate consulting hires pursue graduate school after a few years. Often paid-in-full by their firms (with the agreement to return post-matriculation for several years), it affords a break from the intensity of daily consulting work and an opportunity to pause before moving on to “phase 2″ of their careers.

The majority pursue business school, with law school and Masters/PhD programs coming in 2nd and 3rd, respectively. Consulting can position an applicant well for the best universities – particularly for MBA programs. Some thoughts on business school and consulting can be found in my interview with Marquis.

Which consulting firms are best depends on your intended academic path. For business and law school, aim for the top strategy consultancies. It’s good to look at:

• Where consultants at your firm went to school – this is a good indicator of the paths available
• Alma maters of partners at your firm – a good indicator of where your firm will be known and influential

If you’re interested in Masters/PhD programs, look at companies that specialize in that particular topic if applicable. For instance, Cornerstone – with its economics research focus – is great for prospective Economics PhDs.

Corporate roles predominantly in Fortune 500

Percentage: 25%

Another consulting exit opportunity is a jump to Fortune 500 corporate roles.

Consulting firms are feeders to strategy groups at large Fortune 500s – from Pepsi to Siemens, from Citigroup to Target. These relationships are mutually beneficial, as Fortune 500 companies hire consultants to support their own strategy work.

Click here for reasons why companies hire management consultants

Outside of strategy, consultants are a good fit in roles requiring research, analytics, project coordination, and personnel management. Functions that fit the above criteria include business development, corporate development, select Mergers & Acquisitions, and operating roles.

Benefits of corporate roles include a lighter work day, a more stable work environment, and potential to build an operating skillset. Cons include unpredictable upward mobility, reduced pay and benefits, and less flexibility in choosing projects, managers, and colleagues.

Every management consulting firm is well-suited for this path, although the more prestigious firms provide more opportunities.

Nonprofit consulting

Percentage: 10%

Many consulting firms offer nonprofit consulting cases as a perk. Many consultants choose to pursue nonprofit consulting work fulltime, which comes in several formats:

• Independent nonprofit consulting firm (eg, Logistics Management Institute, Wellspring Consulting)
• Non-profit consulting firms closely affiliated with for-profit consultancies (eg, McKinsey’s Touch Foundation, Bain’s Bridgespan)
• Internal nonprofit fellowships – more common at the largest strategy consultancies
• Actual nonprofits with a track record of hiring consultants (eg, The Clinton Foundation)

The benefits of this career path are clear – eliminating poverty in sub-Saharan Africa is more exciting than increasing operational efficiency 7% at a Philippines call center. Non-profits are closely tied to public sector institutions, so this path can be an interim step to public policy and government roles.

Cons include reduced pay and benefits, long hours, and challenging environments.

If you’re interested in this path, target consulting firms that are known for nonprofit and pro-bono case work, either internally or through strategic partnerships.

There are independent nonprofit consulting firms that offer flex-work arrangements regardless of your background as long as you have a valuable skillset. This can be a great way to get your feet wet. Company names are escaping me now, but I’ll update when I remember

Public sector and government roles

Percentage: 5%

The least typical of consulting exit opportunities.

Many consultants pursue political careers – Bobby Jindal (ex-McKinsey) and Mitt Romney (ex-Bain) are 2 visible examples. Few consultants enter politics and government service directly.

Those that do gravitate towards diverse roles, from advising political candidates to direct political appointments (witness Nancy Killefer’s failed attempt to become Obama’s Chief Performance Officer) to campaign work. These roles are flexible, prize business skills, and provide upward mobility. Few become civil servants in the normal, bureaucratic-sense.

Benefits to this work are clear for those interested in pursuing government careers. Cons include reduced pay, longer hours, uncertain career paths, and less talented colleagues (I’m aware this is a generalization).

Consulting firms best suited for this career path do a lot of public sector consulting. Booz Allen is one obvious example. DFI Consulting is another.

That wraps up our tour of consulting exit options. They are more diverse than investment banking exit opportunities.