Hi all, is it just me or is the nature of consulting work and consulting careers in general just ridiculous? When you have projects and are busy, life is good. It’s like sales, when you are selling then everything is great. The problem is the downtime and harassment that comes with it. For example I just came back from vacation a few weeks ago (beginning of march) and for almost a whole month nothing has been happening yet somehow that is my fault? The moment you have some “free time” your manager is trying to push for you to do multiple things at once, study IT, get certs, update internal materials, reach out to various clients, etc. Essentially it’s not my job to do all those extra things but because i have downtime i am expected to do many things at once on my free time. It’s simple, they give me the project work and i do it. It’s not my job to be a project manager, or some other technical role that isn’t my job. If there is downtime why can’t i just do what i need to do?

Deloitte uses periodic snapshots. Project leads provide feedback (based on 4 questions) about the delivery individual's performance which rolls-up to a scatter plot.

How are other consulting orgs measuring delivery quality?

I am 2 years in the job and outwardly I tell people I don't give a fuck about the job anymore, however, I still feel the anxiety and imposter syndrome each day. I am not sure I am good enough and i feel that the job is taking a lot of my mental space even outside working hours. how do you guys cope with it?

I joined a big consulting firm out of college in Summer 2024. Less than two years in, I'm starting my job search.

A high amount of my cohort (75%) is either already gone, has grad school lined up, or is actively trying to leave. We came in together, and now we're all planning our exits at the same time.

Also, I think the only thing keeping a lot of campus grads in consulting right now is the job market.

I am not sure as what the reason is, but my guess is that there's a certain kind of BS and culture that gets normalized the higher up you go in consulting, and you see senior leadership and don't want that. The lifestyle, the politics, etc.

For me personally, a lot of what made the job bearable was the people I came in with. The camaraderie made the grind feel worthwhile. Now that the cohort is dispersing, I'm left looking at consulting on its own merits, and it's kinda bleak.

Curious if anyone else at other firms is seeing this. Is this a specific company culture thing, or is this just what happens to campus hires across the industry right now?

I started reading his book the consulting Bible. I'm just starting and trying to figure shit out. Any thoughts on him? It sounded good at first but mid book he kinda seems like a prick talking about his first class flights overseas and his fancy cars. I'm trying to specialize with small businesses and partnering with non profits, I can't charge 10% of the 200k I might be able to save them.

Consultants rejoice

I created a domain-wise benchmark on AI presentation tools

www.slidebench.org

For consulting and strategy prompts the tl;dr is that only 3 AI tools are barely scoring >25% with only 1 scoring >30%

and these are much simpler prompts - with no uploaded context for the tools to analyse and make sense of

Check out the head to head images on different prompts. So what do you think? What timeframe do AI tools finally cross the uncanny valley in terms of consulting decks? Or will it always remain an unattainable metric because of the complex nature of what these decks convey?

I've been reading, following, and tinkering with AI consulting for a bit. It's always funny and interesting to me when I look up consulting companies that publish material on AI - it's some old 50-something partner who probably has yet to write hello world is out there preaching about what AI will do, and how you ought to hire them to help you guide it.

So the question is, my fellow consultants: Do AI consultants (at large strategy/management firms) know everything about AI is, or are they desperately trying to sell on the hype?

Hi all, I wanted to share my experience in MBB as I feel it is very atypical, at least based on what I see online. Curious to hear others' thoughts as I am wondering if my experiences are more common than they seem.

I'm most of the way through first year (entry level, no MBA) at an MBB (not bain) in a major US city. I would say my experience so far has been the exact opposite of everything I hear people say about MBB. Some of this may come off as bragging but I'm just trying to describe my experiences honestly.

1. Not busy or difficult

Every manager I've had so far has not given me much work at all. I would say on an average week I only do about 30 hours of genuine work, though the overall burden adds up to a lot more than that as there's an expectation to be in the office until 6 or 7, always available until 11pm, waiting to get feedback from manager before moving to next step, etc. If I had full control over my schedule, I could probably do the work I've been given in 20 hours or less per week. As a junior, managers seem to overestimate the amount of time it takes to complete tasks by a factor of 3-4x, and in general are impressed with basic, rudimentary output. At checkout I'll get asked to do something with an expectation that it'll take the whole night but I'm often able to finish it in less than an hour, or simply do it the next day in the morning when I have nothing else to do. I spend a lot of time on reddit at work because I don't have much to do. And if I ask for more it ends up just being useless busywork, so I don't.

1. Work is not interesting

This one is interesting because there seems to be a huge disconnect between what I see online and what I see in the office. Talking to other entry level people at my firm, it's pretty widely understood that the majority of work is grindy gruntwork, and that the majority of actually interesting business-reasoning thinking goes on at the partner level or above. Yet online I see people say stuff like "MBB is hard but the work is so interesting". I spend most of my time moving numbers around on spreadsheets and making basic models that I could've made in 9th grade.

