Functional Consultant CV: example, skills and writing tips

Functional consultant CV example

The example below shows how the advice in this guide fits together on one page. The person, the companies and all the figures are invented: use the structure, not the content, and replace every detail with your own.

Notice what makes this CV useful to a recruiter: every line says which business process, which system, which project phase and at what scale. The rest of this guide explains how to build each section in the same way.

Job title and professional summary

Name your domain and your system

“Functional consultant” is a broad title. Your CV title should show the business domain you work in and, when it matters, the system:

Functional Consultant – ERP Finance, 6 years’ experience
SAP FI/CO Functional Consultant
Salesforce Functional Consultant – Sales Cloud
Functional Consultant – banking and payments
ERP Consultant – supply chain

Avoid a generic “IT Consultant” if your specialism is clearly functional. The domain (finance, HR, supply chain, CRM, banking, insurance) can matter as much as the software.

Functional consultant, business analyst, product owner: which title fits?

These roles overlap and their scope varies between employers, so check the job description and choose the title that describes your actual responsibilities.

Professional summary example: experienced functional consultant

The professional summary (often called a personal profile in the UK) is three to five lines that state your domain, your systems and the project phases you cover.

ERP functional consultant with 7 years’ experience on finance transformation projects. Requirements gathering, workshop facilitation, functional specifications, configuration, testing and user support through to go-live.

Professional summary example: junior functional consultant

Junior functional consultant with first experience from a [12-month] work placement on a CRM project. Requirements gathering, user stories, functional testing and user support.

Adapt these examples to your real situation. “Dynamic, rigorous and client-focused” tells a recruiter nothing about your expertise: replace it with your domain, systems and projects.

Functional consultant CV skills by area

Do not turn your CV into a list of keywords. Select the skills you have genuinely used on projects and phrase them so a recruiter can see how.

A skills line such as this gives little information:

ERP – CRM – Agile – Rigorous

This one is far more useful:

Functional analysis · Business workshops · Functional specifications · SAP FI · UAT · Jira · Change management

Describing your experience and achievements

For each project or assignment, state the client or sector, the dates, the business process, your role, the system, the phases you covered and the scale. Follow this order where possible:

context → your own action → tools or method → scope → result

For example: “During an ERP roll-out for an industrial group (context), I organised user acceptance testing (action) in Jira and Xray (tool) with 12 key users across 4 entities (scope), and the finance processes went live on the planned date (result).” The figures in this sentence are illustrative.

Too vague

Participation in the ERP project
Requirements gathering
Testing
Change management

More informative

Illustrative figures.

Functional lead for the invoicing domain in a 20-person project team
Ran workshops with finance, sales and logistics teams to redesign the order-to-cash process
Wrote functional specifications and configured business rules
Organised user acceptance testing and supported users at go-live

The second version shows your role, the process, the phases and your contribution. Add figures when they give context: number of users, countries, sites, processes, test cases, workshops, people trained, size of the project team.

Achievement examples to adapt

Replace [X] and [Y] with your own verified figures, or leave the line out if you cannot support it.

• Took part in an ERP roll-out for [X] users in [Y] countries, as functional lead for [domain].
• Ran [X] business workshops and formalised the target processes for [domain].
• Wrote and ran [X] test cases and coordinated regression testing before go-live.
• Trained [X] users and [Y] key users before go-live, with user guides for each process.
• Defined data migration rules and validated migrated [customer/supplier] data across [X] rehearsals.
• Coordinated the functional work of [X] workstreams between business users, the integrator and developers.

Systems and tools: show how you used them

“SAP expert” or “Jira / Confluence: proficient” tells a recruiter little. Name the systems and modules you have actually worked on and what you did with them:

SAP FI: functional configuration of accounting processes
SAP MM: analysis and configuration of purchasing processes
SAP S/4HANA: migration project and functional testing
Salesforce Sales Cloud: requirements, validation rules and user profiles

Do the same for delivery tools (Jira, Confluence, Azure DevOps, Xray, TestRail) and modelling tools (Visio, Bizagi, Signavio). If you use SQL, say how: “SQL: control queries and data analysis during testing” is credible; presenting yourself as a SQL developer when your use is limited is not. You do not need to be a developer to describe your role on interfaces: defining the data exchanged between two systems, validating mappings and testing flows are functional work.

Education and certifications

Functional consultants come from engineering, computer science, business school, finance, management, supply chain or HR backgrounds. A degree outside IT can be perfectly consistent if your functional expertise comes from the business, for example a finance degree followed by ERP finance projects. Use the format qualification – specialism – institution – year.

Certifications can support your profile when they are relevant: for example from SAP, Salesforce or Microsoft for Dynamics, or in Scrum, ITIL or business analysis (IIBA). Give the exact name, the issuer and the year, list only those you hold, and do not overstate introductory certifications.

