Tag: consulting

is it a good idea to be a consultant?

consulting presentation

 

consulting presentation

I don’t think anyone can prove this, but there’s probably a rising prejudice against the job description “consultant”. The reason is that as long-term unemployment becomes more and more common amongst professionals, many of them have started calling themselves consultants during their unemployed tenure. They don’t actually consult - they have no clients, they have no portfolio and what they really want is simply to be able to call themselves anything but unemployed. Is it fair for Human Resources departments to almost automatically flag people with the “consultant” title as “probably just an unemployed person who didn’t wish to label themselves as unemployed?”

It’s easy to take up both sides of this argument. One, anyone can call themselves a consultant. In a society in which you need permission to label yourself a person who administers health care to birds, it’s amazing that anyone can present themselves as an expert in a field in which they may have no expertise at all. I could advertise myself as an “expert Excel consultant” tomorrow and there’s no chance my state or country would blink an eye. If I proclaimed myself an expert accountant (CPA) or expert tooth extractor (DDS) I’d have state agencies knocking at my door tomorrow. It’s not fair that anyone be able to label themselves as a consultant - that word should imply some recognized expertise.

On the other hand, why not? I’m expert at many things, in my own opinion: I’m a decent writer, I’m quite good implementing, training and using several internal audit software packages, I’m a good trainer (in multiple languages) and I am better than many in the use of Excel and Access. Shouldn’t that give me the right to call myself an expert? A consultant? A coach? Whatever the term, why can’t I offer myself up and let my skills speak for themselves?

I think it’s a disservice to the title “consultant” that so many people these days grab on to that moniker the second they are unemployed. HR departments are justified in assuming that many consultants are simply unemployed people who hang that title around their necks once they lose a job. I sympathize - simply labeling yourself as “unemployed for 6 months” is much worse, of course, than labeling yourself as an “up-and-coming consultant” over that time period. But I would recommend that anyone who calls themselves a consultant be ready with a few things when coming to an HR department:

 

  1. A portfolio. Anyone can prepare a portfolio, of course. But the simple fact that you prepared it means you’ve put at least that much effort into it. If you don’t have a portfolio - be it online, hard copy or even just a well-constructed LinkedIn profile - you’re not a serious consultant, and nobody will take you seriously.
  2. References. If you don’t have at least 2 or 3 former supervisors or past consulting clients who can enthusiastically vouch for your work, I wouldn’t hire you as a consultant. A consultant lives and dies off the quality of their past work. I’ve hired consultants solely off of recommendations from colleagues and acquaintances I’ve trusted, and I’ve rejected consultants who couldn’t provide those references. It’s quite simple: consultants with references thrive; consultants without references die.
  3. Proof. If you don’t have a portfolio and your don’t have references, what do you do? Have proof. Be able to back up your skills. If you claim to be an expert in Access, ask for permission to demonstrate it. If you know SAP backwards and forwards, show it. Don’t claim to have expertise in an area you don’t know. But be ready to show total command of any area an employer/client is looking for: have an idea how to amaze them ready to go. Certification is a great help here, too. If you can show certification in an area, you’re well along to convincing an HR department that you’re qualified to provide services.

It’s not an easy thing to tell people you’re good enough to fix things. I’ve been doing it since 2005, full-time. I’ve sold to Wall Street and the Fortune 500. It’s hard to convince smart people you’re going to bring something to the table they don’t have. They don’t like to hear that. But the simple fact is that if you’re going to present yourself as the mystical “consultant” you have to bring that little bit extra. You have to sell, you have to convince, and most of all … you have to DO. Consultants have a narrow margin for error. Employees can blame politics and teams and all kinds of things, but a consultant - especially a standalone consultant - has to show results, and soon. Don’t worry about the unemployed who call themselves consultants - distinguish yourself through your portfolio, references and proof and you’ll be on your way to a six-figure career in no time.

Photo Some rights reserved by markhillary

updates, summer in October and links

This week I suddenly decided to update a few things here at brip blap. I’ve added a much more complex Facebook page, for starters, which you can see at facebook.com/bripblap. I also added a new page here - greatest hits. I’ve got a Media Mentions page over on the Facebook site - a similar page is about 90% ready for this site. And of course you can probably see (if you’re visiting the site and not reading through RSS or email) that I’ve changed up the layout a lot, including a “like on Facebook” thing-y on the right.

