Students we’ve reviewed have received offers from
ChatGPT makes your CV sound better. Screeners aren’t marking how it sounds.
A chatbot polishes the wording. It doesn’t know what a consultancy or a bank screens for, so it can’t tell you what’s missing. Here’s the same line, both ways.
“Spearheaded comprehensive due diligence across diverse consumer and healthcare transactions, leveraging strong analytical skills to drive value.”
It sounds bigger. There’s still no deal, no size and nothing you produced, and words like “spearheaded” and “leveraging” now read as AI-written to a lot of screeners.
Which deal, and how big? A banker reads this line to see whether you could do the analyst job, and it doesn’t tell them.
Name one transaction, give its size, and say what you built for it.
Question back to you: what was the biggest deal you worked on, and what did you hand over at the end of it?
Scored like a screen, not a style check
Consulting CVs are scored on leadership, problem-solving and personal drive. Banking CVs on interest in finance and deal content. Miss one and the score is capped, the way a screener would bin it, and nicer wording can’t talk it back up.
Built by someone who did the interviewing
The criteria come from two years at Bain in London, working recruiting events and interviewing candidates, and from more than 175 banking and consulting CVs I’ve scored and marked up by hand.
Knows the rules chatbots get wrong
Top banks don’t count Forage virtual internships. A personal profile wastes your best lines. “References available on request” and Microsoft Office cost you space. Chatbots add half of these.
Never makes anything up
Every comment quotes the exact line it’s about. Where only you know the number, you get a question back, not an invented figure.
We’ve helped Indian students, at home and abroad, get offers from the top banks and consultancies.
The CVs are usually strong underneath. They just don’t read the way a London or New York screener expects.
- CGPA out of 10 and Class 12 board percentages, shown so they’re understood abroad
- JEE and other entrance ranks, with the size of the cohort next to them
- Indian companies and family businesses given enough context to count
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!!”Where they started, and where they ended up
Rejected from every investment banking spring week in their first round of applications.
After working with us, offered a place on every spring week they applied to next: McKinsey, PwC and Bank of America investment banking. Turned the Bank of America spring week into a summer internship.
A marketing internship and some tutoring on the CV, and no idea how consulting internship applications worked.
Offered a summer internship at BCG.
Internships in China at an energy company and in marketing. Rejected from every summer internship.
Offered a graduate job at Citi in London.
Shared with each student’s permission. Details changed so they can’t be identified.
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
Why not just paste my CV into ChatGPT?
You can, and it will tidy the wording. It won’t tell you that your CV has no clear example of leadership, which McKinsey, BCG and Bain screen for first, or that a bank won’t count your virtual internship. This review scores you against what the firms screen for, using criteria from two years interviewing at Bain and more than 175 CVs marked up by hand.
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 CV it’s about and tells you what to change.
What happens to my CV?
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.
Can you get me an internship or a referral?
No. We don’t sell internships, referrals or introductions, and we never will. We help you make your CV as strong as it can be. The firms make their own decisions.
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.