Hi there! You mention these special tracks for PhDs. What are you referring to? There's plenty of PhDs across the spectrum from generalist consulting to all sorts of other things that are more or less specialized. There certainly isn't “one” track for all PhDs.

However, I do see your point and here's my advice:

• Generalist role: If you're going for this, which is a valid path for PhDs, you should completely revamp your CV to make it fit for business. That's because it will land in the same pile as all the MBA CVs that are following this template, which ultimately is perfect for MBB generalist roles. Anything between 1 and 2 pages is OK (assuming that form, content, and format are spot on).
• Specialized roles: As mentioned above, there's various non-generalist paths for PhDs and your CV should be adapted accordingly i.e. relevant technical details proportional to the degree of specialization regarding target role. However, as a general rule, I wouldn't go beyond 2 pages. MBB simply isn't academia and this still has to be read by a recruiter, who won't have/take the time to do more than 2 pages.

Could go a bit deeper if you could share the type of role you're thinking of.

Hope this helps for now!

Dear Sebastian,

in your interviews or your cover letter you can also point out the many similarities between academy and consulting that you enjoy and why the differences motivate you. Similarities for example:

Building up expert knowledge in a topic

Continuous learning and challenging, competitive environments

Teaching/presenting/sharing know-how element

Meaningful, impactful work

Problem solving

etc.

Differences that might motivate you:

More practical applications of consulting

Constantly teaching new topic (every presentation is different instead of having to lecture the same course)

The joy of solving business problems and interacting with people

etc.

Please do not hesitate to reach out, should you have further questions.

Hi Sebastian,

If you apply for a job in consulting you need to change the CV and adapt to the consulting format. This means you should keep 1 page every 10 years of experience (with the exception of a few countries such as Germany, where also 2 pages are fine).

Some of the key things to consider for a good CV are:

1. Use action verbs to describe the experiences (eg “Led…; Analyzed…) and use a structure of Action - Results
2. Quantify results. If you find challenging to have specific numbers, you can use number of countries/clients/forecasted results
3. Show experience related to leadership or teamwork. A good number of candidates have points on problem-solving and drive in achieving results, but lack experiences related to work in/leading a team
4. Show relevant extracurricular activities and interests. They make the profile more interesting and help to show leadership skills when you don’t have relevant work experience on that

You probably know this already, but typical red flags include:

• Low GPA
• Lack of any kind of work experience
• Bad formatting / typos
• 3-4 pages length
• Lack of clear action --> results structure for the bullets of the experiences
• Long paragraphs (3-4 lines) for the bullets of the experiences with irrelevant details
• Long gaps without any explanation

For an ad-hoc review, many coaches do a session on CV improvement. Otherwise, you can post a sanitized version here in the Q&A to get feedback.

If you have more questions please feel free to PM me.

Best,

Francesco

If you are applying to the generalist track, you should have a 1 page CV. You can add your academic CV as an appendix to that CV if you like.

Hi Sebastian,

You shouldn't remove most things but you should change them. You need to reword them to emphasize and highlight more consulting-based traits. What you choose to put in and how you put it in the resume can make or break your application. Feel free to reach out for support in this.

If possible, you need to get additional consulting-related experience as well. That could be by getting leadership positions in various clubs, working on a side project, doing pro bono consulting (like through Impact Consulting) etc.