How to get a management consulting interview (the 10 point rule)

Communities Curious Consultants
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Sharing this for anyone looking to get into management consulting.

It has been said that many consulting firms screen resumes based on the 10 point rule. For those who are not familiar, the 10 point rule refers to a score /10 which each applicant is assigned based on the quality of their resume. Participants who score high on this system have a higher chance of getting an interview offer.

The breakdown of the 10 point system is as follows:

Academics - 3 points
1 point for Credit (>65%)
2 points for Distinction (>75%)
3 points for High Distinction (>85%)

Work Experience - 3 points
1 for every professional consulting experience
1 for every professional experience at a MNC or market leader in their industry

Extracurriculars - 3 points
1 for each experience. These include holding a president or executive position in a club/society, playing representative sport, starting a business, or volunteering overseas

Miscellaneous - 1 points
1 point that is commonly assigned to any referrals or used to a firms own discretion

Typically MBB give interviews to applicants who score above an 8, but can fluctuate year on year based on the level of applicants. T2s and boutiques are known to give interviews to those who score a bit lower.

How does this affect my resume?

With this knowledge in mind, you should aim to balance your resume to highlight both academic, professional, and extra-curricular experiences. This could often mean highlighting more extra-curricular experience to present a more well-rounded application.

With that being said, the 10 point rule isn’t a set in stone rule, and is known to change year on year, so this should be treated more as a guide than gospel. Best of luck with recruitment!

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Hi Jenrid,

Thank you for this super informative breakdown.

Do you have any advice for someone who has no business experience and coming from a software engineer background looking to break into consulting?

thanks

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A pathway you might want to consider is applying as an industry hire. This means developing your skills as a software engineer, but also your business acumen. The combination of these skills could make you super effective on a case requiring technical expertise.

As such, you want to show strong proficiency in your industry of expertise on your resume, but also show that you’ll be useful in a business context. This can be done maybe through your extra-curriculars or personal projects you have worked on and brought to market.

Casing is a good way to build up business acumen and consulting ways of thinking, so will recommend starting your case prepping journey if you haven’t already.

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Wow, thank you!! Will do!

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Wow, that’s really helpful insight, thank you!
I have a somewhat niche question - for double degrees (e.g., completing two bachelors simultaneously) if one degree (law) is ~65, the other (commerce) is 80+. The blended score is ~71. Do you know whether that would get me 1, 2 or 3 points? i.e., will they assess my best, worst or average?

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Unfortunately I believe they take in the average score, so in this case you’ll be getting 1 point for a score of ~71.

I think they do sometimes consider difficulty of degrees - ie single commerce vs comlaw, but I think for the scoring system they just look at your overall.