CONSULTING TECHNIQUES AND DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES

When you are interested in learning a bit more about the consulting industry and whether it’d be a good fit for you is this what you picture when you think of consultant people often all the impression that like in this video consultants sit in a boardroom and dish out fancy expensive advice and while some elements may find origins and truth there’s a lot more to the consulting industry than most media portrays Webster’s dictionary defines consulting as the act of giving professional advice

This is a very broad statement and includes a wide array of professions including doctors lawyers and accountants so what kind of advice are we talking about well at times companies require a level of expertise that their current employees cannot provide for example when deciding whether to enter a new market improving the effectiveness of the current business or implementing new software and training employees to use it in these cases the company can hire and train individuals to address this lack of expertise or the company can look outside for this help the reality is that consulting is incredibly diverse and many scenarios are far from what you just saw firms may specialize in different industries like energy health care finance or nonprofit and focus on various aspects of helping those businesses from strategy to operations to IT or engineering.

Accordingly the work that these firms do and the roles these consultants play vary quite a bit so what two consultants actually do well let’s take three types of consulting as an example strategy operations and IT strategy consulting firms may help companies analyze market data to determine which markets in Latin America to enter or whether production should be moved to Asia for lower cost operations firms may help analyze the company’s internal operations in order to find opportunities for improvement

For example to help chocolate company make more to supplied growing demand or improve quality of paint production so they can stay competitive in the marketplace and technical consulting firms may have projects focus on integrating a new software system with existing systems or support detailed design of a new power plant and typical responsibilities of a consultant will vary depending on the industry the specialization and even the culture of the firm so depending on the kind of firm that you’re at the nature of the work that you’re doing as well.

I loved consulting because it’s given me the opportunity to always be challenged whether that means understanding very clearly where my piece of work sits in the bigger picture or understanding how my team’s work impacts the clients bottom line or leading others or simply be able to adapt to a constantly changing environment that’s very dynamic whether that means different industries or interacting with client members from different levels of the organization and I think all these skills set me up to do really anything in the future you know from more consulting to working in industry to graduate school or any other number of options the question to consider is what’s right for you if you remember only one thing just remember that the consulting industry is incredibly diverse and there are a lot of options to choose from you should choose the right path for you and hopefully consider consulting as one of those options.