r/consulting

26F with two YOE in consulting. Have just done a five module Management Consulting course provided by Emory University on Coursera.

Is it worth uploading this to my LinkedIn profile? The course was valuable from a learning perspective but my understanding is that Emory isn’t an Ivy League or M7 university so I’m unsure whether it would do much for my profile from an employer’s perspective (I’m from the United Kingdom so I apologise if this incorrect or reads as ignorant or naive).

I’m 1.1 year in to BCGX as an associate and received an offer externally to jump to a senior role, ~40% pay bump. Of course, benefits are thinner than BCG, no travel etc etc.

I’m just wondering should i wait for my promotion or leave, considering i’ve ‘moved’ a box in my first cycle and my next review in Oct is coming up. But still….. long days ahead.

Tbh i dk why i ask this as well, seems like a brainer. Just needed to let it off i guess…

Thoughts on that?

for context: have experiences in the field, 4 years in career

Writing this after I deleted my loyalty account with them. Kid me would’ve thought I’d be more mature as a grown ass woman, but here we are.

Hey guys!

I'm a Masters student. And I just started my internship and I'm working alongside a Senior Consultant this past month. As of now my responsibilities have been to support her in making executive level slides. I'm good at consolidating contents, but her structuring is different level. How can I get better? The story telling in her slides feels so impossible to Master. Do you guys recommend any online courses in which I could refine my thinking? Please help 🙏

Have you seen MS announcement? I’ve looked at their landing website. It looks like a total AI slop

Would the be able to compete on any level except technical?

At least in title. I got passed over for a promo to manager in the most recent performance cycle at my firm, and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so low. I asked what I did wrong/what I need to focus on moving forward, and I was told “nothing…you did everything right and had client account support from your last project, but your story slipped through the cracks.”

It is absolutely humiliating to watch the peers I started with surpass me, and even some who are younger than me get ahead.

Yes, I manage teams/analysts and lead client meetings in my day to day role. Yes, I support my practice and have visibility with leadership. I guess it wasn’t enough. I need to work on my confidence, probably. Clients like me, my managers like me…but I must be doing something wrong. I probably coasted a little too much a year or two ago and it’s coming back to bite me.

Someone please tell me nearly 5 years at consultant level isn’t as fucking cringe as it feels right now.

ETA: I am interviewing elsewhere. Have gotten a few hits but only for lateral moves so far rather than promos

For context: I have been at the forefront of this space for the past 2 years in a leadership/strategy /client engagement position but also from a technical/R&D internal enablement position at a very large global firm and very early into my consulting career. Through happenstance I was selected by executive leadership due to drive, reputation, continued reliability, base level understanding, and closeness to the technology. I understand firms pretending to be more competent or forward thinking in RFPs/client engagement to get customer buy in but individuals are pretending everywhere. Coming from a semi-technical but not necessarily enterprise background it has been surprising and kind of annoying for every single director, principal, delivery lead to pretend they are “AI leaders” because they got a few certificates and have seniority. Meanwhile they can’t explain to me what a semantic kernel is, the efficacy of MCPs vs CLIs, complexity of multi-agent systems in legacy systems, state management, harnesses, fine tuning, and have zero AI wins under their belt outside of a POC LLM wrapper chatbot that some gut stitched together with ChatGPT and got scrapped once it was in a client environment. The other day I went to a workshop where members of different firms(some in the big 4) were invited and every single one was clearly clueless about the topics after commentary and discussion yet they are their firm’s “AI Leaders” they’ve chosen to represent them. The other month I also had a guy internally with 15+ years of experience try to push his way into my team with some executive support but after a few conversations about feasible contributions(functional use cases, technical speciality, GTM strategy) I quickly realized this was a case of clout chasing to get visibility with no actual usefulness and dead it.

1. Is this normal in consulting for people to lie and claim they’re the expert in the latest emerging trend?
2. What is the point of this? Surely they know if they’re using it to leverage externally that they’ll be called out in any technical interview. Job security? Internal promotions?
3. Is there a way to differentiate from this saturated moat if I’m really that person?
4. Have you seen this at your own places of work?
5. Is this having a negative impact to our space with false promises by false leaders delivering useless POCs to clients thus creating more hesitance towards enterprise adoption?

emlyon business school (in France) just published a field/literature study on the effects of AI on the profession

Over the last 1.5 weeks, he had been constantly pointing out the tiniest misses. He points them out highly passive-aggressively. I end up feeling terrible and making more mistakes.

