Problems in professional and personal lives are bound to arise. No matter how hard we try to escape them, they keep appearing. If we are not able to deal with them, the best way to get a solution is to visit a consultant. We can approach them for doubling our money, overcoming depression, patching up with a spouse, switching a career, to promote and market product and services, and anything that troubles us. Consultants are the subject-matter experts who are qualified, experienced and licensed to give advice to clients on a myriad of issues. These are the positions, who using their knowledge of resolving issues bring difference to people's lives. So if consulting or providing advice to people and companies is your forte, get ready to prepare a consultant resume for job searching. But since consulting profession too is plagued by competition, drafting one won't be an easy task.
Here are the tips that will help draft a job-winning consulting resume irrespective of the field you are in.
Provide Your GPA
While there is no need to include GPA in other resumes, you must add it in your consulting resume. That's what makes the consulting resume unique. Since a consulting profession needs strong critical thinking and analytical skills, the GPA details will help the prospective employers to measure them. Even if you have a high class ranking, include that detail too.
Show Your Math Scores
There is this thinking among employers that most universities don't follow a standard pattern for giving GPAs to students. Therefore, they prefer to see GMAT, GRE, LSAT, SAT, etc. on a consulting resume. The marks scored in any of these standardized tests make them easy to access the candidate's math abilities. The reason employers prefer to see these standardized test scores is the co-relation between logical thinking, analytical, and math skills. So don't forget to add your math abilities on the resume.
High Hard and Soft Skills
Any resume that is not demonstrating the candidate's strengths and abilities will never be considered for an interview. In fact, such job applications will be thrown straightaway. Therefore based on the consulting field, you need to mention both hard and soft skills. For example, if finance is your field, then your consulting resume must show skills to use latest software that helps in building financial models. In addition, your management skill to handle a team of financial professionals, and knowledge of business are must to go on the resume.
However, along with the hard skills, soft skills are also must to include in the resume. This is compulsory for both experienced and in-experienced candidates.
Here are the core consulting skills without which your consulting resume would be incomplete:
Highlight Your Achievements
The best way to describe your consulting experience is by highlighting your achievements. To fetch a favorable response from applying for the job, you have to craft an achievement-based consulting resume. To highlight them, just list down all the achievements that you earned for your clients and employers.
Let's take an example of achievements that an experienced financial consultant achieves in his or her career. Since the financial consultant's job is to help clients build financial plans for short-term and long-term gains, and provide guidance on issues such as savings, insurances, investments, and retirements, the person's accomplishment are the changes that he or she brought into client's life. In that case, the accomplishments in the Work History section would read like this:
Keep it Concise
Communication is a vital part of any consulting job. And one way to show the prospective employers that you are adept at it is by keeping your consulting resume concise. By this, we mean the content on the resume must be specific and written with an intention to fulfill the prospective employers' need. So write a short description about your skills, work history using bullet points. Just include those points the recruiters or hiring managers want to see. To know what they want, read the job description for the consulting position. When you thoroughly understand it, then only start drafting the resume.
For example, when you are writing about your skills, don't just say you're good at solving problems. Instead use a bullet point to add a sentence on how you solved it and what your solution resulted in.
List Transferable Skills
It will not irk the recruiters if you add some of the common skills that are not asked for, such as:
There are many options to include transferable skills on your resume such as:
Including transferable skills will show the hiring managers that you have already used different skills and some of them or all can be useful to their company.
So when drafting your consulting resume do remember to quantify your achievements, include transferable skills, and keep the resume concise. If these tips are insufficient for you, use consultant resume samples given below that matches with your profile.
Checkout our sample resumes below :