Most students who send their first CV to a consulting firm have never worked in one. That is normal: the first consulting internship is precisely the one you are looking for. Recruiters know it, and they do not read these CVs looking for consulting experience. They look for evidence that you already have the qualities the job requires, gathered elsewhere: in a corporate internship, an association, an academic project or a student job. This article explains which evidence to show, how to translate your experiences into the language of consulting, and shows three CV lines rewritten.
What the recruiter looks for when there is no consulting internship
Faced with the CV of a student with no consulting experience, the recruiter does not compare similar experiences. They try to answer a broader question: in six months, will this candidate be able to structure a problem, produce a reliable analysis and present it to a client?
Firms themselves describe the qualities they look for. Bain writes on its interviewing page 🔗 that it looks for people who are intellectually curious, entrepreneurial, find challenges exciting, and can explain why they want to join that firm specifically. McKinsey’s postings for the Business Analyst role, published on its careers website 🔗, highlight the ability to break down and solve problems through quantitative analysis, to drive an independent workstream and to work in a team.
Your CV must therefore work as a file of evidence. Each line should make the reader think: this person has already done, on their own scale, what a consultant does.
The three kinds of evidence to show
Three families of evidence are enough to convince, provided they are visible within a few seconds.
Analytical rigour. Have you already worked with data to reach a conclusion? An Excel model, a market study, a statistical analysis in a dissertation, a cost analysis during an internship: anything that starts from figures and ends in a recommendation counts. What matters is the path: a question, a method, a result.
Leadership and initiative. Have you already taken responsibility for a project or a team? Chairing an association, launching an event, coordinating a group project, starting an initiative during an internship. Recruiters look for people who move things forward without waiting to be told what to do.
The ability to communicate with demanding audiences. Have you already presented work to decision-makers? A debrief to a management committee, a defence before a professional jury, a presentation to a Junior-Entreprise client. Consulting is a job of deliverables and presentations: showing an early trace of it is reassuring.
A fourth dimension often comes in without being sought: academic excellence. The school, the ranking, a competitive exam passed, a distinction. It is not an experience, but it weighs heavily at screening; it should therefore be placed at the top of the CV while you are a student.
Translating a corporate internship into consulting language
An internship in a company’s finance, marketing, procurement or strategy department is often closer to consulting than people think. The problem almost always comes from the way it is written.
A student CV generally describes tasks: “participated in”, “helped with”, “monitored”. A firm’s recruiter expects engagements: a problem, what you did to solve it, what it produced. To translate, ask yourself four questions about each internship:
- What question was the company asking itself? Cutting a cost, understanding a drop in sales, choosing a supplier, launching a product.
- What analysis did you carry out yourself? Not the team: you.
- What was your deliverable? A model, a memo, a presentation, a dashboard.
- What did the decision-maker do with it? A decision, a budget, an action plan, however modest.
The answers to these four questions form an almost word-for-word good CV bullet. If you cannot answer the fourth, it does not matter: saying who the deliverable was presented to is often enough.
Making the most of associations and academic projects
Student commitments are often underestimated by candidates themselves. Yet a Junior-Entreprise, a consulting club, a humanitarian association or a student union offer exactly the situations a recruiter looks for: a budget to manage, a team to lead, partners to convince.
For them to count, three rules:
- give a precise role, not just the name of the association: “treasurer”, “partnerships manager”, “project leader”;
- quantify the scope: number of members, budget, number of events or studies delivered;
- show a result: a partnership signed, a study delivered, an event that drew an audience, a process improved.
Academic projects follow the same logic. A group project for a company, a dissertation with field research, a case competition won or well ranked: all of these can be described as an engagement. Do not file them under a “projects” line with no detail; give them a bullet that tells the problem and the result.
The strategy consulting intern CV template applies these rules: a strategy department internship written as an engagement, a Junior-Entreprise with a role and results, and a line dedicated to the case club.
Before and after on three CV lines
Here are three typical student CV lines, rewritten for a firm’s recruiter.
A management control internship.
- Before: “Participated in preparing the budget and monitoring performance indicators.”
- After: “Analysis of budget variances at four plants and identification of three cost items drifting out of line, basis for the savings plan presented to the finance director.”
A student association.
- Before: “Member of the board of the school’s solidarity association.”
- After: “Treasurer of a sixty-member association: annual budget kept balanced, two new partnerships signed with local companies.”
An academic project.
- Before: “Group project on the electric bike market.”
- After: “Sizing of the French electric bike market for an SME in the sector (demand-side and supply-side approaches), positioning recommendations presented to its managing director.”
In each case, the rewritten version contains a problem, a method and an audience. The figures give a scale, with no need to impress. These figures are illustrations: use your own, provided you can explain them in interview.
To go further on how to organise engagements later, once you have several, our article on presenting consulting engagements on a CV shows the three possible structures. And to know how your CV will be read at a large firm, the article on recruitment at McKinsey describes what the firm says it looks for at screening.
Mistakes that give away a lack of experience
Some mistakes recur in student CVs and immediately signal a candidate who does not yet know the codes of the job.
- Starting with a “career objective” section saying you want to “join a renowned firm”. It takes up space without proving anything. A one-line, factual summary is better.
- Listing qualities (“rigorous, dynamic, team player”) instead of showing them through experiences.
- Multiplying experiences of a few weeks without detailing any of them. Two well-described experiences are better than six empty lines.
- Misusing consulting jargon. Writing “due diligence” or “MECE” for work that does not qualify shows immediately and worries the reader.
- Going beyond one page. Firms read one-page CVs; a student who sends two shows they cannot yet synthesise.
- Neglecting form: approximate alignments, inconsistent dates, spelling mistakes. In a job where you deliver documents to executive committees, form is a test of rigour.
This last point is often the costliest, because it is the easiest to avoid. The ConseilCV editor handles the layout for you, keeps alignments clean and produces a PDF that firms’ screening software reads correctly: all that is left is to work on the substance of each line.
Frequently asked questions
Can you apply to strategy consulting without any internship?
It is difficult for a job after graduation, easier for a first gap-year internship. In that case, associations, academic projects and student jobs must carry the evidence of analysis and leadership.
Should student jobs go on a consulting CV?
Yes, if they show something: stamina, responsibility, customer contact, teaching. One line is enough. A job held during your studies also shows an ability to manage several priorities.
Does a Junior-Entreprise make up for the lack of a consulting internship?
It does not replace it, but it comes closest: you carried out studies for real clients there. Describe it with your role, the number of studies delivered and a client result.
How do you talk about your lack of experience in interview?
Without apologising for it. Tell the story of an experience where you solved a problem, with the same precision as on your CV. Firms recruit students for their potential, and it is that potential you must make visible.