Resume for economic and strategy consulting

Hey there,

The short answer to your first question is: 100%, your CV should be super-tailored! Recruiters are swamped with resumes and it's very easy for them to reject you because "his/her interests don't seem super-aligned with our core work".

When you think about your resume, I suggest you carefully pick and choose the experiences/projects that will make you look as aligned as possible to the core business of the firm you are applying to.
 

More pragmatically:

• Let's say that you have 3 bullet points to describe your experience at "Boutique Economics Consulting Inc" and you want to work for the PE arm of EYP. Even if your work was 80% for public sector clients or regulators, and only 20% for private clients, I would focus at least 2 bullets out of 3 on private clients
• When you describe a project, try to pick the angle that makes it closer to the standard work of your future employer. 
  - E.g., for Econ Consulting you would do something like "Analyzed national labor data using econometric modeling in Stata/R to uncover a +7% structural growth trend in the renewable energy market; findings informed workforce gap planning decisions for a public entity"
  - While for strategy consulting, you could do "Sized the renewable energy services market through bottom-up demand modeling rooted in advanced analytics, revealing a $100M opportunity in unmet industrial demand for high-skilled O&M providers"
  --> This could be the same project, but told from different angles

I have a background in Industrial Economics and I helped a lot of candidate move from Econ/Antitrust consulting to MBB -- from resume building to casing. 

Feel free to reach out for a free intro call: my experience is mostly Europe and US, but we can transparently assess together whether I can help you. Worst case, you just invested 15 minutes :)

Hope this helps!

Tom

Hi there,

Short answer: yes, you should tweak your CV — but you don’t need two completely different versions.

I’d think about it more as changing the lens, not rewriting your experience.

With your background (4 years in a boutique economics firm), you already have strong, relevant experience. The difference is what you choose to highlight.

If you’re applying to something like EY-Parthenon’s economics practice, you can stay quite close to how you probably already describe your work. Lean into the technical side — models, data, rigor, anything related to pricing, competition, regulation, etc. That’s exactly what they’re hiring for.

Where things really change is if you go for broader strategy roles.

There, the same bullet points can easily come across as “too technical” if you’re not careful. It’s not that they don’t value analytics — they do — but they care more about what the analysis led to.

So instead of focusing on the model itself, shift the emphasis to:
what was the business question, what decision did your work support, and what was the outcome.

For example, I’ve seen CVs that say something like:
“Built an econometric model to estimate demand elasticity…”

That’s fine for econ roles. But for strategy, it’s much stronger if it becomes something like:
“Supported pricing strategy decisions by analyzing demand drivers, contributing to X impact.”

You’re not changing what you did — just making it easier for a generalist interviewer to see the business value.

In terms of effort, you probably only need to adjust ~20–30% of your CV:
a few bullet points, maybe the order of projects, and how you phrase things. No need to start from zero.

One mistake I’d avoid is trying to “hide” your economics background for strategy roles. It’s actually a differentiator. The goal is to translate it, not dilute it.

I’ve worked with a few people coming from boutique / specialist firms into larger consulting, and this framing piece is usually what makes the difference — not the underlying experience.

Good luck!

Best,

Soheil