Students we’ve reviewed have received offers from
Wall Street and the MBB offices in the US read resumes the way London does.
The standard is the same. A few conventions differ, and we flag them.
- GPA out of 4.0, and when you’re better off leaving it out
- One page, no photo, no objective statement at the top
- Sophomore-year recruiting for junior summer internships starts earlier than most people expect
- Greek life and club roles written so they read as leadership
Banks and consultancies screen for different things. So we score them separately.
Tell us which you’re applying for. If it’s both, you get two scores.
Investment banking
- Real interest in finance on the page, even if you study history
- Only the modules that matter to a bank, like Corporate Finance and Accounting
- Deals and transactions with a size attached
- Technical skills you could defend in an interview. If you can’t build a model, don’t say Excel.
- One page. Banks are strict about it.
Consulting
- Leadership: someone else’s outcome depended on a decision you made
- Problem-solving: the problem, what you did, and what changed
- Personal drive: something you started, or pushed further than anyone asked you to
- Range. Consultancies like all-rounders and care less than banks about whether your experience is relevant.
Both get checked for numbers in your bullets, one page that a screening system can read, consistent dates and fonts, and interests specific enough that an interviewer would ask about them.
Which deal, and how big? “Built a five-year revenue model for a £40m healthcare acquisition” tells a banker you can do the analyst job.
Anyone can sign up, so screeners at the top banks don’t count it as work experience. Take it off the CV. Mention it in a cover letter if you want to.
Interviewers sometimes skip straight to this line. “Sunday league goalkeeper for six seasons” gives them something to ask about. “Football” doesn’t.
“Eight Second CV’s full review service is incredible! I wouldn’t have gotten my offer for BCG without the attention to detail and support they provided with my CV.”“I applied to Bain before and got rejected. Then, I reapplied and this time passed the CV screening and eventually got an offer because I used Eight Second CV’s full human review.”“I used the automatic review feature and received so much detailed commentary. My CV for investment banking looked so much better after!!”I spent two years at Bain in London, working recruiting events and interviewing candidates. Before that I had offers from most of the firms you’re applying to.
Citi, Bank of America, BCG, Bain, McKinsey, Oliver Wyman, Strategy&, L.E.K. and OC&C. Since then I’ve reviewed more than 175 banking and consulting CVs by hand, and the automated review is built from the notes I made doing it.
Want me to rewrite it?
Send it over and I’ll rewrite it line by line, with tracked changes so you can see what I changed and why. You’ll have it back in 1 to 2 working days.
Request a human rewrite- A Word file with every change tracked
- A clean final version in the one-page layout screeners expect
- Questions back to you if I think a bullet is hiding a better story
Guides
All firm guidesQuestions
Is this only for UK students?
No. There are versions for the US and for Chinese, Indian and Nigerian students. A good banking or consulting CV looks the same whichever office you apply to, so the standard doesn’t change. How we read your grades and your past employers does.
Which applications is it for?
Undergraduate ones: spring weeks, summer internships and graduate roles at bulge-bracket and elite-boutique banks, MBB and the tier-2 consultancies.
How specific is the feedback?
Every comment quotes the line of your resume it’s about and tells you what to change.
What happens to my resume?
We use it to write your review and delete it after 30 days.
Can a person look at it instead?
Yes. Request a human rewrite and you’ll have it back in 1 to 2 working days.
Being a member isn’t leadership, and McKinsey drops CVs with no clear example of it. If you held any role, name it and say what happened because of you.