The mistakes we're talking about:
- Leaving a cell colored with the wrong scale of color
- Missing a point to be mentioned in an email (out of 8-9 other points)
- Storming at me because I was not reachable for 30 mins - wasn't well, took a break
- Legal contract draft - Compiling two legal contracts under time pressure, highlighting a statement I was fearing was an incorrect wording and turned out to be incorrect - he emailed me how my quality of output was very low and does not work. There was 1 other miss in the document too but on the remaining things I was being stormed at in-writing for things that are legal knowledge, that I didn't have/ directly borrowed from another fully vetted contract I was asked to refer from.
- Mass reachouts to ~100 people, sending 1 email to someone I was asked not to - client called out my mistake and my manager made me write an apology email to the client.
- Financial summary: reporting a standalone number for one year instead of consolidated - he asked me to email my partner apologizing for the miss

I get these are misses but they're increasing because of a negative reinforcement loop. I literally feel "scared" to come to office everyday because of the way he is behaving. He just behaves with me like this, very cool with other team members - so I'm not sure if it is genuinely my fault.

I understand as an MBB consultant, my work should be spotless but he has misled me with the modules I'd be given, off lately (same 1-2 weeks) doesn't let me lead meetings, holds discussions with clients and case leadership on my modules in my absence. On the other hand he spends 80% of his time with the other person on the team that makes me feel castaway.

It is my last week on the case, have been on it for ~a year now. My manager has had a history of being very recency biased.

I feel terrible. Should i resign?

I'm doomed, very likely won't find a good next case and he will very likely screw up my evals.

Really looking for advice - am I genuinely going wrong, not meant for consulting or am I being too harsh on myself? How do I navigate this situation?

I know this has been asked before but I feel that AI is evolving so quickly we need to ask this question every few weeks.

Basically I have been using AI for productivity/research/analysis… etc and it has helped me massively. But now my boss wants to show his boss how our team is ‘futuristic’ and up to date and how we use AI.

So I wanted to brainstorm with consultants here on what AI use cases have you done that senior leadership were aware of.

EDIT:
- Yes this is about me being visible and getting credit, not about helping my company.
- I work as internal consultant if that makes any difference.

Hi all,

Senior consultant in engineering here. I’ve always been a generalist, and in this industry it’s often tough to find a way forwards with my more technical colleagues. I tend to work on projects that are complex, delayed and overspent, and a lot of my job is to bring pragmatism and decisiveness to a floundering project.

As I become more senior, I’m increasingly finding my attempts to lead projects to be blindsided or blocked by niche technical questions or assertions from other senior folk, ones that I lack the in-depth knowledge to immediately counter.

Things like “is this compliant?“ or “how does this fit in with [tech standard I’ve never heard of]“ or “we need [document that’s never been mentioned before] in big meetings. The implication is always that my work is fundamentally incompatible with some existing rule or process.

Once I’ve gone away and done my research I either find a very niche answer, or find that the question doesn’t actually apply to the subject we were discussing. 90% of the time, the question turns out to be irrelevant or inconsequential.

So my problem is I’m getting increasingly tripped up by these questions that I cannot immediately answer, which then blocks the meeting and dents my credibility. In engineering it would be quite taboo to respond that I don’t care or I suspect it’s irrelevant, but my sense is often that the questions are indeed silly or irrelevant from senior leaders that really should be showing more leadership.

I sense the solution isn’t to try and build an encyclopaedic knowledge of each programme to head those questions off at the pass. But I don’t really know how else to respond. I’ve considered trying to bring tech experts with me to those meetings, or even complaining about the lack of pragmatism from these senior folk, but neither seems particularly workable.

Anyone got any advice?

Sorry if this sounds very basic but I don’t come from a client facing background and I’m facing issues passing the first round of interviews because I don’t have proven experience in this area. Could anyone explain why this experience can’t be obtained during the job? Since you’re working in client facing, what exactly do you do on a daily/weekly basis? What are the key success factors to excel in building client relationship?

I’m from a canadian non-target, networked a great amount & finally got McK R1 only to bomb it. Also really worked on great internships & case comps throughout uni

It sucks cuz I let myself down but can some of y’all please offer some kind words of wisdom.

I only wanted to go Consulting if I got offers from firms offering a decent comp compared to my other career choice, Product Management.

I’ve done 3 Product co-ops so ik i will have good options when i graduate but just kinda sucks that I didn’t make through

Most of my close people i shared w don’t understand the odds of even securing an interview.

Ik it’s not the end of the world but def was a dream of mine to work at McK.

I got the rejection call btw & this isn’t me second guessing.

How well would you say your firm applies what it sells externally, internally?

Are your internal processes and controls adequate?

Is your technology reasonably optimised (especially the stuff that's not directly tied to client work)?

Does the company use decent L&D and change management approaches whenever major changes/restructures occur?

I've always found we suck in this regard - I'm curious if I'm alone.

(This is not a convoluted attempt to generate ironic leads, fuck that).

I got hit with the mass layoffs last year in Deloitte. 5 years with solid reviews and great standing - gone.

