Student consultants certainly mean well: for their CVs if not the organisations they consult to. But whether student consulting organisations deliver for clients or the students who take part is questionable.
In this piece, I look at the reasons professional consulting firms are hired, and explain how student consultants are ill-placed to offer the same value propositions. I finish with some questions prospective student consultants should ask themselves before starting any project.
Organisations hire consultants for specific reasons
I’ll summarise these reasons as: experience, expertise, speed, and legitimacy.
An organisation facing a challenge they have no prior experience in may hire a consulting firm to help them navigate that challenge. In these engagements, experienced senior consultants provide value by guiding their team and the client through problems they’ve encountered before. Consultants can also connect the client to research teams and global networks of experts.
An organisation may also hire consultants to complete work quickly, where they do not have the capacity to do so themselves. This may include discrete projects completed at arms length, such as due diligence on a transaction, or turnaround projects where consultants are embedded within an organisation.
Finally, senior management may hire consultants as an independent second pair of eyes, to help justify critical decisions and strategic choices. Such engagements show consultants hold legitimacy in their field and a mandate to provide honest opinions.
Student consultants offer few to none of these value propositions
Student consultants, as a general rule, are unlikely to hold specific expertise on their clients’ businesses or industries. They may have access to academic research through connections to their university, but this is seldom relevant in a business setting. Students most likely lack the expert connections to networks that could help their clients. Teams also lack expert supervision, often relying on supervision from other students, monthly meetings with entry-level analysts from major firms, or from academics with mixed practical experience.
Furthermore, students are not in a position to complete work quickly: student consulting is generally a part time pursuit, balanced against studies and other work commitments. So, student consulting firms cannot offer clients speedy delivery.
Nor can they offer legitimacy: student consultants’ lack of experience and brand mean such engagements seldom contribute to decisive analysis or allow students to act as trusted advisors on critical decisions.
Finally, consulting firms can draw on their experience to ramp up quickly, and teams are well versed in ways of learning on the job and managing an engagement to minimise impact on the client’s day to day work. Student consultants have less experience in this regard, and in some cases, rely heavily on their clients to support the engagement.
Of course, student consultants often work pro bono, and their clients do receive outputs from their work. For certain clients this can be useful: but more often than not, the work product is more akin to a research report than problem analysis or strategy, and in my experience, not particularly insightful. In the worst case scenario, student consulting clubs are a net drain on productivity, consuming more time and resources than they save.
Should you be involved in student consulting?
At my previous management consulting firm, student consulting clubs are informally known as the “kiss of death” by recruiters. Not because the experience itself was a deal-breaker, but because people with student consulting experience rarely succeeded at interviews. Those with student consulting experience who did receive offers generally were involved in managing larger student consulting organisations – that is to say, they had proven experience embedded in and operating an organisation, rather than consulting to one.
If you are a student considering student consulting, aim to engage with organisations that fit your existing experience – where you can add value quickly with the skills you have, or where you already have a sound understanding of the business and industry. Ask yourself: will your client benefit from your specific set of experience, expertise, and connections? Are there a particular set of tasks you can complete more quickly than your client? (Perhaps technical tasks, a statistical method, or automating routine activities.) Or, on which of your client’s issues can you speak with legitimacy? (Perhaps a legal or financial qualification, or accreditation in an industry standard.)
If these questions have you scratching your head, you may be doing a disservice to yourself and your client, and the marginal benefit to your CV is likely not worth the effort.
Sam Smith worked in a top-tier management consulting firm for two years before taking time out for study. They write under a pseudonym to bring you honest reflections and insider information.
Image: Pexels
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