Humans of Consulting
What is it really like to work in management consulting?
Management consulting is a large and growing part of modern economies. In 2019 the value of global management consulting was over 160 billion USD and Ibis World estimates that over 5 million people globally work in management consulting firms. The large players in global management consulting include the strategy focused McKinsey, Bain and BCG, arms of the ‘Big 4’ accounting firms KPMG, EY, PWC and Deloitte as well as myriad other organisations with particular focuses or expertise.
Management consulting is the practice of helping organisations to improve their performance. Clients of consulting firms range from private sector organisations, to government and public sector, as well as nonprofits and NGOs. Consulting firms advise on topics as diverse as launching new products, entering new markets, improving employee experience, reducing costs, technology transformation, public policy and much more.
Everyday, people all over the globe interact with products and services that are influenced by management consulting firms. Each piece of work that a management consulting firm undertakes is a ‘project’, and consultants may work on many projects simultaneously. Some consultants have an industry focus (e.g. education, financial services or healthcare) or an area of expertise (e.g. public policy, outsourcing or digital transformation). Many consultants, especially at the junior levels, operate as ‘generalists’, working across many different projects and industries, only specialising later in their career. The variety of clients, the range of problems they work on, and constant project-based work with different teams makes management consulting firms unique places to work.
The work that consulting firms do means that they are exposed to (and often create) global best practices regarding workforce management and employee engagement and experience. As a result, management consulting firms should be at the leading edge of designing great places to work for their own employees. Those who join consulting firms have high expectations of what it will be like once they are on the inside. However, not much about the employee experience is publicly shared by those inside consulting firms in an accessible, objective way. This project Humans of Consulting aims to change that, shining a spotlight on best practice areas, where things fall short and where there are opportunities for change.
Humans of Consulting (HoC) will describe the lived experience of those working in global management consulting firms and offer a series of recommendations for how these firms could deliver a world class employee experience to their own staff, reflecting the advice they deliver to their own clients. To do this, HoC has started by conducting a series of in-depth qualitative interviews where we invite current and former employees of management consulting firms to share their experiences with us.
However, this project is live and ongoing. We will continue our qualitative research and aim to supplement it with other research activities and supporting data as the project unfolds.
What’s next for HoC?
We will soon share some initial findings from our research on the theme of ‘expectations vs. reality’. Through a series of articles we will outline the emerging insights from our research and share what our interviewees’ expectations were going into management consulting and how the reality of their work experience matched those expectations.
As well as sharing our insights, we continue our research. If you are a current or former employee of a global management consulting firm and would like to take part in our research, please do reach out at hello@humansofconsulting.com. For more updates follow us here on Medium or on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter.
