Thoughts on consulting: Hell or just Heck?

January 3, 2007 6:19 PM

Thoughts on consulting: Hell or just Heck? Despite the headline, I'm interesting on hearing both negatives and the positives. It's that time of year again where people freak out about getting their BA and then embarking on the Great Hereafter, and somewhere in this path, the mutterings of 'consulting' are heard. Weigh in, AskMe.

If you've done it, either on the small scale or the Bigshot firms, please weigh in. If you've thought about it and decided not to, put that in too. Recent grads or not-so-recent grads, how did this all come about? Anything that you're willing to give is helpful at this point.
In the interests of keeping it a fact-finding mission, I'm leaving myself out of the equation, unless more specific details are needed.

posted by lilithim to Work & Money (14 answers total)

I'm with one of the consulting bigs. If you want me to shoot your resume along, email is in profile, I can tell you more before doing so.

I didn't come to the firm straight out of college - I worked in the retail / fashion industry for about 5 years, and suffice to say I wish I had gone straight into consulting. Graduated in double-aught, FWIW.

Generally you're going to get some decent training and then start doing coding or some other kind of grunt work for your first couple of years, after which you'll move on to a slightly-more interesting level of involvement/work on your projects (sooner rather than later, if you're a real rock star). Depending on the industry arm that you're consulting in, you're likely going to be making average to above-average pay at least until your 2nd or 3rd promotion.

I think you're going to end up dealing with some of the same shit no matter where you go - consulting or industry. Cheap ass management, bullshit politics, the works. One thing I do like about my company is that they have a generally emphasized philosophy of taking care of their people, which they sometimes actually come through on. This is sometimes called work/life balance. After a few years in consulting, let me say that actually finding this balance (with or without corporate assistance, more likely the latter), is key to staying sane.

Oh, and get ready to live out of a suitcase for the next few years. If you don't like traveling, get thee to industry.

Your question was kind of vague, if you have any more particulars you want to know about, just ask.
posted by allkindsoftime at 6:29 PM on January 3, 2007

Consultant == travel.

That's the first thing, and perhaps most important, you have to decide if you can accommodate. Understand that travelling constantly now is not exactly as glamorous as it was pre-9/11.

On the upside, most people (again, helped by 9/11) don't want to travel constantly so earnings are generally higher.
posted by Ynoxas at 7:14 PM on January 3, 2007

Thirding the travel issue: my ex-GF has been a consultant since college, first w/ Accenture, then Ernst & Young, now with a big CRM software vendor, and you basically lose all control over where you'll spend your time. It's exhausting... and it's hell on relationships :(
posted by nicwolff at 7:30 PM on January 3, 2007

I work for a very large firm as a consultant. Travel is definitely mandatory for this type of job. I've been traveling pretty much constantly for the past 2.5 years, and it is definitely draining and not glamorous at all. (For example, I traveled 100k miles/year on average for the first year and a half and 155k miles this past year. And that's just flights, not counting trains or auto mileage.)

I do like the flexibility of not having an office and missing out on the office politics. My job is never boring and I am always doing something different from week to week (though this is not always the case with consultants, as some work on months- or years-long projects).

I did not start doing consulting straight out of school - I went into industry first. Both suck in their own special way. If you can deal with lots of travel, long hours, and a bit of drudgery at first, in exchange for learning a shitton and gaining a lot of valuable experience, then I think consulting is a good option. If you like going home every night at 5 and putting your feet up, it's not for you. :)
posted by bedhead at 8:08 PM on January 3, 2007

Yeah, I've worked for two of the big however many there are nowadays and a smaller group now. Unless you're doing govvie work, it's crazy travel and really long hours. You didn't mention what type of consulting you're thinking of -- if you're going along the lines of Accenture, IBM, etc., then despite what they tell you about process, business, blah blah, you'll most likely be doing technology implementation. But if you're thinking McKinsey, Booz, BCG, Bain, then it's strategy consulting and a whole other game (much harder to get into, much more intense work). I've done both, feel free to send me an email for more info.
posted by echo0720 at 8:12 PM on January 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

There are also some industry jobs that provide an experience somewhere in the middle. I worked for a software company and had my time split between implementation work for customers, and product development. I was part of a implementation team if you looked on the org chart, but there were also smaller products that the core product development team did not work on - not profitable enough to market to all customers, but worth working on in between big contracts. This combination had me split about 80/20 home/travel (mostly because our biggest customers were located in the same city, and I didn't have to stay in a hotel). The pace of churn wasn't nearly as bad as with a consulting firm, but there's constantly new people to work with so you don't get bored and stale like you might in many jobs where you see the same people everyday.
posted by Calloused_Foot at 8:20 PM on January 3, 2007

I'm in consulting (e-business) but I don't work for a consulting firm. I don't make the big bucks, and due to the nature of the business, I don't travel; more senior people do travel more, but still not nearly as much as a first-year management consultant. Took the job right out of college because it was the only offer I got in the geographic region I most wanted to be in and 'cause it sounded interesting. Mostly because of the first part.