I’m also planning on getting up a coaching/consulting link here in the near future. I asked this question at Facebook, too, but I’ll repeat it here - is there anything about the site design that needs to be updated (good or bad)? Feel free to contact me directly, or leave a comment.

It’s been easy to feel enthusiastic, despite a woeful market for my “main” consulting specialties (audit and finance). That’s probably what inspired me to spend some time working on the “behind the scenes” part of the blog. The weather has been nice – that’s an understatement – and this is the time of year that living in Florida really pays off. When everyone else north of us starts to don jackets and coats occasionally, we’re still in shorts and t-shirts. I know in 50 years it’s going to be 155 degrees in the shade (and our house will be underwater thanks to rising ocean levels) but right now it’s nice having a relatively hot autumn.

I linked to a few sites a bit off the beaten blog-reading path for me this week.

  • Whose permission are you waiting for to start your escape? : I know in my case if I have any permission required to move away from my primary consulting work, it’s entirely internal. I imagine most people who are “stuck” in lines of work they don’t care for that much may claim it’s the mortgage or the kids’ college funds or the car payment or whatever, but at the end of the day you have to give yourself permission.
  • The Road Less Talked About: Building a Business Empire, not an Income Stream: I’ve just recently started reading Maren’s blog and in this post she’s talking about the anti-4-hour workweek (to put it in a nutshell).
  • Strategies for Minimalist Freedom Success: How to Make Difficult Decisions: I am an experienced practitioner of paralysis by analysis. This post made me think about the way I approach some of the difficult decisions I need to make.
  • I Made a Mistake and Checked Zillow.com Today: If you aren’t planning on selling your home/investment property, a trip to Zillow is almost always wince-worthy.
  • Should You Save For Long Term Goals While Still In College? : Honestly I think the main goal while in college should be avoiding debt. Saving is a nice bonus, but unless you’re on a full scholarship AND work a part-time job, it’s going to be tough to find that extra money. Not impossible – but tough.

And a few more:

how to become a successful consultant

I’ve preached the gospel of “going it alone” for years on this blog, and I stick by it. I’ve seen far too many of my colleagues hung out to dry by the corporations they work for to think that being an employee is a good career path. But being a consultant has one ugly secret, deep down at its core: in order to be a successful consultant (monetarily, not actually effective) requires that you first spend your time in the dirty, ugly trenches as an employee.

I’d like to say it isn’t true. I’d like to think a really gifted, talented person with an eye for change could leap out of college and start helping people as a consultant. I’d like to think that the tools for communication would naturally be there for some of these people: comfort speaking in front of large groups, the ability to write clearly and directly, the personal confidence to sell products and relate to decision makers without trepidation.

In my experience: nope, doesn’t happen.

I’m a good public speaker. I can sell. I can work a technical presentation and apply complex principles to difficult problems. I couldn’t have done any of this, in my opinion, without the years in the trench: the years I spent hammering away, unrewarded, at Big 4 firms and multinational corporations. What they gave me was, at the same time, invaluable and a curse. They let me work hard. They put me in front of very senior management or executives at clients before I might have been ready to deal with them. They asked me to navigate politics, presentations, negotiations and calculations without a net. I sweated a lot of 11 pm nights at the office working on presentations so I’d be relaxed and able to throw them off without much trouble today.

If you’d like to be a consultant - a REAL consultant - with a grasp of your subject and the sort of calm, unhurried patience you see in the most polished advice-givers, let me give you a tip: spend a decade getting your brains beaten in by a consulting firm or a corporation. There’s no better training for confidence than to have your confidence challenged, pushed and tortured for years. It’s sad but true. If you work out, the true muscle-building activity takes place on the rep where you “fail” - the rep where you can’t lift the weights one more time. That’s the point at which new muscle mass - scars, really - build up your muscles and increase your strength. Being pushed to prepare that presentation or asked to analyze that acquisition on short notice is what will make you a better consultant.

There is no shortcut. When I was hiring for a multinational corporation, I didn’t look to independent consultants two years out of MBA school. I looked to the Big 4 and other consulting firms. Why? Not because I had any love lost for them (I didn’t, at all) and not because they had the best prices or even the best people. I did it because I knew these were people who had been pushed since day 1 at their firms to fail. The “upwards or out” mentality is useful even if you’re not in a corporate position. You’re either increasing your skills and widening your contact pool or you’re heading out. This is the philosophy of the Big 4. Up or out. It makes sense, even while it’s a sad way to live.