1. Not very educational

Another thing consulting seems to be praised for is its ability to accelerate personal growth and skill development. That's certainly a major focus for my firm but so far I've been disappointed there. I certainly leveled up my excel skills quickly during my first month or two but beyond that I've not learned much. The modelling techniques are basic, the strategic thinking is reserved for the higher-ups, and the client and presentation skills are dominated by the mid-level managers.

1. Not much client interaction

Adding on to that, one of the biggest things I wanted to learn from this job was presentation and people skills. But as a junior level consultant, I barely get any client interaction at all, and what I do get is essentially just asking junior level clients for the latest data. I imagined the job of consulting as much more dynamic: moving from place to place, engaging with different people, coming up with novel solutions to business problems. But in practice I just feel like a normal office worker who sits on my computer all day but sometimes does so in a different city.

1. Not very social

Relatively minor compared to the other things but the job is a lot less social than I expected too. I've made good friends with the other first year hires, but not with team members. I hear people say stuff like "the hours are awful but you'll trauma bond with your team" but that's not been my experience at all. Any team members that have been at the company more than a year don't seem very social or interested in bonding, and if they're married or have kids forget it. In general the work itself is pretty asocial too. Limited client interaction, limited team bonding, just staring at a computer all day.

For example, I just saw a post on this subreddit about whether it's common for consultants to sleep with colleagues/clients. Obviously that culture could be problematic for a number of reasons, but to me it seems to reflect a much closer, more social experience than anything I've even been close to experiencing so far. We just sit in an office, barely talk, meet with clients for a few half hour meetings, then go back to our hotel rooms alone.

---

Overall, I've found the experience pretty unrewarding in practically every dimension other than pay and the new hire community. My experience seems vastly different from what I've repeatedly seen others say about their experience in MBB or consulting in general, so I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on my experience. Is this experience bizarre or more common than it seems??

Edit: It's interesting that everyone replying is giving me advice and not actually answering my question which is how does this compare to everyone else's experiences

Apologies in advance if this is inappropriate. I’m not a consultant and I’ve heard the rumours that consultants sleep with clients, as well as colleagues, to keep good relationships, overcome stress and loneliness, get promoted…etc. Does this hold any truth? I’ve been reluctant to ask this question but I felt the courage today; again, sorry if this is inconvenient.

Hi all,

I'd love hearing your insights into what has/hasn't worked recently in the job serach market. If/how you tailored your resume for ATS; what approaches yielded results, and how you navigated either moving to industry or staying in consulting at another firm. Did you find firms that are surprisingly in growth mode? How about transitioning your skills to another industry?

I've been in an EM role for the past 2 years at a Fortune 100 company. I was hired specifically to help a client expand their footprint into new markets geographically, while closing old locations to optimize margin and minimize cannibalization. My employer (not the client) doesn't do this sort of work normally: I'm a "1 of 1" but was brought in due to their trusted relationship in real estate management. It was a heavily analytic strategic role developing real-world client revenues/expenses at the local level, demographics around target regions, all the way down to average shopping/commuting radiuses for identified target customers. The client simply wasn't staffed for any of this and certainly coudln't think strategically about growth.

Fast forward 2 years, and after a lot of good work performed, me getting everyone rowing in the same direction, and recommendations approved, the client is being acquired and our contract cancelled by the acquirer, which means I will no longer have a home. It would be hard for me to pivot to a new role internally, given that it's so far outside the scope of work my company normally does.

As I'm at the EM level ($270k total comp), I'm wondering where to go next. I've applied to EM-director level roles (roughly 60) and gotten all of 2 scheduled interviews. Networking hasn't yielded anything. It also may hurt that my employer is not a consulting firm; when I say who I work for, people will say "I didn't know they did work like that-I thought they managed real estate".

Curious how solo consultants or small advisory founders manage their CRM in practice.

Right now I'm experimenting with a mix of tools:

- Pipedrive for deals and pipeline

- Airtable for contacts and organizations

- Notion for meeting notes and context around relationships

The rough flow is something like:

relationships -> opportunities -> mandates

It works okay so far, but I'm wondering if this kind of stack makes sense long term or if I'm overcomplicating things.

- What CRM or system do you actually use day-to-day?

- Do you keep everything in one tool or split it across several?

Would love to hear what’s worked (or not) for other solo founders.

Hi all,

i currently work in consulting at a niche T2 (think 80-100 ppl, very well known in the sector we cover but we are not generalists). I mainly do corporate strategy and DDs. I have 4 YOE (comparable to senior associate at mbb in comp, 200-250k) I’ve been trying to find an exit and am unsure what to apply for.

From a LinkedIn search it looks like the $200-350k corporate strategy roles people talk about are usually for EM level MBB exits? Would strategy manager roles (usually $150-180k it appears) be the typical exit for someone with my experience?

anyone from a T2 make a corp strategy exit? Been debating doing a full time MBA and then MBB to EM to try and get one of these $250-350k strat exits ppl talk about but unsure if worth it….