Anyways, been working on certs and licenses, building my own LLC to bid on subcontracting gigs, and working on some startups on the side to stay fresh and competitive while searching for a job and avoid any gaps in my resume. I also want to add that I’m a veteran with a secret clearance and intel background and have a few specializations outside of strategy/transformation consulting like data analytics, coding, GIS, and enterprise architecture.

So, I feel like I have a pretty competitive CV, but no matter what I do I can’t even get an interview for the life of me. I lowball salary reqs, I apply to entry/mid level positions only, and 80% of the time I’m overqualified. Sometimes I fit a very niche role like “looking for someone with army background and big 4 experience. Proficient in GIS and geospatial intel is a plus” and can’t even get an email from the recruiter.

Am I just being a victim here, is the job market just that bad, or are some of these postings fake?? I feel like I’m losing it here. I know it’s not my resume, because I’ve worked with a lot of people in different companies to really nail it down and make sure it aligns with ATS and other AI software. I also tailor it for most job postings as well.

Hey Folks,

It’s a question only I can answer for myself - however curious about the experience people have had with transitioning to independent consulting.

I’ve been with my current consulting firm for about 10 years - focused mainly on cyber security architecture, designs, engineering etc. Based out in Canada and making around $170K annually.

I’ve been offered a 1 year contract with an old colleague that has branched off into his own independent firm. The comp is more than double my salary. I have no idea why I am even thinking about it, but here I am.

Current job work life balance is decent, my team is decent, but lots of bullshit redtape, bullshit leadership etc. This offer, I will be doing almost the exact same work, but reporting to only my old colleague which I always enjoyed working with anyway.

How have you all made the transition and what pros and cons did you face during your experience?

Thanks in advance!

Hey all, before I start complaining gotta give an obligatory my job is not that bad and many of my friends work significantly harder for way less pay.

I’m currently a manager and truly don’t work more than 45-50 hours a week, and a lot of weeks work maybe 30. However, I will often not hear back from a partner for days on end and then get frantic calls at 7,8,9+ p.m. often late on Fridays and very frequently weekends. This means I’ll often have not much to do besides bullshit admin / proposal / BD stuff from 2pm on and then have a firedrill late at night.

Many have tried pushing back, not responding and they are always forced out / get bad bonuses, etc. Our work necessitates long hours around deal deadlines but this is so unnecessary. I also know when a deal deadline is and of course know that week is going to suck, so I can plan accordingly.

This leads me to wondering for any folks that have been in industry or have already made the leap, is this all avoidable on the other side? I do not give a flying fuck about corporate culture, climbing the ladder or any of that. I got into consulting to get ahead, save a bunch and juice the resume. I don’t mind working longer hours, just want some more predictability so I can make actual plans, instead of never really knowing when shit will hit the fan.

I know I’m in a general very lucky position, and many would kill to have the hours I do for the money, but too many of my hobbies involve no cell service and so I want to be able to put the laptop down at a predictable time.

TLDR, how is the balance in industry / on the client side truly? Even if longer hours than the standard 40, do you know in advance? For example I would love if I had 55 hours of work to do and had 5 days to do it, rather than 3 hours of work that I find out about at 9pm that has to go out before midnight.

I’ve been going back and forth on this and could use some outside perspectives.

I’m currently less than a year away from partner track/principal/AP at an MBB (about 3.5 years from partner). I’ve been with the firm basically my entire career. Joined after undergrad.

Performance-wise, things are going well enough. The challenge is that I’m not sure I actually want the partner path, I know this is an awkward time to leave, I’ve noticed recruiting for other roles rarely gives me the bump for my current tenure vs at the manager level etc.

A few friends and I have an idea for a small AI-focused advisory venture on the side. It’s very early and all of us have day jobs, unclear if they will want to do this full time, but I do.

The thing pulling me toward it isn’t necessarily the money, although upside is important. It’s the idea of building something myself, having more flexibility, choosing what I work on, and not spending the next 3/4 years grinding toward a partner role that I’m increasingly unsure I want.

At the same time, walking away now feels crazy. I’m so close to a title that would probably help my credibility. The compensation is obviously very good. And there’s always the possibility that I’m romanticizing entrepreneurship while underestimating how hard it is to build a sustainable business.

Part of me thinks I should stay another year, get the promotion, and then reevaluate. Part of me thinks that’s exactly what I’ve told myself at every stage of my career: “just make it to the next milestone.”

For people who have left consulting late in the game, especially those who were close to partner-track promotions, what do you wish you had done? Is being this close to that title a reason to stay, or is it a sunk-cost trap?

Edit: my co founders are more technical / connected with potential client populations and the work is related to what my current specialty is. My focus would be on non-tech delivery and closing deals (less on sourcing)