So if you think about becoming a consultant, think about putting in a long time in your chosen profession as an employee first. Get that job at an engineering firm, or hospital, or accounting firm, or whatever. Make sure you can cut it. Once you’ve stopped failing, or struggling, maybe you’re ready to sell yourself as a consultant. Just don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that there is no job bigger than you or tougher than you; as a consultant, you have to be constantly aware that eventually “the one” project will arrive where you can’t quite keep up. And that’s when those ugly skills and pathetic abilities - staying up late and working while everyone else is out at the local bar - will come in handy.

how to avoid giving gifts at work

That’s right: how to AVOID giving gifts at work. A pet peeve of mine, for a long time, has been the corporate office “pitch in for a gift” routine. If you aren’t a corporate employee, let me explain. What happens is that there’s one perky busybody in every department who decides to buy a flower basket when co-workers gets sick, or a teddy bear when they have a baby, or an item from the registry when someone gets married, or even a little gift for everyone’s birthday. This busybody goes around and asks everyone for a “donation,” knowing full well that for most people refusing is an embarrassing proposition.

I have never liked this business of pitching in. I like it even less now that I’m a consultant, and anyone with half a brain should be able to realize that I have even less interest than the average employee in participating. Plus:

  • 1. I don’t always like the person for whom the present is being purchased.
  • 2. Sometimes the reason for the gift is trivial - someone is having a birthday? What, are we 12?
  • 3. There is a subtle discrimination - someone who has been around longer, or has a better position, or is simply more popular gets bigger or better gifts.
  • 4. If the busybody is encouraged, soon you are shelling out $10-$20 a week for “voluntary” gifts.

I am also very uncomfortable accepting such gifts, and have often said point-blank that I don’t want any gifts. Maybe I have a distorted view, but to me if I receive a gift I feel an obligation to return it the next time I’m asked to contribute. Then I’m “stuck” as a regular contributor. And I won’t do it. I often make a point early on to tell people that I do not participate with any “optional” offerings – gifts, flowers, etc. I don’t give to the boss’s favorite charity, either, another pet peeve. Going around soliciting for your daughter’s Girl Scout cookie sales is soliciting, plain and simple. So is Yankee Candle and anything else the boss brings in and coos about being “fun, you should try it!” Imagine if I started bringing in sales brochures for my consulting business and handing them out to people in the finance department.

Now that I’m a consultant - and technically not “part” of the department - I find it easier to refuse. I am stingy enough with gift-giving for my family and friends (and myself) that I resent any “required” gifts for my co-workers. I know, in a sense, that this just reflects the realities of most people’s lives - that they spend more time with their co-workers than with their friends and families and therefore want to contribute to the morale of their workplace. Yet every time I’m asked to pitch in $10 for a co-worker’s cheese-and-sausage gift basket I see $10 that could buy my son some books, or $10 to add to my nieces’ and nephew’s custodial accounts, or even $10 that Bubelah and I could put towards an occasional evening out. I am selfish that way. I want to give money to charities of my choice, not to a charity chosen by a coworker who had a great-aunt pass away.

So am I crazy? Do you have people asking you to contribute to “departmental” gifts at the office? Do you participate? Am I just being a jerk?

As we know it is always something, whether it be anniversary, birthday, or new born baby gifts.

what a week at work feels like

charlottenc

Having just returned to a contract consulting position after seven months “in transition” (as the career coaches might say) I’m struck by how nothing has changed. In my case the locale is different - Florida, not Manhattan - and the timing has meant a lot (when I was last working, George Bush was still lame ducking to retirement). But I’m still working, more or less, in the financial services industry. I’m still doing contract consulting. I’m still in a cube, drinking the free coffee and cursing Word 2007.

Corporate employees are an oddly stressed but relaxed bunch. Stressed because they feel the need to create the appearance of great activity, stress and therefore accomplishment. Relaxed because they don’t want to finish TOO much, TOO fast. They know they need to put the face time in to stay past the boss’s departure. They get some perks - free coffee, for example. A lot of adult companionship, too; maybe not the friends you would choose in the normal course of events, but still people of similar backgrounds and ambition.

I was nervous for the first 30 minutes that maybe over my long break my mind had turned to jelly, but it hadn’t. I can still do all the work AND stare out the window AND calculate how many days until I can retire on a spreadsheet. The work, like most contract consulting work I’ve done, is a mix of the mundane, the boring and the challenging. Mundane and boring are self-explanatory: if you have staff and a consultant, the consultant will get the less interesting work. Staff need to develop. The challenging work mainly arises from the assumption that I know more about the industry and the company than I do. That can actually be interesting, learning about a company on a rapid basis. As an auditor, you’re expected to understand the company well enough to question someone who’s worked there forever. It’s not easy spending a few hours boning up on a subject then interrogating someone who’s been working on that subject for 20 years. But at least it’s not boring.

