Why I Became a Consultant, and You Should Too If....

Why I chose to become consultant:

I remember the exact moment that I decided to pursue consulting as a career path. I was entering my junior year in college and was exposed to consultants in a summer internship at a large telecommunications company. At the time I pursued a marketing internship aligned with my college major. For my internship, I worked with a marketing program executive who had just transitioned into her role after several years in consulting (I would find this out several years later). Even though I was an intern, she gave me full reign to run a couple of projects the marketing division needed to complete before the end of their fiscal year. I was excited to have so much freedom to run my own projects and gain invaluable experience.

One of my assignments was to come up with a banner ad marketing campaign in alignment with the organization’s new strategy (banner ads was just emerging at that time as one of the main ways to advertise in the early days of the internet). Part of my role was to interview key stakeholders, which included meeting with a team of consultants that were helping shape the company’s strategy in order to capture the key talk tracks that the campaign had to embody. I had several meetings with members of the consulting team and was immediately intrigue by the way they explored ideas with me and brainstormed as a team. What was even more interesting was that they were all from different parts of the country and traveling in every week just for this project. At the time, I didn't know there was work that would require so much travel. I liked the idea of being exposed to a variety of different companies and work.

Every week during my internship, I purposely made excuses to meet with the team to learn more about their work, who they were, and how they got into the field. By the end of the summer, I had decided that I wanted to go into consulting myself and began seeking consulting roles. The following summer I did a consulting internship and by the first semester of my senior year, I had secured my first consulting job offer.

Fast forward over a decade later, the same excitement I had for consulting from the outside looking in still ring true today. It was one of the best career decisions I made.

You should consider consulting if...

1) You are a people person that enjoys collaboration.

You will work with a lot of really smart, ambitious people on project teams and all types of people on your client sites. Your goal on a consulting team is to learn how to be humble, influence people, and make friends. Be a team player while bringing your voice to the table. While strong written and verbal communication skills are a must in this business, having manners and general respect for people will take you far.

2) You enjoy solving complex business problems.

Learn how businesses operates and the lifecycle of industries. Be willing to challenge conventional thinking. Look at parallel industries to identify lessons learned that you can bring to clients. Take the time to understand how to read financial statements such as profit & loss or for public companies, 10k statements.

3) You're comfortable being an early adopter and thinking big.

Typically consulting is 5-10 years ahead of where an industry is headed. You have to enjoy constantly learning to stay on top of emerging trends and ideas. You also have to be comfortable in sometimes forging into the unknown.

4) You're willing to work long hours, be agile, and pivot at a moment’s notice.

Consultants work very long hours and thrive on change; we constantly are working in different environments, on different projects, with different teams and clients. At any moment, you may be working hard on an analysis when you are then asked to shift gears instantly to prepare for an impromptu client presentation. You have to be flexible and keep an open mind.

5) You have the ability to work well with ambiguous environments.

You will sometimes have to make sense of very little data. Having the ability to connect the dots, being analytically creative, and innovative (think outside the box) will help you identify insights and test multiple hypotheses. Being able to convey simplistic, innovative solutions are also prized skills.