Is Being a Consultant Fun?

It may give you a nice exit opportunity but this job involves lot of travel.

Is being a management consultant fun? As in, does the average consultant, week in and week out, generally enjoy their job?

No.

The work is challenging and can be intellectually stimulating (but not all the time, as much of what you'll do will involve endless research attempting to find data that may or may not exist). However, I'd say that the ratio of unhappy to happy consultants at the junior levels is much higher than 1.0x.

I think it depends very much on where you work. And also what you like.

Matter of personality, you'll never unless you try.

i'm sure a lot depends on the specific office you get into. some are more friendly than others, some more bureaucratic than others. basically from the interview you'll get much information. i found that nomatter where, if you like the people and they like you, you'll enjoy yourself at least a little. in the end it's all work. it all gets monotonous and boring, but the people make the difference.

depends

there are ppl that truly like what they do, and believe they add value to their clients

First year you may not find it to be very exciting as you learn the ropes. But as you get more responsibility, it becomes lot more challenging/interesting.

To give you an example, I do mostly operations consulting. Currently in one of the initiatives I need to have nearly 50 people from 18 different groups (who do the same thing in different ways) agree on bunch of stuff in next few months. Right now I am freaking out cause it seemed downright impossible yesterday, but I need to make it happen in next couple of months. The other initiative is worse cause we don't have much information on what we are doing. And in both areas, I don't have the depth of knowledge to walk in and sound like an expert. So it will be a lot of learning on the go, then make it happen by making people with 20 years of experience buying in. Unfortunately I need to take it from Analysis -> Recommendation -> Implementation as well.

Travel can take a toll on you. I ended up flying everyday last week (and 2 1.5 hour drives), and still had pretty high spirit. Someone does your bed everyday.

Not fun if you are in a long term relationship. Accurate to say you spend a lot of time looking for something that probably doesn't exist (and higher-ups know it probably doesn't exist) but in the 5% chance you find it, it would be nice to have.

The people make the difference is also absolutely true. Team dinners on the road are a big part of the experience, and if you don't like spending time with those people you won't be happy. The people at the firm, and specifically the office, you work at will have a huge impact on how much you enjoy it. I happen to love my office so no issue there.

As far as the work, very case-dependent for me:

Pure growth strategy > Customer segmentation > Process redesign > explicit cost cutting (layoffs) > post-merger integration > anything to do with private equity (very demanding client, guaranteed to make your life suck)

so it mainly depends on the office? what's the best way to get a feel for that sort of thing before you actually join it?

Depends on what kind of consulting you do. If you are lucky enough to do the type you are interested in, yes it wil be generally enjoyable (if you don't mind the 60+ weeks not including travel). But honestly, I would say that it would be hard enough just getting into consulting let alone getting into the niche that interests you. But, whether you go in to banking or consulting, be preapred to sell your soul (of course, more so in banking).

Really depends. Basically whether you enjoy it is driven by (a) can you work on stuff that you like and (b) do you work with great teams. As you start in consulting you will see all types of set-ups along these two dimensions and a couple of boring projects with bad people could happen if you're not, after all, lucky. On the other hand, you may also just happen to start out on sth you really enjoy and make great connections and you have the best possible professional experience.

Not sure whether you can influence this much from the outset, but I guess getting a feel for what projects different offices tend to do most would help to improve your chances on (a). I also find that I can much more relate to people who like the work I do than people doing sth else, so indirectly, office selection will prob also drive (b), but to a lesser degree.

So while the 'average' 50th percentile consultant will be ok with their job, the range of satisfaction must be quite big.