What’s not so great about the job?

The world of consulting is not for everyone. There are some practical considerations you need to think about before applying to work for us.

The travel requirement

We are a hands-on implementation company. That means we work day-to-day with our clients to try to help them make their business more successful. Unfortunately it also means we need to spend a lot of time working directly with our clients. It is simply not a “boardroom” or “office” job. The need to be at our client’s location means we travel a lot. We try to keep the travel requirement between Monday and Friday (fly out early Monday morning and come back Friday night by dinner). Some projects are local and some projects have easier travel access, which may mean our teams can come back late Thursday, and work at home one day of the week. But some teams are in tough-to-get-to locations, which may mean leaving Sunday night and getting back Friday. Some could be in Europe, which may mean two-week stays. This is all part of the business of what we do and you need to think through the requirements carefully.

If you don’t like travel or prefer to be home every night, it is not a good job to go after. We understand that sometimes individual conditions change for people (like getting married or having kids), which makes the life-style decisions more difficult. For some it means leaving the industry despite loving the job, for others they find a way to adapt and make it work.

The pressure to deliver results

You shouldn’t underestimate the pressure to deliver real, tangible results. As mentioned, we don’t give a report and hope the local managers can make it work, we roll up our sleeves and struggle through the changes with them. This is extremely rewarding for some people, and causes great anxiety for others. Often, despite the apparent logic of the changes, clients resist changing what they have always done. For those good at what we do, this means trying to understand how the changes affect the individual and the environment. For those who don’t deal with stress as well, this can be very frustrating. Also, not all great ideas work when you put them into place. You need to adjust your position and strategy to accommodate new information or aspects of the problem that weren’t picked up. You need to be resilient and determined to achieve the results sometimes against what seems like great odds. You need to find this type of mental and physical challenge exciting. If you have a tendency to get intimidated or overwhelmed when plans go sideways, this may not be a good job option for you.