Making your functional consultant CV easy to read for ATS

Consultancies, IT services companies and IT departments often search for profiles by domain, system and module. The aim is not to “beat” or trick an applicant tracking system (ATS): it is to make sure your key information is extracted correctly and easy to find.

• explicit job titles and, where relevant, “Business Analyst”;
• clients or employers, sectors and dates for each assignment;
• the business domain and processes named in full;
• systems and modules named precisely (SAP FI, not just “ERP”);
• skills written as text, not only as icons or rating bars;
• languages, which matter on international projects.

“SAP FI Functional Consultant – requirements, configuration and testing” is far more precise than “IS Consultant”, but only use the systems and modules you genuinely know.

Tailoring your functional consultant CV to each job

Assignments can look for very different domains and systems. Your background does not change, but you can adapt the title, the summary, the projects you detail, the tools you bring forward and the business processes you describe.

Before applying for an assignment on SAP, Salesforce or a finance transformation, it helps to see which elements of the job description your CV already covers and which are missing. CVReader compares your CV with a job description and highlights the points of correspondence.

Compare my CV with a job description

Free matching requires an account.

Junior functional consultant or career changer

With little consulting experience, the same principle applies: be precise about what you have actually done.

• Students and recent graduates: describe work placements and projects like real jobs: workshops attended, user stories written, test cases prepared and run, defects followed in Jira, documentation updated.
• Career changers from the business: key users and business experts (in finance, purchasing, HR or logistics) can bring forward their process knowledge and their involvement in system projects, such as testing or training colleagues.
• Training in progress: state the certification or programme, the provider and the expected completion date, without presenting it as already obtained.

Accounts payable specialist moving into ERP consulting. Key user on an SAP roll-out: wrote test scenarios for the purchase-to-pay process, ran acceptance testing and trained 15 colleagues.

Trained or working in France?

If your experience is French, a few adjustments make your CV clearer to English-speaking recruiters.

French qualifications

Keep the French name of your qualification and add a short explanation:

• MIAGE – Méthodes informatiques appliquées à la gestion des entreprises: French university programme combining computer science and business management.
• Diplôme d’ingénieur: French engineering degree awarded by an accredited engineering school (école d’ingénieurs), usually after five years of higher education.
• École de commerce: French business school; give the programme name and level as stated on your diploma.

There is no automatic equivalence between these qualifications and British, American or other degrees, so do not present them as equivalent.

French project vocabulary

Several French terms have no direct English equivalent. Translate the role, not the words:

• MOA / MOE (maîtrise d’ouvrage / maîtrise d’œuvre): the business owner side and the delivery side of a project; “coordination MOA/MOE” is coordination between business and IT teams.
• AMOA (assistance à maîtrise d’ouvrage): usually best described as business analysis or business-side project support.
• Recette: acceptance testing; “recette utilisateur” is user acceptance testing (UAT).
• Cahier des charges: requirements specification; ESN: IT services company or consultancy; mission: client assignment.

Mistakes to avoid and final checklist

Not stating your business domain

Finance, HR, CRM or supply chain can make a big difference to a recruiter.

Listing systems without context

Explain what you actually did with SAP, Salesforce or Jira.

Presenting yourself as a developer when you are not

A functional consultant does not need to overplay technical skills.

Staying so functional that no system appears

Recruiters also need to identify your technical environment.

Writing only “participated in the project”

State your own contribution and the phases you covered.

Mixing business analyst, product owner and functional consultant without explanation

The roles overlap, but your actual responsibility must stay clear.

Leaving out results and scale

Users, countries or processes give context to your projects.

Checklist before you apply

• My title states my domain and, if useful, my system or module.
• My summary fits in three to five lines and names my domain, systems and project phases.
• Each assignment shows the sector, the process, my role, the system, the phases and the scale.
• Every figure is accurate, verifiable and not confidential.
• Each system and module listed is one I have actually worked on, with its context.
• Certifications have their exact name, issuer and year.
• Clients, employers and dates are easy to find, and skills are written as text.
• I have brought forward the domain and system that match the assignment.

Functional consultant CV: frequently asked questions

What skills should I put on a functional consultant CV?

Requirements analysis, business workshops, specifications, testing, the systems you configure, your business domain and user support, each with a few words of context.

Should I name my ERP or CRM?

Yes. SAP, Salesforce, Dynamics or Oracle can be key criteria, especially if you name the modules or features you genuinely know.

What is the difference between a functional consultant and a business analyst?

The roles often overlap. Functional consultants are usually more involved in configuring, testing, deploying and supporting the solution; business analysts focus more on needs and requirements.

Should I put SQL on my CV?

Yes, if you really use it to analyse or check data, with your level and how you use it.

How do I describe an ERP project?

Give the context, your role, the processes covered, the system, the phases you took part in and the scale of the project.

Is a functional consultant resume different from a functional consultant CV?

“Resume” is the usual American term; “CV” is used in the UK and much of the world. For a job application, the advice in this guide applies to both.