Are You Management Consulting Material? 5 Key Qualities To Tell If You Are

Typically you’ll find that Top and Mid Tier Management Consulting firms look to take in hires early to mid March every year, about a month ahead of other Professional Services firms. In order to be prepared for this recruitment period, keen applicants will typically prepare during the summer vacation leading up to recruitment, normally around December to January (Yes, you heard right. During the holidays!).

So what can you do to battle these competitors? GradTips offers you 5 key qualities a management consultant needs in order to be successful.

Excel at Structured Problem Solving

Structured problem solving requires someone to quickly analyse a situation on their feet and decide an appropriate action plan without hesitation, with a highly desired outcome. You will be required to structure the problem that is provided to you, create a hypothesis, perform analysis design, gather some data to use for your analysis and to test your hypothesis, interpret your results, and finally present them in a structured and well articulated manner. Other things to consider when solving a problem:

• Define the problem - what’s wrong? clarify the situation and don’t make silly assumptions.
• Write down all the possible solutions to the problem that come to your head
• Discuss each possible solution to the problem - to your interviewer or to your client. Write down the advantages and disadvantages of each.
• Discuss the most practical (or the least risky) solution from your list of solutions you identified earlier.
• Put forth a plan to carry out the best solution. Things to consider include how much funding you require, how many resources it will take, how long it will take, and leave a gap at the end of your plan for contingencies.

Be able to Write Reports for a Client Upon Strict and Stringent Deadlines

Within consulting, there will be many strict and stringent deadlines to adhere to when working. It’s not uncommon to find yourself with a task provided to you at the start of the day, with a deadline at the end of the day. If you are a person who thrives off adrenalin, likes writing and researching a topic you probably haven’t the faintest idea of, then consulting is a profession for you. If you are more of a person that likes to do a similar type of task every day between the hours of 9 to 5, then perhaps consulting isn’t for you. You are also required to focus both not on the quantitative metrics of your findings, but also describing it through qualitative and descriptive narrative.

In its simplest form, research comes in the form of researching journals, whitepapers, articles, books, websites, and any other source you can think of, in order to gather some meaningful data to analyse. Once this data has been collected, you must then selectively code the data into structured silos / categories for further sub analysis. After that, you must form a recommendation based on your findings, which may or may not require some creativity on your end, often requiring you to generate objective opinions.

Be able to Create Effective and Telling Presentations

One word - PowerPoint. If you absolutely hate using slideshow presentation tools such as PowerPoint, then consulting is definitely not for you. A consultant seems to always invariably present findings and opinions through handy-dandy-fancy slide shows. I personally love this area of management consulting, as it requires a fair bit of imagination, creativity and aesthetically pleasing colour schemes. For each slide, you must ask yourself the same question over and over again in order to make sure your presentations are highly valuable. Ask yourself “so what” at the end of each sentance you write. It will enable you to be clearer in your approach and your presentations.

Being Able to Speak, Present and Deliver Said Presentations

If you lack the ability to form a straight sentance, or the ability to deliver a speech or presentation of results to a crowd, then consulting may not be a profession for you. A consultant must be able to step up and deliver a presentation or speech when called upon, and must be across all the findings in the presentation, or at least sound like he or she is totally across it! Again, make sure you are totally across your work before you present. Nobody likes taking advice from a consultant that doesn’t really know what they are talking about. They must be the master of the domain they are provided.

Confident, Able to Think Quickly, and Think Out Loud.

A consultant will always be able to take pride in their own work, and also take pride in their thoughts and thinking. Strategic insight is key in this industry, and if you cannot act confidently or workshop through business problems, then again consulting is probably not for you. You must be analytical, and able to think on your feet at all times. When a question is thrown to you out of left field, you will need to be able to answer it without hesitation, making sure your integrity is not compromised!

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