It's fine. A little boring. Definitely heck. The work is very detail-oriented and our recommendations are not unfrequently stunningly obvious, because we are often called in not really to give advice but to help produce a PowerPoint that someone can show to his boss to get funding to implement our recommendations, which are probably the same things he's been trying to get the department to do for the last eight months. This means that there is not a ton of opportunity to value-add, especially at the entry level. Almost everything valuable I have learned on this job has been about using Excel. On the other hand, I can stop thinking about work at 5 and don't even really have to think very hard about it the other eight hours of the day, either.

This experience is basically the opposite of what everybody else will tell you about consulting, but hey, it's a big industry, and not every consulting job is like one at McKinsey.
posted by phoenixy at 8:41 PM on January 3, 2007

Maaan, I was so jealous of my friends that came out of school and went right into some of the big consulting firms. They were earning crazy money right away for that age, having fun, and getting great experience just like that. This was mid through late 90s - don't know what the scene is now. They liked the travel just fine, even thought it was kind of cool (though it was less cool after the novelty wore off a bit). It's much easier and more novel when you're fresh out of school. It's like, "hey look at me, I'm a grown up! Mr. Business Man on a plane, in a suit, in Chicago, at a hotel, at the bar, getting laid, making green, whee!". I couldn't believe what they were getting paid and they weren't even particularly gifted and had no real hard skills or experience speak of, so it kind of rankled.

I on the other hand had teams of people like them (as part of more senior teams of course) come to help my company implement our projects - - paid them long green to tell us how to do what we were already doing, basically, or when that was the only way to get organizational buy-in for some big change. And I was making peanuts. I'm still not making now as much as some of them were then. They seemed to think it was normal. Wished I was on the other end of that exchange.

I say give it a shot if you've got an in. If it's not for you, or the travel becomes too much, you can bail after a couple of years. Solid experience, exposure to different kinds of work in different sectors, solid skills training, valuable mentoring, cash in the bank, benefits, versatile and attractive resumé that you can take just about anywhere. Kind of wish I'd stuck with that business major now.

I also think it would be a very helpful transition. The Great Hereafter you cite is often a very rude and unexpected awakening. The invisible railroad tracks you didn't realize you've been on all these years end abruptly and it can feel like slamming into a wall, or falling into the sea with no rudder and no compass and no landmarks. You get the "Now what?" and "Is this it?" shellshock face. If you can zip right into something like this, it'll keep your momentum going and give you time to think about what you really want, but from the comfort of your nice apartment instead of mom's basement, and doing comparatively worthwhile work instead of answering the phone and making copies.

Downsides, sure, but give it a shot, camper. Don't expect the first step to be the "right" one either. The hereafter is more random, varied, freeform, and reinventable than you think. Any decent step at all is better than fretting over where to place that first foot. As time stretches out, that becomes more and more apparent than it is when you first come out, thinking you've got to choose correctly right away or else.
posted by kookoobirdz at 9:12 PM on January 3, 2007

I've just quit from one of the biggies, and it was a rather nice feeling. I was lucky enough however to work on the 'human side' i.e. comms and training, so I never got stuck doing coding or running test scripts. A lot of the bigger consultancies are moving steadily away from business consulting work of the type I enjoyed doing and more towards systems integration, which personally I find pretty dull. On the plus side, I'm pretty used to picking things up and running with them, and it looks great to future employers. If you eventually want to go into another industry which is lower-paying however (i.e., I'm moving into more creative work, using my writing skills, yay!) then keep an eye on the salary - it's pretty easy to price yourself out of other lines of work and end up locked into consulting for the pay, even if you're miserable.

And n'thd on the travel - if you don't like hotel rooms, trains and planes, don't even think about it. Staying in a hotel sounds exciting, but after six months of hotel food and never seeing your friends and/or SO, it bites royally.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:18 PM on January 3, 2007

I went into consulting straight out of college. I won't mention the company, but it was a major public-sector consulting outfit.

