咨询业(Consulting) 中篇

12已有 684 次阅读  2010-08-04 12:24   标签咨询业  Consulting  中篇 

Job Prospects

While outsourcing consulting was the bread and butter of many firms over the past few years, that’s all changing. The BLS expects consultants in business, technology and health care to enjoy a whopping 60 percent growth rate between now and 2014—more than four times the cross-industry average of 14 percent, and making it the fifth–fastest growing employment segment. Increased profitability reported by top firms bodes well for fueling that growth. With a tight labor market, it’s actually cheaper and easier to hire specialized expertise in the short term than it is to try to find an appropriate staffer to bring onboard.

The BLS says that the growing number of businesses means increased demand for advice in all areas of business planning as consultants draft business plans and budgets, develop strategy, and determine appropriate salaries and benefits for employees. Some of the key areas of growth include:

  • Location and marketing planning for franchised restaurants and retail stores.
  • Logistical consulting, mapping the most efficient links between suppliers and customers.
  • Human resources and workplace safety experts who can help companies navigate increasing federal, state and local employment law, as well as how companies can better attract and retain talented employees.
  • IT consultants who can help companies take advantage of technology.
  • Environmental compliance and “green” consultants who can help businesses navigate stiffer environmental laws and regulations, while helping companies find ways to be more sustainable, which is of increasing importance to customers.

Love-Hate

What's Great

Love My Job
Most people who work for consulting firms talk about how intellectually stimulating their work is. They enjoy the challenge of going into new settings and facing some of the most difficult issues business leaders have to deal with. Although most don’t admit it openly, there’s also a palpable excitement associated with being able to sit down with a CEO of a large firm and tell him or her what to do. Consultants also take pride in seeing the impact their advice has on clients’ businesses.

People Power
The key resource of consulting firms, and some would say the only resource, is their people. All of the top-tier firms fill their offices by skimming the cream of the undergraduate and business school elite. Insiders tell us that working at a consulting firm is very much like being on a team with the best people from school: "People are universally bright, interesting, hardworking, and motivated." Many insiders also say they enjoy socializing with their colleagues.

Learning Environment
One of the thrills for many consultants is the constant learning that comes with the consulting workload. Whether you’re learning about a new company or industry, talking to people in various parts of a client organization, or brainstorming ways to deal with challenging technical problems, consulting offers a steady diet of new cases and settings. Many consultants believe they wouldn’t face such a wide variety of challenges in another profession.

What's To Hate

A Dog’s Life
The travel, the hours, and the difficulty of maintaining a personal life top everyone’s list of consulting complaints. "There is limited life outside of work," says one insider. It’s not that people in other professions don’t work long, hard hours, but the consulting lifestyle, which often requires the consultant to be out of town four days a week for months at a time, is hard to maintain over the long run, especially for people with families. Some individuals actually thrive on the pace and excitement of the energetic schedule. For many others, a few years are about all they want to put up with.

"I’d Rather Be…"
Consultants often express their desire to get into the thick of managing a company and start making management decisions. This may be partly a case of the grass being greener, but after giving advice to so many companies and executives, many consultants are eager to try their hand from the client side. They also complain about not getting the in-depth experience they’d get if they worked at a company. A large number of consultants leave after a few years to start businesses or work in operating companies.

What Difference Does It Make?
Most people who go into consulting as a career say they do valuable, highly meaningful work. However, a common complaint among ex-consultants is that the work didn’t seem as meaningful to them as they would have liked. As one explains, "I felt like we did a lot of ephemeral strategy stuff for big companies that didn’t really amount to much. I really didn’t want to be working with conservative, old Fortune 500 companies. I wanted to be making a difference in a smaller setting, with real people."

Major Players

Consulting Firms that Ranked in the Fortune Top 100 MBA Employers
Rank Firm
2 McKinsey & Co.
4 Bain & Co.
5 The Boston Consulting Group
16 Booz Allen Hamilton
18 Deloitte (includes consulting and audit units)
23 IBM (includes entire company, not just Global Services)
36 Accenture
37 PricewaterhouseCoopers
57 A.T. Kearney
78 Monitor
86 Oliver Wyman
95 BearingPoint


Source: Excerpted from Fortune; WetFeet research. 
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发表评论 评论 (5 个评论)

  • ET9H 2010-08-04 12:41
    你们怎么做到在日记中点别人的名阿,我被多人点,是因为我很红吗?哈哈
  • miwawa 2010-08-04 13:16
    哈哈,a dog's life...
  • hsWang 2010-08-04 13:27
    ET9H: 你们怎么做到在日记中点别人的名阿,我被多人点,是因为我很红吗?哈哈
    发表日志后 会看到日志下面有一个"点名" 的功能, 点击后就知道了怎么回事了
  • stream 2010-08-04 13:29
    ET9H: 你们怎么做到在日记中点别人的名阿,我被多人点,是因为我很红吗?哈哈
    哈哈哈哈 因为多乐是小红人
  • ET9H 2010-08-05 11:07
    多乐已经彻底完全百分百的脱离我的控制了。变成我妈的小臣民了
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