What is Consulting?
Consulting is one of the most popular career choices for graduates and young professionals. Consulting still regularly tops the charts as one of the most desirable fields to break into.
But what, exactly, is consulting?
Consulting is more than making slide decks and pushing numbers on an Excel spreadsheet
What is consulting?
At their core, consulting firms help companies solve complex business problems and capitalise on new opportunities. As a consultant, you’ll be deployed to client sites in small teams to analyse issues and provide strategic, data-driven, recommendations.
Management consultants are like GPs of the business world. When someone visits their GP, they describe their symptoms, the GP listens, analyses, produces a diagnosis and recommends a treatment.
Consultants do something similar for businesses: they listen to the client’s issues, ask a bunch of questions to make sure they have all the information, then analyse the problem to diagnose it.
The consulting equivalent is a ‘problem statement’. This tells the client what is going wrong in their business and where. Consultants then propose a course of action to cure the problem. Unlike GPs, they stick around to help implement the fix. Your GP won’t spoon-feed you medicine, consultants will.
What do consultants do?
What do consultants do all day?
Common day-to-day activities include:
Stakeholder interviews
Industry research
Data analysis
Benchmarking competitors
Identifying improvement areas
Presenting recommendations
Consultants collaborate closely with clients to diagnose issues, craft strategies to address them, and often help oversee implementation. The goal is to improve efficiency, maximise profits, and boost competitive advantage.
The 6 main types of consulting
Confusingly, there’s more than one type of consulting.
These are the most common consulting divisions:
Strategy: advise on long-term planning, new market entry, M&A, etc.
Technology: IT strategy, systems integration, digital transformation.
HR: organisation design, talent development, change management.
Operations: supply chain, manufacturing, process enhancement.
Management: organisation structures, new initiatives, general operations.
Finance: accounting, risk management, corporate finance.
It’s possible to change what type of consulting you do during your career, especially if you’re at a big firm.
What skills do you need to succeed as a consultant?
Excelling as a consultant relies heavily on ‘soft’ skills such as:
Client management: understanding needs, setting expectations, nurturing relationships.
Executive presence: conveying credibility and confidence with leadership.
Team collaboration: co-operating on analysis, problem-solving, and deliverables.
Ambiguity tolerance: operating without complete information to make progress.
Communication: distilling complex issues into compelling narratives and recommendations.
Time management: consistently delivering quality work under ambitious deadlines.
On top of this, firms expect you to have strong analytical capabilities. This doesn’t mean that you need a maths degree (although you’ll probably need to do some number crunching). However, the ability to objectively observe a problem and critically analyse it is essential.
How to break into consulting
Landing a job at prestigious firms like McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte, Accenture, and PwC is very competitive. Requirements typically include:
Strong academic track record.
Demonstrated leadership experience - university societies, internships, etc.
Sharp analytical and problem-solving abilities.
Strong communication skills.
Ability to think strategically and ‘out of the box’.
The intense pace provides accelerated leadership development and exposure to diverse industries. It’s an excellent way to turbo-charge your career. The work is challenging but the career is highly rewarding.
Start your consulting journey with confidence
This blog provided an insider overview of what consulting really is and what it takes to excel as a new consultant.
Although demanding, a consulting career offers immense opportunities to gain experience and have strategic impact early on. Check out consultingsurvival.com for all the training and community you need to be a confident and successful consultant.
Good luck!