It can be a good gig if you're looking for a job where you're going to be doing a different thing every few months. But you'd better come with a 'can do' attitude, and be willing to travel, because when you're fresh of college people don't want to hear anything out of your mouth other than "sure, I'd love to do that."

Public-sector consulting will make you cynical very, very quickly about the inner workings of government. Remember the old adage: if you like sausage or respect your government, don't watch either one being made. It's quite true.

I never got much training, either. It was more along the lines of a one-day course on how to use the company email, here's your company Amex, now go start racking up the billable hours. Training? It's on-the-job training. (To be fair though, training budgets at most corps go up and down like the tides; after a good year they might be awash with cash and shipping all the new hires to Bali for a week of 'orientation;' after the stock takes a beating it's four hours of Powerpoint in a basement conference room.)

Perhaps moreso than other jobs, consulting can be what you want to make of it. For a lot of people it's just a way to kill a few years between college and grad school, for others it's a serious career option. Some people get lucky in terms of finding projects that have work-from-home opportunities, while others end up driving all over creation (on their own time and putting mileage on their own car), to work long hours for the same basic pay. Also: every company will tell you when you interview that they do raises based on "lots of factors." They make it sound very holistic. This is mostly crap -- consulting companies care about one number more than anything, and that is your billable hours. Bill a lot of hours, and you will be promoted (and be given projects that allow you to bill more hours); fail to bill hours and you will find yourself pushed onto crappy projects until you quit in disgust.

I have no regrets about taking the job I did, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is looking for a job out of college, who is willing to get their hands dirty in the corporate world. It beats the hell out of your parents' basement.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:36 PM on January 3, 2007

I work for one of the big strategy firms (McKinsey, Bain, Booz, BCG) - if you can get in here after graduating, go for it - no reservations whatsoever. Reason I say this is that we take on graduates for 2 years only, then people either go into industry or a paid MBA with the offer to come back in 3 years. Not only do they get an amazing training, but they go into all sorts of high risk very cool jobs with the safety net of a good job when they return.

I see 23 year olds leave our place able to write business plans, build a business model in Excel, create and deliver a convincing presentation and most importantly be credible in meetings with 50 year old execs. Nothing else I know of gives you such a rounded skill set so young. WIsh I had known about it before I became a lawyer and switched later!

That said, you don't say what type of consulting you mean, so disregard the above if not relevant!
posted by csg77 at 1:34 AM on January 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

There's fantastic advice above from people who are/were with some of the major firms.

I've been in consulting for two years, and worked in education for three years before that. I work at a small boutique consulting firm in Boston. It has a lot of the benefits of the major firms, and avoids some of the negative aspects--significant amounts of travel chief among them. We travel, but not five days a week like you will elsewhere. A lot of our staff, and most of our partners, are former Accenture, BCG, or McK consultants, partners, or directors. They've brought in the things they loved about their past work, and did away with the things that they hated. The result is a great place to work.

Like I said, we're small. Thirty people right now. Ten when I started two years ago. Everyone gets to voice their opinion in a group this small, and everyone gets a great understanding of why decisions were made. It's an outstanding learning opportunity if you're interested in a career in professional services.

Don't just think of the major firms when you're looking for a job. Look around for some of the smaller ones, too.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:52 AM on January 4, 2007

I work for a pretty small (15 folks or so) consulting firm serving the non-profit and government sectors. What I like about what I do is that it lets me dabble in a wide range of areas. I specialize in affordable housing finance, but have written policy papers on vacant land management and business plans for child care providers. I also get to think that I am helping people in need in some small way. Because we target a sector that the biggies don't really care about, we don't have to hunt around the country for gigs and there's no real need for travel.

On the downside of working for a small, specialized company - the pay is comparatively low, training is almost non-existent, and recognition is negligible.

I also know folks who have worked for the biggies. They got great training, made big money, worked very hard on very cool projects, and left when they decided that they wanted to see more of their families.
posted by qldaddy at 8:25 AM on January 4, 2007

Having worked in a top strategy consultancy, I can say its hell on relationships, especially when shifting time zones. Blah. Its somewhat different from other types in that you do generally get the 5* treatment (always nice as a grad) and heaps of responsibility very quickly.

Top thing about them is that the skills (pretty much problem structuring and presentation) are extremely transferable - I moved onto a hedge fund but had offers from a wide range of other sectors.

I also know people in a lot of other types of more specialised consulting - different, but perhaps more enjoyable if you like that specific field. Working in brand consulting for a bit was especially fun - you get to wave your hands around and Think Big Thoughts :)
posted by Mossy at 1:35 PM on January 4, 2007