Hi! Two questions about beach time in consulting.
1) what do consultants do when you’re on the beach (assuming you aren’t doing any proposal work)
2) as someone who’s about to enter the beach, are there things I should be thinking about or doing?
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The only time to be on the beach is (1) vacation/PTO in use, (2) deloading from intense project (should not be more than 5 business days), (3) staffed on an internal project initiative that's as important as billable work. When rolling off a project, at least 2-3 weeks before, ideally 4 weeks before, you should be internally networking or asking your coach or resource staffing contact for advice and insights.
If I were in your shoes, I would look to get re-staffed as soon as you can - and if the project doesn't kick off for ~1-2 weeks, use PTO for an impromptu summer trip.
super super helpful, thanks so much!
No worries - good luck on getting re-staffed.
Been on the beach a few times (usually only a couple of days at a time, but I've also had a couple of weeks at once) when coming back from a vacation or when I exited our PE group and went to our general practice and business was slow.
Personally, I just relax, do my admin I need to take care of (mailing something, filling some form, returning some package, etc.), catch up with people (e.g., chats with former supervisors / senior managers to discuss personal development {PD}), catch up with staffing / checking my progress against my PD goals, or lately revising the GMAT.
Read the comment, then saw the User, I was like... "of course", solid insights, as always.
Depends on where you are.
If you're at big 4 or Accenture like companies for example, you should take a quick breather (one day) and then start asking around for work, networking, etc. Utilization is tracked and they will punish you for too much beach.
If you're at MBB for example, it's no issue and very natural to have beach time in between projects where you genuinely do nothing. It's not your responsibility as an individual to get yourself staffed.
Tbh in this climate, it IS your responsibility to get staffed, even at the MBB firms where they claim that’s not the case. They say that’s not true, but when the market tightens and there’s not enough projects, teams will pick who they want, and they usually go with people who have a good reputation.
In fairness, that might be the case at McKinsey or BCG, where the onus for staffing is much more on the consulting peeps.
But right now with us, since we have a dedicated staffing team (although I think I heard BCG is doing that too now? I can't remember), the priority is given to people who are in their promotion window or on PIP, because they need the reviews. But this still isnt up to us as individuals.
We of course talk to staffing (I had a conversation just 2 days ago with them) but at some point a quiet pipeline and already staffed cases are going to create bottlenecks. Obviously, the easier you make it for them (the more flexible you are to: do internal rotations in specialist teams, do travel cases, do internal cases), the better, but this won't be a silver bullet. My "want to be staffed" shouldnt trump someone else's "need to be staffed".
Also, as you rightly say, beach time is a good time to relax. I just did 46h in the last 3 days, and this is my last week, so I will enjoy my beach time next week :D
But to your point, if I were to be unstaffed for more than 3 weeks (exc. vacation time), I would start to bring that up with Staffing directly and would definitely push to be staffed.
If you’re new, you’re most likely just going to get staffed by staffers (rather than network), so just chill and complete any training you need to do and be receptive if someone wants you to help on a proposal etc. if there’s something you want to do (eg a given project) then contact the team and say you want to help/how can you be part of it etc.
If you’ve been around a while and have a good reputation, you can often swing a week or two on the beach in between projects, even if it’s not great for utilisation (not that my firm cared about this) Eg at around 2 yrs in if I had nothing lined up after a study and nothing I was excited about, I’d just say no to opportunities I don’t want to do that I’ll wait a week or two for something else. If you’re in this position just chill and try to pretend you’re busy on some things to avoid LOPs hehe. You need to have something visible to do (eg doing a training for a client in Excel is one I did) to not get bogged down in random boring shit work.
Although that was before current climate so not sure on your specific circumstances.
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