I need you for a consult

November 8, 2007 11:44 AM

In follow up to my highly unsuccessful question from last week (which btw you are still very welcome to answer), what do you actually do when you work in "consulting" and how do you get there?

I am specifically interested in non-IT consulting and would like to know:

1) What does your job consist of, i.e. what is it specifically that you do?
2) What are the education/knowledge/skill requirements to perform this job?
3) How did you get hired (would be interested mostly in stories from European offices but all are welcome to contribute)

posted by barrakuda to work & money (9 comments total)

One consults about something. "Consulting" as a standalone thing doesn't really make sense. It's a transitive verb. You seem to be using it as an intransitive verb. So, one might be a management consultant, an organizational consultant, one might consult about client retention or expanding a client base or developing a new product. Another phrase to substitute for consultant might be "freelance teacher".

So, if you have a skill about which you can consult, then usually what matters is developing a reputation for being either good at that skill or good at teaching other people about it. Then you market that reputation to people who might be helped by your intimate knowledge of whatever it is you have knowledge of.
posted by OmieWise at 11:51 AM on November 8, 2007 [3 favorites]

"Consulting" is a very general term that can mean pretty much any work done as a not-full-time-employee, depending on the context and the industry. You're going to have to ask a more specific question to get a useful answer here.

(However: since based on your previous question you're just starting out in the working world, I'm going to suggest that consultancy is not the best way to get started. It's much more usual for people to have spent some time in a traditional employee role before they break out on their own: if you've never worked in [whatever] industry before, it's difficult to sell yourself as knowledgeable enough to be worth hiring as a consultant, because, well, you aren't. Also, working for a while in a traditional role is how you make the contacts who will hire you later on as a consultant.)
posted by ook at 11:58 AM on November 8, 2007

ok, before everyone assumes that i want to open my own consulting firm - my question was to find out about types of work in management consulting in big consulting firms, like Booz Allen, McKinsey, BCG, Accenture, etc.
posted by barrakuda at 12:10 PM on November 8, 2007

alas, that still covers a multitude of sins - Accenture is a very different place from McKinsey. The level at which you will be joining also makes a big difference (my friends tell me that graduates generally get a lot of deeply crap grunt work, often endless data churning, whereas experienced hires can go straight into substantially more interesting roles).

My flatmate has worked for Accenture for three years now after joining as an experienced hire (previously he was a management accountant) - in his current role he's assigned to a major outsourcing project. His role seems to be a liasion between the Accenture staff doing the implementation and the client. Lots of project and resource management but also in-depth knowledge of how the outsourcing process works, what's important to the client etc. It seems to involve endless meetings, conference calls and never ever being in your flat...
posted by patricio at 12:41 PM on November 8, 2007

If you want to work at McKinsey, Bain, etc start by getting an MBA from Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, etc. They will come recruit you.

In terms of what you do: you analyze businesses and market opportunities and give people advice in return for lots of money. They trust you because you are a consultant rather than an employee.
posted by alms at 1:13 PM on November 8, 2007

Alms has it.

Big management consulting companies look to hire graduates from the best schools exclusively. Then they train you intensively to fit their mold of consulting. That is your skill set: being smart, a good learner, ambitious, hard working and a good communicator. They'll teach you the rest.

The point of consulting is to learn one skill and apply it many places. Thus you apply your economies of learning and can do things faster and better than employees (hypothetically). For management consulting, this involves applying a thought process or management style to a problem repeatedly.

At these types of jobs, you work very hard for big money. It is a "partner or out" pyramid scheme like some law firms and accounting firms. Maybe you don't work as long hours as a investment banker but you don't get paid as much either.

The people I know who do it, love it. But I think it is a short term committment for most of them. They think after 3 years that they can get themselves hired by one of their clients. In fact, that is the marketing plan for these consulting firms. Hire really smart people, work them hard so they leave but have great experience, then milk them for contracts once they leave to become an manager/ executive in a large firm.
posted by FastGorilla at 2:11 PM on November 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

I second alms' and FastGorilla's points. You get hired by these big consulting companies because your CV shows that you've been brilliant and industrious all your life. That means 1400+ SAT, high honors Ivy bachelor's degree, and maybe a prestigious master's degree, or a year or two of work for a top company. They train you to do whatever they need you to do, you pick up quickly because you're brilliant and industrious, and no matter what you go on to do in life, you're permanently in their Rolodex and you remember them fondly because they gave you your big break.
posted by ikkyu2 at 4:02 PM on November 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Basically, it's brain pimping. At least, that's how I always explained my two and half years at one of the bigs.

Big Consulting firm hires new graduates straight out of university. Said new graduates are often academically gifted, but also have a certain qualities like co-operation, ease of interaction with others, and so on. Basically, they're looking for smart, ambitious and likeable people, who are able to quickly get up to speed on things, will take on enormous tasks with a big grin on their faces, and are drawn to the heirarchical structures that make these things work.

Huge Company X decides they want to do something. Might be putting in a new computer system, or changing the way their organisation is structured. This is something they either don't want to do themselves (because it's hard, or unpleasant, for example re-orgs involving redundancies) or are not capable of doing themselves (they look around their workforce and can't see the people that would be willing to put in the hours and the effort to get things done by an (often relatively arbitrary) end-date). Big Company X could go out and find the same talented, capable and enthusiastic grads, as well as the experienced managers, to actually make Project Y happen. But that would be expensive long-term, and take forever.

Hence, Big Company X comes to Big Consulting Firm. Big Consulting Firm pimps out its smart kids and experienced managers, pays them a lot of money, but charges anywhere from three times to twenty times what it's paying for them. Then, you take the people and the things they have learned doing it for one Big Company, and you put them into another Big Company. Rinse, repeat.

The answers about the often dull work when you're starting is absolutely true. Dull and lots of it. On the other hand, when you've been there a year or so, you get a LOT of responsibility pretty quickly, and you can find yourself, 22 or 23 years old, in charge of things worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Also, the answers about being 'academically and personally brilliant' are true to an extent, but a lot of it, at least in the UK, also has to do with how good a fit they think you're going to be. I had an OK academic record, but had done lots of team management (charities and reserve forces) and an English degree, meaning I could talk the hind legs of a donkey.

Any more q's, do Me-Fi Mail me. You might also find this question has some useful answers for you.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:16 AM on November 9, 2007

In a bout of aimless websurfing I ran across this page describing the new hires, for the last six or seven years, of a firm called Princeton Consulting.

It seems like everyone they hire has a Ph.D. in some difficult discipline, lettered in a varsity sport at their prestigious college, and has high-level mastery of some other pursuit or hobby. I've wondered for some time, what the hell are all these high-achieving brainiacs doing for Princeton Consulting?
posted by jayder at 8:14 PM on November 9, 2007