Bill Nobles ⋅ Basking Ridge, NJ Exxon ⋅ 30 years experience

Sidy, thank you for your service. I passed along your question to friend Dick Walker whose career was consulting. Here's his advice based on personal experiences:
(1) Emphasize your intellectual curiosity supported by examples from your military service or other experiences.
(2) Provide examples of your powers of observation.
(3) Connect your military experiences with areas in which the specific consulting organization specializes.
Finally Dick warns to be careful about expressing your expectations. Initially be prepared and willing to do the grunt work supporting other consulting experts. The "traveling to different clients, solving their problems, and returning home with a sense of accomplishment" will come later after you have proved yourself.
Good luck, Bill Nobles

Sidy Sidibe ⋅ Noblesville, IN U.S. Air National Guard, First Lieutenant ⋅ 7 years served

Andrew,
I really appreciate your perspective on consulting. I learned a lot already from your posting. I would like to know a little more about the billable hours: when does it start? I am anticipating that I would be an associate (if I do get in).
Thanks again for the tips.

Andrew Karp ⋅ Sonoma, CA Sierra Data Science ⋅ 20 years experience

Hi....in addition to all the great advice you've received previously, I'd like to suggest that you reach out to the people from these firms at the information sessions you attended and network with them about opportunities with their firms.

I worked for a major consulting firm many years ago and while I think it was a great career move and got a lot out of the experience

But, I would like to point out some of the drawbacks to working for these outfits:
1) Emphasis on billable hours. If you aren't billing time to a client then the partners of the firm look at you and wonder why you are still on the payroll. A bit of an exaggeration, but still something to think about. In the firm at which I worked we had a monthly "realization" report that measured the ratio of the number of hours you billed to the number of hours available for work that month. For example, if there were 20 work days in the month, you had 160 hours available to bill. If you worked 120 hours, took 24 hours of vacation and then 16 hours of "dead time," your "realization" was 90 percent. On the other hand, if there were 160 billable hours in the month, and you only billed for 16 hours, your realization was 10%. Folks with consistently low realization rates were not kept on the payroll for very long.
2) Expectation of constant travel. Sounds more exciting than it is. Depending on your personal/family circumstances, you may not want to spend Monday-Friday at a remote site and then fly home late Friday night and back out again Sunday afternoon. You can't trade your frequent stay points and frequent flier miles for a good home life.
3) Internal politics. In the firm where I worked each partner was the supreme ruler of their practice and had practically unlimited power to hire/fire/discipline his or her "resources." Each "practice" was its own fiefdom within the larger firm. You may have limited opportunities to transfer to other offices/practices/partners if things aren't going well in your current assignment.
4) Up or out. Many firms either promote you or ask you to leave if they don't want to shove you up the ladder. As you move up the food chain you will be expected to sell services to clients, not just work on jobs. And, you will be expected to supervise other consultants. Be certain you understand how this process works at a firm before you accept their offer of employment.
5) Thin ice. If you run afoul of a more senior consultant, or of a client, you can expect to be "made available for other opportunities," or "counseled out," or just plain old fired.
6) Non standard work day. If you aren't willing to work more than eight hours a day, don't go to work for a consulting firm. Expect many long days and weekends churning out "deliverables" for clients.

Here are some of the benefits of working for a consulting firm, from my perspective, just to be fair:
1) Clients assume you know what you are talking about since you are "a consultant."
2) Opportunities for travel (see #2 above, however) with limited out of pocket expenses. In many cases you are can stay the weekend at the client location, if you want, rather than fly home, and use the time to explore new places.
3) Ongoing new projects and assignments
4) Good training/development opportunities. I got a lot out of in-service training on proposal writing, presentation skills, etc. that I put to use every day now that I am an independent consultant.
5) Professional networking opportunities
6) Job opportunities. Many clients like to hire their consultants, so you are in effect "trying out" for a job at each client site. And, the firms are usually very happy when a client hires one of their consultants, as it maintains/enhances the relationship between the two entities.

Hope this helps...

Andrew Karp
Principal Consultant
Sierra Data Science
www.SierraDataScience.com
Sonoma, CA

Sidy Sidibe ⋅ Noblesville, IN U.S. Air National Guard, First Lieutenant ⋅ 7 years served

Thanks for the advice Tom. I am currently in the process of doing that and I will also look up the directory.
Sidy

Tom Cal, CFA ⋅ San Francisco, CA Army Veteran, Investment Manager ⋅ 25 years experience

Sidy, Request a one-on-one mentor from ACP. Also review and reach out directly to advisors in the acp-advisornet Advisor+ Directory.

http://acp-usa.org/Mentoring_Program

https://acp-advisornet.org/directory

Organizations that participate in ACP's one-on-one mentoring program includes firms with consulting practices such as Atcenture, Deloitte, HP, and IBM.