Unfortunately, this happens more often than one would think. Consulting firms hire the best and the brightest from the industry and don’t invest enough in training them in the key skills required to succeed in Consulting. If you’re hired from B-school in a batch, it may be a different story though, and you may get a week of Consulting 101 training in the standards and frameworks of the Consulting firm you have joined.

In my opinion, these trainings do little to teach new hire Consultants about what it really takes to succeed in Management Consulting as a profession. And that’s because they focus on the very basic skills that can only help you succeed at a Business Analyst or at max., a Consultant level. I’m talking about formatting slides, visuals to use in presentations, firm-specific frameworks such as 2×2 matrices and maybe even a mock client presentation drill.

These trainings, while well-intentioned, just cannot teach you the key Consulting skills required to grow as a Consultant. In a nutshell, the main skills you need to survive and thrive in your first year are:

  • Storyboarding
  • Project management
  • Networking
  • Client management
  • Running meetings
  • Client workshops
  • Proposals/ Sales
  • Building your brand
To become proficient in these skills, you can do one or a combination of the following three things:

  • Learn by experience – The most painful and annoying way to learn Consulting and I speak from experience! Expect several embarrassments and possibly losing many exciting opportunities to learn because some Manager/ Partner thought you had zero skills when you began your career. Ouch!
  • Find a great mentor – Tough but doable. If you’re super lucky, you’ll find a mentor who cares and teaches you the nuances of how a Consulting firm works.
    Understand that this is very rare. At the end of the day, Consulting is a very demanding profession and no one will have the time or energy to babysit (sorry!) you and explain all the details of how Consulting projects and people work.
  • Study online courses on the internet – This is a safe albeit paid space to find a mentor who has the experience working in Consulting firms and can guide you based on the lessons they have learned from first-hand experience.
    The great part – you don’t have to put in years of trial and error to know how to succeed in Consulting – both at the client and within the firm. And yes – those are different strategies!

The first 90 days are when you will interact with most senior people to introduce yourself, get your first project, work with your first client and project team. This is a very short window to impress these multiple stakeholders, who will form their first (and last!) impression of you in a flash.

Download my free pdf on 10 reasons why external hires FAIL in year 1 of Management Consulting to dive deeper and avoid these mistakes.

In Consulting, people usually stick to these first impressions because you only work with them for a short while before moving to your next project. And word of mouth travels fast!

You will have a reputation before you know it and it better be fantastic, else it impacts both the quantity and quality of projects you get next. Being ‘on the beach’ or ‘on the bench’ may sound very relaxing to a normal person, but to a Consultant, it can spell career hell.

Consulting is a very rewarding but demanding profession, and many people waste years trying to navigate their way up the Consulting food chain. This is where it pays to have a mentor – whether within or outside the firm, who can guide you with practical examples on how to deal with the many tricky situations you can find yourself in.

The learning doesn’t stop at senior positions in the firm. In fact, that’s where the analytical skills take a back seat and the softer skills (e.g. client relationships, networking, team development) become even more important. Like they say: “new level, new Devil”.

So what was your experience with your Consulting orientation training? Did you have one? Were you overwhelmed? Underwhelmed? What was your major takeaway or question? Let me know at punya@byondgood.com. I read every email.

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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.