In any career there are job characteristics that only an insider will discover. To individuals outside the field, these may be invisible, or they will be clouded by desire and personal bias. This is especially true in management consulting. Several fantasies exist about what consulting entails:

  • The perception that your schedule is your own: “I can work when I want to and, even, go to the gym at 2:00 in the afternoon.”
  • The perception that the travel in consulting is fun: “I’ll go to interesting places.”
  • The perception that the job is primarily doing work that you like to do or are very good at: “I’ll be providing my particular expertise.”
  • The perception of glamor and prestige: “I’ll be admired and sought-after as a leader in my field.”

All of these notions are true to some extent, but it’s certainly not the whole story. You have to have strong commitment and really want to be a consultant, if you’re going to weather your shattered illusions. For example, the truth about scheduling flexibility is that you’ll be working at 8:00 at night, or all day Sunday, as often as you go for a walk in the middle of the afternoon. For about three years, while you’re building your core clientele, consulting can be a 24/7 job. And, as far as traveling to interesting places . . . , well . . . they’re just not that interesting. And the process of getting to those places is flat-out hard work.

About the nature of the work that a consultant performs, these are two important considerations:

1) Seventy percent of consulting is sales. Once you “land a gig,” you do get to use your particular training and expertise to complete the project. However, it’s the act of persuading a company that they can benefit by contracting with outside help and that you are the best one to help them that determine whether your consulting career will be financially viable. I know outstanding technicians in various fields who have struggled to make a go of consulting; and I know mediocre technicians who are able to thrive because they know how to engender confidence in a client and can sell themselves over the competition. If you don’t want to spend 70% of your time at networking functions, making telephone calls, sending letters of introduction, submitting proposals, and selling yourself, you won’t be happy with a career in consulting.

2) In general, consulting involves discrete projects, in which the individual consultant does the work that produces specific outcomes within agreed-upon timeframes. The consultant’s sense of satisfaction, therefore, derives from the quality and results of his or her own efforts. Many people who aspire to consulting have risen to the top of their fields and long ago stopped being a worker bee. Satisfaction as a department head derives from developing the talents and skills of staff and pride in department-wide results. Most of the actual work of consulting is not glamorous and will take you back in your career.

Bottom line, consulting is a distinct job with specific characteristics that one is either suited to, or not. It is not just the “next step” one takes upon reaching the level of expert in a given field.