What’s the best way to learn baking/sewing/gardening?
Apprenticeship.

Learning by doing and training under an expert was the only option in Management Consulting until a few years ago.

I’d still argue that it is the most effective way to learn the Art and experience the fast-paced, dynamic world of Consulting.

Every year hundreds of thousands of students and experienced hires apply to the MBBs and Big4s and a few thousand make it to their choicest firms. At a top Consulting firm where I worked for 8 years, the joke was that it is more difficult to get into that Big4 firm than Harvard itself!

Working for a top Consulting firm is like being in the best Chemistry lab. You are learning from experts and experimenting to see what works best. Same for your Consulting career. Having a mentor who can guide you through the nuances of, not only the Consulting projects, but how to navigate the firm itself, is extremely important for your career progression.

There are 3 parts to what you learn in Consulting:

  1. Structured Thinking: Think about this as all the frameworks that you will learn, that help you organize your thinking around the client’s problem and help align on the best strategy or solution for the client.
    This includes all the case prep you did for your Consulting interviews, the books you read on ‘cracking’ cases, as well as all the frameworks you will learn as a new Consultant (usually specific to the firm - e.g. the BCG growth matrix).
  2. Technical skills: Spend a year as a Consultant and you will become a pro at Excel, PowerPoint and Word at the very least….give or take a few more software (e.g. Tableau, Project etc.). You’ll be an analysis ninja and slides champion by the time you’re done working on these for 60–70 hours a week. I’m not exaggerating.
  3. Key Consulting skills: These are the ones you learn by doing and observing your senior practitioners. In my opinion, this is the biggest value add of a Consulting career. I call these LIFE SKILLS because they can help you thrive in ANY work environment.

    And a major part of this learning is intangible.

    Developing these 8 Key Consulting Skills make it worthwhile to slog through the super-demanding craziness of Consulting :
    1. Storyboarding
    2. Networking
    3. Client relationships
    4. Project management
    5. Building your brand
    6. Team management
    7. Running C-suite meetings and workshops
    8. Business Development and Sales

But what if you haven’t “made it” to the firm of your choice, or you just want to learn the skills of a top Management consultant, without the pain of 70-hour work weeks? This is where you can either learn from:

  1. an experienced Consultant working in Industry or smaller Consulting firm
  2. the experts who have lived the Consulting life and taken their craft online.

Check out more posts on the BYONDGOOD blog for free resources that give practical, tangible steps to develop the 8 Key Consulting skills while also providing real-life examples and anecdotes from my 10-year Big4 Management Consulting career.

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 Punya is a former management consultant with 15 years of experience at 2 Big4 firms, serving top Fortune500 clients. She has lived and worked in 6 countries and changed 3 careers working across several industries. Punya is passionate about coaching new and aspiring Consultants to succeed in Management Consulting.