Everyone I know in consulting entered it in large part as a means of career advancement, be it through the ranks of the consulting industry or with the intention to pivot into a different career down the line.
Yet, what does it mean to get the most out of the consulting experience for career advancement?
When I talk to MBA students and undergraduates interested in consulting, there seems to be lots of different ideas about what a consulting experience can do for one’s career progression.
As my consultant friends and I plan our careers for the next few years, I want to provide clarity on this issue and highlight the three most important things that you can get from a consulting experience.
Personally, I intend to stay in consulting for at least years going forward. Yet, even so, these three considerations are relevant for moving up the consulting career ladder or successfully transitioning from it:
- Acquiring expertise
- Gaining a meaningful professional network
- Building a professional brand
1. Acquiring expertise
By expertise, I don’t mean specific skills such as excel jockeying, PowerPoint creation, or making dashboards in Tableau.
Those do truly matter.
However, by expertise I mean a set of skills and knowledge that allow you to credibly become valued as an expert in a reasonably well defined field of work.
Examples of this would include becoming an expert in conducting due diligence for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the retail industry or becoming an expert in applying artificial intelligence in the e-commerce industry.
This kind of expertise is important because it allows you to distinguish your value proposition beyond general competencies and accelerate your rise up the career ladder.
2. Gaining a meaningful network
Who wants you on their team? Who will take the time and effort to make you better? Who will refer you to future opportunities? Who can you reach out to for professional advice and support?
The collection of people that will support you in furthering your career comprises your network.
I want to highlight that a meaningful network is not to be conflated with how many professional contacts you have on LinkedIn.
Knowing people is one thing. Knowing people that will help you is what really matters.
Consulting provides a rich environment in which to build a meaningful network. Most firms encourage extensive internal networking across all levels and focus areas. There are also numerous firm-sponsored events, in person and virtual, that create opportunities to meet people and build connections.
3. Building a professional brand
What do others think about you professionally?
The consulting experience is an opportunity for you to shape a professional brand. The most straightforward way to do this is through your body of work. If you spend 4 years doing Federal consulting on the postal service supply chain, then you would have a professional brand of being a postal supply chain expert.
However, within your consulting experiences, your professional brand doesn’t have to be just associated with the industry or functional areas of the projects you worked on. You could, for example, build a professional brand of being a data wizard or business development guru.
The great thing about consulting is that there are usually opportunities to take on new problem-solving opportunities, even if you are still working on the same project. It also helps that consulting is an industry that cares about professional brand building. Your peers and mentors alike can help provide you with guidance on best practices.
Your professional brand is a key driving factor that can propel your consulting career forward, or support a successful transition to your next venture post-consulting.
Final thoughts
It is important to fully appreciate the value of the consulting experience for career progression. At the end of the day, most people would agree that the expertise, network, and professional brand you build during your years in consulting are the three main factors that will accelerate your career within the consulting industry and in the ventures that lie beyond.
Hall Wang is a dual degree MBA and Master of Public Policy graduate from Georgetown University who has recently matriculated into a major management consulting firm. He has worked at America’s most innovative companies including Blue Origin and Facebook, as well as having done two combat deployments as a US Army Officer.
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