Introduction to Consulting

Other courses on consulting are nearly always about starting your own consulting firm. For many of us, that is either not possible due to our limited skill or knowledge base, or not something we want to do just yet - we'd rather get some experience with an established consulting firm before striking out on our own.

Instead, this course is about how to join a consulting firm, and be effective and successful with that firm. Knowing how to be effective and successful with a consulting firm will help you tremendously in your quest to join a firm as you can more effectively position your skills, education and personality to match what the consulting firm is looking for.

All that said, if you want to start your own consulting firm this course will still help you a lot! Almost everything we cover can be used as you start your firm. The big difference is that the way I present the material is from the angle of joining a consulting firm rather than starting your own, but that does not change the underlying basis, such as how firms make money, what a proposal looks like, or how to handle a meeting, for instance.

In this lecture we talk about what consulting is, and why companies would hire a consultant. Understanding this better places you to provide the right sorts of consulting services, as well as help you understand what a consulting firm is looking for when they want to hire a new consultant.

In this lecture we talk about the four main things consulting firms provide to their clients: objectivity, broad experience from dealing with a variety of clients, analytical skills as a result on a focus on delivering solutions, and the time to actually work on things.

In this lecture we talk about what being a consultant means for you when it comes to salary. We also talk about how higher than average salaries as a consultant means that the work you do is not simple but full of ambiguity.

In this lecture we discuss what it takes to be a successful consultant. A good deal of what it takes is being a visible professional, and having what is called "conversational competence". One good part of working for a consulting firm (rather than starting your own firm) is that you will pick up a great deal of conversational competence from being around your consulting colleagues and being with clients.

Up to 70% of clients leave their consulting firm as a result of the actions of one consultant on the team. Usually this has nothing to do with the work being performed and everything to do with the person performing the work. The impression you make on others is important, and making a good first impression is critical.

In this lecture we talk about handling what is often the first question from a consulting firm looking to hire you, or a client looking to find out more about you as a consultant: "Tell me about yourself...?"

LinkedIn the professional version of Facebook. With over 500 million subscribers, LinkedIn is a global force. I have consulting firms tell me that they won't even hire someone unless they have a LinkedIn profile, and I have had former students tell me that their consulting firm recruiters just use a person's resume for the name to look them up on LinkedIn.

In this lecture we talk about getting yourself set up on LinkedIn correctly.

Crafting a good resume is critical to getting hired by a consulting firm. It is also a critical piece of documentation when a consulting firm is pitching to be hired by a client for a project.

In this lecture we talk about crafting a skills-based resume that focuses not on a chronology of what you have done (which is a traditional resume) but on the skills you bring to the table right now for the consulting firm or client.

Clients of consulting firms are not going to need a cover letter from you. This is only for when you are applying for a consulting position at a consulting firm. The cover letter is a critical component of the application process as it shows how you engage in communication professionally.  This lecture shows you what goes in a great cover letter to a consulting firm.

If you understand how money is made by a consulting firm, then you can make sure you play your part in the process as well as possible.

In this lecture we talk about the different levels within a consulting firm, which I call finder, minder and grinder.

We then discuss the #1 metric in consulting, which is chargeability - what it is, how it is calculated, and why it matters to the consulting firm and to you.

The #1 metric as a consultant is chargeability. In this lecture we discuss how you can impact your own chargeability.

For a consulting firm, the way they know the firm is successful (not necessarily the consultants themselves, but the firm itself) is how much profit each consulting engagement makes. In the consulting world this is called realization.

In this lecture we discuss what realization is, how it is calculated, and what can impact it.

We work an example of a consulting firm to show how all the pieces fit together: people, rates, chargeability, and overhead.

This section deals with people. How many managers and staff consultants are needed based on how many partners there are.

We work an example of a consulting firm to show how all the pieces fit together: people, rates, chargeability, and overhead.

This section walks through a template to help you solve the case.

We work an example of a consulting firm to show how all the pieces fit together: people, rates, chargeability, and overhead.

This section walks through the solution from start to end.

Partners in a consulting firm don't get paid a regular salary. They take "a draw" from the consulting firm's earnings.

In this lecture we discuss how partners in a consulting firm get paid.

We worked an example of a consulting firm to show how all the pieces fit together: people, rates, chargeability, and overhead.

In this lecture we show how all these pieces interact. If you make a change in one place, there are consequences in other places. If the partners want to make more money, we show how they could get this done, and the consequences of each change they make.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover the cover sheet, or front page of the proposal.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover the table of contents for the proposal.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover the problem statement, which is the problem that the consulting project that this consulting proposal is about is hoping to solve.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover the statement of work, or the approach that will be used to do the work that this consulting proposal is proposing.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover the major assumptions that are critical in writing the proposal.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover project staffing and how to present that in the proposal.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover the fees for the proposal how to present them. We will cover exactly how to come up with a budget for a consulting engagement in a different section of this course.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover expenses, and how you present them in a consulting proposal.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover adding terms and conditions to the proposal. These are standard and largely legal parts of the proposal and whilst important don't change much at all from engagement to engagement.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover how you add references from other work you've done and your resumes to the consulting proposal.

In this section of the course we are walking through an actual consulting proposal.

In this lecture we cover what it takes to convert a consulting proposal to a consulting engagement.

We have worked our way down from a firm-level of understanding how money is made and now we are at the individual engagement level. Key concepts such as realization come in to play here. Understanding how a budget is made up, and where you fit in to that budget is very important to your success, as you will be measured very closely against the budget.

We look again at how money gets made at the firm-level and bring the important parts of that, which includes realization, to budgeting the engagement.

Immutable means that you can't change it. In this lecture we look at how the ways scope, cost and schedule of a consulting project interact with each other are immutable (unchangeable).

A continued discussion of the immutable consulting triangle of cost-scope-schedule with examples of how it works.

As we continue our important discussion of the immutable consulting triangle of cost-scope-schedule we now apply to clients.

The immutable triangle of consulting, scope-schedule-cost, is indeed unchangeable, as is the dimension of quality, which we talk about in this lecture.

In this lecture I talk about how the immutable triangle of cost-schedule-scope applies to healthcare

The timeline is a critical component of every budget. As we discussed in the immutable triangle of consulting, scope-cost-schedule are all inter-related so you need to make sure that the timeline for the project is reasonable and achievable.

If you are budgeting an engagement, knowing how big a task is is an important part of the process. We discuss how to work with this in this lecture.

A contingency is something you set aside in case something bad happens. The question we are answering here is: how big a contingency should you build in to your consulting budget?

In this lecture we give you advice, tips, for budgeting well.

What did you promise you would do in your consulting proposal? In this lecture we discuss making sure that what you said you would do for your consulting client is what you are actually budgeting to do in your consulting budget.

In this lecture we start the process of walking through an actual Excel spreadsheet of a real consulting engagement so you can see how all the pieces fit together.

As we walk through the Excel spreadsheet for this real consulting engagement we take a look at how administrative expenses are factored in.

As we continue our walk through of a real Excel spreadsheet for a consulting engagement we are now in to the heart of the spreadsheet where we have people and the hours they spend on various parts of the project.

The first output from a consulting budget spreadsheet is called Fees at Standard. This is the fees that a client would pay for the work to be done at standard rates.

Consulting work is rarely done at standard rates. In this lecture we discuss how we use a real consulting Excel spreadsheet to figure out what the fees would be for the client at various estimated realization percentages.