Writing a Resume for a Consultant going Full Time

July 29, 2021 6:30 AM

I'm having trouble formatting my resume in a way that parses well and explains my experience. I've been working as a salaried consultant for the past 10 years and hoping to move out of consulting. My job titles have been generic (i.e Consultant, Senior Consultant) which show my promotion progression, but not really the roles that match the jobs i'm applying to. I've been at various clients doing various roles on various projects.

I've seen this question but this seems more applicable for 1099s. I was a fulltime salaried employee with benefits vacation for consulting company X, which got me on a project at big client Y.
Currently I have under experience my consulting company and job title, and under that period I put the client(s) I worked at. The role is described more or less in the bullet points, but I'd rather use that the discuss my results and actions rather than role titles. Nor does this parse at all when I upload my resume to websites automatically, which to me means it's not an optimally formatted resume.

Other ways I've seen people do it is put employment history and project experience in two different sections, but that seems non standard. Others have used "consulting assignment at " for the job title but still doesn't seem to fit.

To make things even more difficult, my company got acquired by very large consulting company that has lots of ads in the last year, so not sure how to show that either!

posted by sandmanwv to Work & Money (3 answers total)

For the portions of my resume where I was a consultant, I have them broken down into two main sections:

Representative Client Work, where I list general descriptions of major or directly relevant consulting projects. I don't use client names, but I do use descriptors ("One of the world's largest FMCG companies" etc.)

Firm Leadership, where I talk about internal efforts I led, accomplishments, etc.

I tailor both sections based on the job I'm applying to.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 6:53 AM on July 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'd say get testimonials from former clients and pass that along with the rather "generic" resume.

A page of blurbs with "_____ has been a tremendous asset to us while we did _____" and similar statements, IMHO, would be more impactful than simple resume summaries. Add business impact words like under budget, ahead of time, simplified training, money saved, etc. and it'd be better than a resume.

That is, of course, assuming you are ALLOWED to use client names and actually got the letters of appreciation from those managers and stakeholders.
posted by kschang at 7:14 AM on July 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Admittedly my approach is more traditional than most, but I've worked on resumes for people with backgrounds like yours, and what I did was to put more information right into the job title, and follow that immediately with context, like:

[Specific Type of] Consultant, [Project Name]
[Company Name & location]
[Dates]
[Context + Summary of role]
[Results]

Content Strategy Consultant, Global VAT Tool
GE Tax IT, Atlanta GA
June 2015 - August 2016
- Led cross-functional team reviews to identify gaps in project documentation and implemented single-source authoring protocols across IT, Product, and Marketing teams.
- Increased customer engagement with product documentation by 110%
- Generated over $500K in sales via newly launched marketing sites with targeted content

Content Strategy Consultant, Global VAT Tool
PwC, Atlanta GA
August 2016 - May 2019
- Managed documentation transition & rebranded content rollout during the acquisition of GE Tax IT division by PricewaterhouseCoopers (Aug - Dec 2019)
- Completed migration of GVT content from Confluence to MadCap Flare 3 weeks ahead of schedule

You get the idea.
posted by MiraK at 7:23 AM on July 29, 2021 [1 favorite]