Consultant profiles – known as CVs – have become an indispensable part of the consulting business. In sales, they are an essential part of the entire process. CVs present the expertise of consultants – skills, certificates, and project and industry experience, for example, are among the information presented here.

But as dynamic and fast-moving as the industry is, the CVs have to be as well. When employees continue their education and acquire new experiences and knowledge, these should be documented in the profiles as quickly as possible. This is the only way the company can plan and fill projects with existing skills. Unknown skills in the company lead to inefficient planning and, in the worst case, to lost sales.

For each offer, the profiles are also customized to highlight the relevant information. This requires a flexible and fast creation of different CV versions.

But how often are CVs edited, how often are they sent and what is actually the most wanted skill? We asked ourselves these and other questions and analyzed the 2021 data from our skills and CV management solution decídalo.

CV maintenance

To be able to respond quickly to project postings, profiles should always be maintained and up to date. What information is included in a typical CV?

We looked at the number of skills, projects, languages, certificates and industry experience. At some companies, the skill entries reach peak values of up to 109 skills per consultant. On average, a CV contains 44 skills.

The differences in the number of skills mentioned often result from the fact that companies list skills in varying detail. In one place, individual skills are mentioned in relation to specific tools or procedures, in another place, several skills are summarized under one skill. For example, in one company only the skill “SQL Server” is mentioned, but in another company “SQL Server 2016”, “SQL Server 2019” and “SQL Server 2020”.

In the case of projects, an average of 11 are listed per CV. More than 30 projects can practically not be found in any CV. In the case of experienced consultants, the project histories are limited to the most relevant projects in order not to overwhelm the reader with page-long profiles.

In addition to the projects, there are on average 4 certificates, 2 languages – mostly German and English – as well as 4 industry experiences.

The right CV for every project

Well-maintained CVs are only half the battle – in order for companies to convince customers and win projects for themselves, the CVs must be adapted for the offer situation. Depending on the requirements, other experiences or knowledge of the consultants are relevant.

In a company, about 8 CVs are downloaded per consultant per year. This means that a newly edited CV is needed every 1.5 months on average.

But not only the relevant projects and skills depend on the customer situation, but also the design of the CV. Depending on the requirements, different design templates are used. On average, our customers have 9 different design templates for Word CVs and 3 different templates for PowerPoint documents.

Which formats are preferred?

Overall, 59% of all generated CVs are PDF files.  Closely followed by Word CVs: these account for 28% of total downloads. PowerPoint documents have a share of 13%.

Large companies in particular often send consultant profiles anonymously, i.e. without a picture and the name of the consultant. The background to this is usually the requirements of the works council. In decídalo, anonymization of CVs is possible at the push of a button using our own templates.  Of our customers, only about 20% use this option.  In the sales process, most companies prefer to introduce their consultants by name, including a profile photo.

The perfect skill combination

The skills available are a decisive factor in determining which consultants are suitable for assignments. In order to find the right consultants, decídalo offers comprehensive search options. It is interesting to note that most searches are not only for one skill, but for skill combinations. On average, 6 skills were searched for simultaneously in 2021 in order to find a suitable consultant. The most searched skills are all from the area of project management. This has not changed from last year.

CVs remain an essential sales tool

CVs are essential for a consulting company to present the competencies and experience of its consultants. The need for individuality of individual CVs is still clearly present and can be seen above all in the many different design templates and CV versions used in companies. With our decídalo software, we help companies to manage CVs efficiently and market skills optimally.

Want to learn more about CV management our software decídalo? We would be happy to show you the possibilities in an individual web demo.