So nothing changed. I have a different attitude towards contract consulting now. It helps me keep a “professional career” active, which is useful in securing mortgages, meeting people and establishing a network in a new city. It doesn’t have to be 100% of my work life, but it’s the part that can generate big chunks of cash in short order. If I can handle health care - and I’ll be writing about that more over the next month - contract consulting could be a nice way to dip in and out of mini-retirements, a la the “fourty” hour workweek. So while I’m staring out the window at the tree, I”m trying to imagine the end of the contract, and another couple of months on the beach.

photo by jacreative

who is the client?

Whether you work as an employee, a consultant, a small business owner or an entrepreneur you probably find yourself in a client relationship from time to time. In my case, I’m always serving a client. Over time I’ve realized that a good question to ask yourself, as someone in client service, is “who is the client?” I’ll approach this question as a consultant, but I think it applies to almost anyone who works with clients or even works in a company where they have to treat other employees as clients.

42-15230517
photo credit: gcoldironjr2003

Asking this question might seem stupid, but I think that it’s easy to confuse yourself. As an example, I usually have two (or more) people who might be THE client. The first is a day-to-day manager, who lets me know what he or she needs and expects. The manager might not be just one person, but for the sake of argument we’re just talking about a single person (I’ll call him or her or them The Manager). The second person who might be THE client is the person who signs the invoices and - basically - pays me. Usually the second person is the manager’s manager (or even a couple of times removed). I may have some minimal relationship with that person (I’ll call him or her The Executive) and probably don’t get much daily direction from them.

So when conflict arises between The Manager and The Executive, who do I need to worry about? I know that my first instinct is to guarantee that The Manager is happy, since he’s the guy I have to deal with on a daily basis. He has a better chance to judge whether the product of my work meets requirements or not, and if I don’t meet his requirements I’m going to be in trouble.

On the other hand, The Executive pays the bills. If she’s not happy with something I’m doing, or something The Manager is passing on to her that I’m doing, I may not have that client on my list much longer. The Executive is the one hobnobbing with other executives and influential people in my industry, and a bad word here and there could really hurt me (and a good word could help me). The Executive may not understand what I’m working on and may not be in a position to judge my work fairly, so a lot of my interaction with The Executive is probably brief presentations at high level meetings where a smile and a confident speaking tone make a bigger difference than the details of the work.

The easiest answer is to say “take care of both of them.” The truth is that in many consulting relationships (and this goes for employees, entrepreneurs, etc.) the consultant is usually swimming in turbulent waters. The desire of The Manager to look “more useful” to The Executive than the consultant is often eddying just under the surface. The Executive is often more concerned about how the consultants present in a meeting - can they sell the project? make it look snazzy? - than whether the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed.

So given that you can’t please everyone all the time, what’s a poor consultant to do?

Early on in my career, I worked with a senior accountant on a difficult project - in the example above, he was The Manager. I didn’t see eye to eye with her most of the time. However, I was lucky to form a friendly professional bond with the overall project manager, who became a mentor to me and was The Executive. I had some tough times with The Manager, and The Executive heard about it. The Executive, however, knew me well enough to push me forward to other higher-profile projects and laud me to other executives.

In retrospect I was probably unfair to The Manager but I learned my lesson - please The Executive. Or did I learn my lesson? At various times in my career on other projects I got carried away with the day-to-day tasks and forgot about The Executive. When the project ended, The Manager looked like a star and The Executive barely knew who I was. Again and again, I realized that the consultant who won the next project was not the detail guy, or the smartest guy, but the guy who forged the best relationship with The Executive.

That’s not to say that you can get by schmoozing without doing good work, but good work won’t do much for you without schmoozing. The relationship with The Executive is always critical to landing the next client. The Manager may be able to help you as well, but chances are good that they won’t talk you up TOO much, fearing a reduction of their own image.

Identifying your client won’t always be easy, but it’s a part of the job that can’t ever be overlooked. If you can please everyone, congratulations - you’ve found an easy client. If you can’t, make sure you know who The Executive is, and make sure they know who you are. I think you’ll find that it makes all the difference - not just now, but in the future, too.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]