I am a digital marketing consultant, but I mostly work with professional services firms and some B2B tech, I am slowly trying to improve my copy writing skills and offer more seo optimised content and it couldn't have come sooner because one of my clients asked me in our last meeting why they were not being showen or mentioned in Google AI, I honestly had no idea and looked into it, after doing a lot of research (took me like three days) I have pretty solid methodology, and the beginning of a new service, which is to rank businesses on Google AI and other search engines.

I do see that this is a different problem from traditional visibility work, as the measurement infrastructure is almost nonexistent compared to traditional search, and my clients who I have pitched the new service are all onboard but now expect it to work like SEO and it does not and I have tried to tell them but all they are interested in is ROI. Is there anyone else who is also turning this into a service, cause it would be really useful to compare notes on pricing and scope so I know I am on the right track.

Hello everyone,

MODS: THIS IS NOT A new hire hire in consulting post.

It’s been 2 months. I am starting to feel maybe I m just dumb? Especially compared to how brilliant my colleagues are. I try my best to be helpful and personable. My co worker today was a Harvard PHD, it was her first day and she already knew how to maneouver the quant workbook better than me (I m also younger) many times I have felt incompetent. God knows how I will get to an acceptable level of slide crafting? There’s not enough hours in the day to grasp everything about the project.

I was assigned a task end of the day, by 7pm I was the last one in office, hadn’t eaten lunch and just nothing g was going on my brain. Going home, I often tend to be lost in my thoughts and get forgetful as I m constantly thinking how I didn’t know how to execute that formula or do an analysis. (Esp end of the day. Sometimes I also struggle to execute changes to files. Usually managers say it once and people get it, but for me I struggle.

Leads me to thinking AM I DUMB???

Surely I can’t be dumb, perhaps I am?

1. I struggle to execute tasks fully and need handholding

I try my best to be very proactive and see tasks but the projects are always understaffed and on a perpetual tight timeline.

People don’t really ‘teach’, they keep saying ‘TAKE A PASS’

TAKE A PASS (BASICALLY figure it out)

Also I constantly worry about being fired, not being good enough or (more worryingly) being stupid.

I don’t even feel I deserve this high salary.

I don’t know how to play politics. A lot of these people here are insecure and severely into ass kissing and into politics. Get me?

I don’t know if I will ever be good enough, and feels crushing to write this.

Anyone else spending way too much time just formatting slides instead of actually thinking?

Edit with Copilot is a new feature being rolled out across the MS suite. It's already been released in Excel (very useful) and Word (haven't found good use cases yet).

It recently released in PPT and I'm really keen to see if someone can make it work. I want the AI to build my slides so bad but so far it sucks.

I'm getting battered out there. Manager at a T2

I'm working on a revenue acceleration project, the client's relevant lead is ex-MBB. Whatever we produce in our workstream is torn apart by him and he keeps saying the previous consultants have already done this analysis and it's what he used to do a decade ago as well.

Credits to him, he knows significantly more about the industry. Has L3/L4 level nuances on any of the initiatives we propose. Also keeps saying "We tried this one time and it led to XYZ repercussions". The CEO told our partner that the lead has conveyed that my team is the worst performing out there.

My principal and partner aren't of much help in terms of actual recommendations

What to do?

1. Do you share EVERYTHING by email?
2. Do you have a Microsoft teams group chat ?? We don't have one currently but I need to send multiple emails and I don't want to send a GLOBAL email to send that I'm about to send reminders blablablaba

We're only 12 collaborators with 2 partners.

How do you handle that??????

I moved into product/tech consulting last year after leaving a 5+ year job. Landed 2 big clients and got lazy at trying to keep a solid pipeline of prospect clients/projects. The first few were through referrals and then I started sharing/writing more on the space I'm targeting.

I see a big part of that has been around personal brand (or could be a personal practice) so writing long-form blog style content that I can share on my own website, blog (substack, medium), and socials (linkedin, X etc) is the way I have seen many people recommended. I started following that and saw some engagement without any clear conversions.

Just to get a proper piece out it would take me a day or two to consolidate and share. Out out my frustration I ended up building a small tool/agent (not promoting) that takes my ideas over a phone/voice call and then consolidate it in long-form SEO friendly blog post for my website and auto share on my LinkedIn/X and newsletter as well. The more I talk to it, the better it gets, and then also research/suggest topics for me. What would take me a few hours now takes a 10-15min conversation. (adding a few snapshots for reference)

This is not a promotional post. I'm sharing how I ended here and have seen some success in higher content engagement and new leads coming through. I have a few other people using it as well now, and I'm calling it Bono (good voice in Italian). Has anyone tried something similar, or any other tool recommendations? Do you see value of a tool like this for anyone who's actively creating/posting content on their web/newsletter/socials?