How I Got Into McKinsey With Zero Connections and Zero Internships
The Resume That Got Me Into McKinsey
- A resume is your most boastful self on paper. Tell them why you are great and what that greatness did for someone else.
- Keep it boring on purpose. No colors, no graphics, no creativity. One page, black and white, every detail clearly laid out.
- Someone will skim this for less than 60 seconds. They should not have to infer anything. Make every line obvious.
- No internships and a 3.4 GPA. My resume still passed the sniff test because it showed clear impact, not prestige.
- The offering: My actual resume (redacted) — free to download.
My resume is not impressive in the traditional sense. I did not go to a target school. I did not have a single internship. My GPA was a 3.4 on a 4.3 scale. I went to Concordia University — which I think is a fantastic institution with some genuinely world-class people coming out of it, but it is not Harvard and nobody is pretending it is.
What I did have was a collection of things I built myself. An ed-tech startup. A proptech company because I was a licensed real estate broker. A non-profit. A teaching assistant role. Track and field at the national level. None of these are the typical consulting resume bullet points. But they were real, they had real outcomes, and they showed a pattern: this person builds things and gets results.
That was enough to pass the sniff test and get a conversation.
Here is how I thought about structuring the resume, and how I think you should too.
- Education. Where you went, when, your grades, and any awards. Keep it factual. If your GPA is not great, you can still list it — mine was a 3.4 and it was fine.
- Professional experience. How you created impact for others with clear, measurable examples. This is the meat of your resume. Every bullet needs to show what you did and what it resulted in.
- Extracurriculars. What you do when nobody is paying you. This reveals your personality and your interests beyond work. Interviewers care about this more than you think.
- Additional interests. Your sauce. The stuff that makes you human and gives the interviewer something to talk about. My track and field, my Japanese, my car enthusiasm — those all came up in interviews.
Every bullet point needs to start with an action verb. Past tense if the thing is done: "decreased," "created," "deployed," "reviewed." Present tense with "-ing" if it is ongoing. Never start a bullet with "responsible for" — that tells me nothing about what you actually did.
The most important rule: someone is going to look at your resume for less than 60 seconds. They are scanning, not reading. Every single line has to land on its own without needing context from the line above or below it. If your interviewer has to infer what you did, you have already lost them.
Do not try to reinvent the format. Everyone in consulting uses the same basic structure. That is a feature, not a bug. It means the reader knows exactly where to look for what they care about. Keep it simple. One page. Black and white. No columns, no icons, no color. Boring is the point.
- Be boastful. This is not the place for modesty. Your resume should read like a highlight reel of why you are excellent and how that excellence translated to outcomes for a team, an organization, or a mission.
- Action verbs only. Every bullet starts with what you did, not what you were responsible for. "Decreased operating expenses by X%" not "Was responsible for cost reduction initiatives."
- Make it skimmable. Assume 60 seconds. Each bullet should stand alone. No one is reading top to bottom like a novel.
- You do not need prestige. I had zero internships and went to a non-target school. What I had was a pattern of building things with real outcomes. If you have that, you have enough.
- Do not reinvent the wheel. Same format everyone uses. Education, experience, extracurriculars, interests. One page. That is it.
- Your "Additional Interests" section matters more than you think. This is where interviewers find things to ask you about. Make it interesting. Make it you.
Here is my actual resume. This is the one that got me into McKinsey & Company. Some things are redacted for obvious reasons, but the structure, the format, and the approach are all there.
A few things worth noticing. I did not come from a target school. I did not have the greatest grades. I did not have any internships or formal corporate background. What I had was a clear pattern of doing things my own way — education through Ismahelps and being a TA, community through Golden Rule and PennyDrops, and finance through my brokerage and proptech. These are not the most impressive things in the world. But they were mine, they were real, and they were enough to start a conversation.
Download it. Use the structure. Make it yours.
