Intro
In this blog, I will be covering what consulting is, who works in this field, where these types of jobs are located, when the timing could be right to step into consulting, pros & cons of consulting followed by why a career in consulting could be for you.
What is Consulting?
We’ve all been to the doctor’s for a consultation at some point in our lives when you’re sick, and over the counter medications aren’t helping your illness, so you seek professional advice from an expert in the medical field to provide the healthcare advice to get you back to full health.
Consulting works in a similar fashion, there are consultants who are specialists in their respective fields who provide their services to those in need. Consulting can vary across industries, such as software consulting, recruitment consulting, healthcare consulting etc the list goes on, you can consult in pretty much anything. The word consult means to advise, so automatically the concept is to have some knowledge to be able to provide guidance to the client you are assisting.
One thing to keep in mind is that nobody walks into consulting as an expert, they all start from the basics with limited knowledge and build their mountain of knowledge overtime, learning from colleagues and experiences as they progress in their respective careers.
Who works in Consulting?
Each area of consulting has different skill requirements to be eligible to work in the field. You need to have transferrable skills and demonstrate the relevant skills required to do the job, but also fit into the organisation. For example, a hiring team would not place a person with no financial experience at all into a finance software consulting role. The right candidate has to be able to prove with evidence that they can demonstrate some competencies that are similar to the day-to-day responsibilities of a finance consultant, such as working with medium to large data sets, using excel functionality to manipulate and extract meaningful data, gathering conclusions from a range of data etc.
Where are Consulting jobs located?
The location of consulting jobs has shifted since the Covid-19 pandemic, many graduate schemes, apprenticeships, contracts and entry level roles are varied across fully remote, with some employers taking steps towards hybrid (this means for example remote for 2 days a week but also in the office 3 days a week), some employers are even asking for 24/7 in-office presence.
As a new person in your career, being remote makes it harder to learn “soft skills” whereas you can pick these up and digest new knowledge far more effectively in person. The same can be said for “technical skills” learning across Microsoft teams/Zoom calls when you’re new in the corporate world can be overwhelming, as this is likely not something you may have done unless you’re coming from a similar style of work.
The way a base office works in consulting is, you are assigned an office nearest to your home. You are responsible for travel costs to that office, and any travel to other offices (depending on the consultancy you work for) are covered by the employer/client. This was the simple answer I never got early on in my career. Some consultancies don’t cover costs to any office outside your base office, unless, you have a valid business reason for the travel, in which case they’ll cover it.
If you are in a position of choosing to relocate and be in person, or stay remote, I'd recommend to relocate as the in person is invaluable in early stages of your career.
When is the right time for consulting?
There is no right or wrong time to consider consulting, but there are a range of factors to give thought to so that you can weigh the pros & cons to see whether this is a path aligned with your future aspirations.
In the finance consulting space, the technology is moving rapidly with the rising expansion of AI tools. There are smarter ways to create finance solutions, which helps those already in the space to make better solutions for clients, but equally the demand to quickly learn new concepts is rising in parallel.
Consulting Cons
The organization can be cut throat: This means that if you underperform the door can be shown to you if necessary as does any job with poor performance (Different organisations have varied tolerance levels of underperforming behaviour).
Long work days: Consulting organizations want you to grow and often you have to work some long days beyond the typical 9am-5pm to go above and beyond for promotion, career progression or project deadlines. This is not a constant, but some days can be more challenging than others, but consider this additional time an investment in professional development, and delivering quality solutions for clients. You can gain appreciation from your team and subsequently get put forward for more projects, meaning you generate more revenue for the consultancy you work for thus giving job security (given you do a good job).
Weekend work: Some projects can demand weekend work unofficially, which means you don’t get paid extra for it unless it's a client who has made this mistake leading to more work required, or your project managers have the budget allocated with valid reasoning. This is not very common, but it can happen when timelines are slim, or you need more time than you have in a work week given project deadlines. I’ve seen instances where weekend work gets given back as annual leave, so you get a few more days leave to make up for those weekends disrupted.
Restructuring: This is a theme that is cropping up in many consulting fields recently. So if you consider this, you’d want to be clear the department you’re looking at joining hasn’t been slashed recently, and that the projects available for consultants are healthy and heavy in pipeline (future projects as well as present projects). Some ways to check this is the traditional Google search, LinkedIn premium insights to see the companies growth trajectory, even customer success stories on the official website of the consultancy shows how strong the organisation is if they can publish quality deliveries frequently. Lastly, I find reading blogs of the consultants already on the ground on LinkedIn can provide a steer if they know what they are talking about.
Consulting Pros
Consulting has pros and cons as does any decision in life, but there are many benefits which come from it, some are listed below:
Accelerated career projection: Working with the latest technology puts you at the forefront of the latest software on the market compared to roles which are in organisations with stagnant software where it could be very dated.
Prestigious clients: In consulting you have the chance to work with some of the largest and most successful organizations in the world, for example your favourite coffee franchise, or shopping place could end up being a client and you get to see the nuts and bolts they have in place which makes them so successful! This is good from a business perspective as you learn what methods they have which are future proof for success. Often clients select consultancies to represent them in development work based on word of mouth from other customer success stories.
Reputation: Some consultancies hold a very respectful positions in the global rankings of consulting. For example, you may or may not have heard of The Big 4, these consultancies hold respect against their names which in turn gives their employees a strong career foundation, working with top talent across the world, giving fantastic career prospects later on because you are exposed to such top tier projects and talented teams.
Earning potential: There is a deeper pocket you can fill whilst working in the field of consulting compared to the other roles. Like anything in life, you must pull your weight, step out of your comfort zone and put in the hard work to prove your worth, you cannot just sit idly and expect to be excel. Effort and giving value back to your clients are a must, equally, you may need to invest time outside work hours to develop yourself more especially as you become more senior.
Networking: Because you have the chance to work with a wide variety of clients and teams, it means the chance to meet new people from various backgrounds and locations is much more likely. Overtime, your network can really bolster your future prospects, I’ll cover this in another blog but this one is instrumental.
Versatility: The skills you learn in consulting are unmatched, you will learn things beyond school/college/university. There will be such simple concepts you will come across and it will leave you baffled how you were never taught this in previous years no matter what background you come from, the list for this piles up and I'll be diving into a dozen topics across following blog series.
Technical skills: You would have the chance to learn new technologies, for instance new coding languages, and you’ll learn how to create something technical whilst simultaneously solving business issues and be taught how to explain it back in plain English to a non-technical audience. Sounds easy reading it right? Well, it actually takes some serious skill to break down something technical into plain English for a non-technical audience. I will delve deeper on this in another blog and elaborate how you can effectively storyline a technical piece of work whilst ensuring it makes sense to listeners.
Conclusion
Well if you made it this far then I must have written something worth your time and attention. As long as you took some learning from this read, that’s mission accomplished for me.
If you have any specific topics that you'd like me to cover then please drop me a message directly on LinkedIn, or reply in the comments below.
Thank you for your time, until the next one 😊