MBB Resume Template: McKinsey, BCG and Bain Format (2026)

An MBB resume template is not a different document for each firm. None of the three publishes a resume format or a scoring rubric, so the same one-page document goes to all of them and the real work is deciding which evidence sits in the top third of the page. What each firm does publish is checkable, and it is the part worth reading before you draft: McKinsey sets out what AI use is and is not allowed while you prepare, BCG names five traits its interviewers look for and calls the skills interview your chance to go beyond your resume, and Bain accepts only Word or PDF files while publishing extra application requirements office by office. This page gives you the working format first, then those three published rules, then before-and-after bullets you can copy the structure of.

For editable base files, use the free consulting resume template pack, which links out to the real Penn, Yale, MIT and Harvard career-center templates and samples. Use that page for the base document. Use this one for what changes when the application is to McKinsey, BCG or Bain. For the full rewrite method, bullet scoring and the human-screen reality, the consulting resume guide is the long-form companion.

The one-page MBB resume format

This is the Road to Offer working format, not a firm-published one. Five sections, in this order, on one page:

Undergrads lead with education and campus leadership. MBAs lead with pre-MBA business impact and use education to show the recruiting platform. Experienced hires translate industry work into client, revenue, cost, operations or stakeholder outcomes.

Every bullet follows the same shape: action, scale, outcome. Harvard's career guidance describes a resume as a brief summary of abilities, education and experience, and that brevity is what forces the scale and the outcome into every line instead of a description of duties. Treat one page as an early-career default rather than a rule: the live role description and application portal decide what you submit.

McKinsey resume: the published AI rules

McKinsey publishes a line-by-line position on AI in the hiring process, and it is worth reading before you touch your draft. (BCG's process page also links guidance on using AI in the application; the table below is McKinsey's.) Its careers site sets these expectations:

Source: Interviewing at McKinsey.

The practical reading for your resume: rewrite freely, invent nothing. Every number on the page has to survive a follow-up question, because the same firm may ask you to complete a test or a game as part of the client-facing application process, and the interview then works from what you wrote.

McKinsey also states it hires problem-solvers from law, medicine, engineering and other fields, and that what matters is critical thinking and impact. If your background is non-business, the resume job is translation, not apology. Name the problem, the method, the scale, and the decision your work changed.

BCG resume: the five traits and the skills interview

BCG's interview-process page describes four steps: application, skills interview, case interview and team interview. It calls the skills interview "your chance to go beyond your resume", which tells you what the resume has to do: earn that conversation by leaving obvious threads to pull.

BCG names five things its INTERVIEWERS look for: integrity, intellectual curiosity, creative thinking, a collaborative mindset and drive. Source: BCG interview process. These are interview criteria, not published resume criteria. What follows is our reading of which of them a one-page document can actually carry:

• Intellectual curiosity shows as self-started work: a project nobody assigned, a tool you learned to answer a question, research outside your major.
• Creative thinking shows as a non-obvious method, not an adjective. "Rebuilt the forecast using store-level foot traffic when sales data was missing" reads as creative. The word "creative" does not.
• Drive shows as scale under constraint: what you delivered with a small team, a short window or no budget.

Integrity and a collaborative mindset are hard to assert on paper and easy to demonstrate in conversation, so we would spend the limited resume space on the other three and let the interview carry those two.

Bain resume: file format and the office rule

Bain publishes the exact application inputs for the consultant role: resume or CV in Word document or PDF files only, educational background information, work experience and relevant test scores. Its application page then asks you to select an office to see the specific local application requirements. Source: Bain consultant hiring process.

Two things follow from that, and neither is published in the same way by the other two firms:

1. Check the office before you submit. The extra requirements are local, so the same resume can be a complete application in one office and an incomplete one in another.
2. Keep both file types to hand. Bain names Word and PDF as the accepted formats, so a Word version is worth keeping even if you submit the PDF.

Bain also lists relevant test scores as a separate application input, so do not assume a scores line on the resume covers it.

Before and after MBB resume bullets

The rewrite is always the same move: replace the description of the task with the size of the work and what changed because of it.

Read the stronger column against McKinsey's rule above. Each number is specific enough to be wrong, which is exactly why it is worth writing, and exactly why you must be able to defend it.

How undergrads, MBAs and experienced hires adapt the format

Undergrads make education and leadership unmistakable: GPA, honors, selective programs, student consulting projects, internships and campus leadership. If the experience section is thin, leadership bullets have to carry real scale: budget managed, members led, events delivered, funds raised.

MBAs make pre-MBA results the center of gravity. Replace broad leadership language with operator language: revenue influenced, costs reduced, teams aligned, clients served, markets evaluated. The MBA brand helps, but it cannot carry a vague bullet.

Experienced hires translate domain depth into consulting relevance: problem definition, stakeholder influence, analytical judgment and measurable implementation. The one-page constraint is doing useful work here, because it stops industry jargon from taking over the page.

If your GPA or school is the thing you are worried about, the low GPA consulting guide covers how to reframe around signal instead of padding.

Checklist before you upload

Where the resume sits in the application

Once the bullets are stable, pair the resume with the consulting cover letter template and the consulting application tracker. The cover letter carries motivation and firm fit, and the tracker prevents the operational failures: wrong file version, missed office deadline, forgotten referral follow-up.

Advanced-degree recruiting programs lean harder on the resume, because the document often carries the application on its own. Road to Offer's McKinsey Insight guide covers what that programme asks for; confirm the current requirements on the firm's own application page.

Road to Offer's firm pages go deeper on each resume and on the interview it is buying you: McKinsey resume and McKinsey case interview guide, BCG resume and BCG case interview guide, Bain resume and Bain case interview guide.

Sources and Further Reading (checked 2026-09-01)

• Interviewing at McKinsey
• BCG Careers, Interview Process
• Bain Careers, Consultant Hiring Process
• Harvard Mignone Center, Resume/CV and Cover Letter
• Harvard Mignone Center, AI for Resumes and Cover Letters
• Princeton Career Development, Resume and Cover Letter Guides