Consultive Magazine

A Day in the Life of a Junior IT Consultant

By Mike. February 4th, 2011. Posted in On assignment No Comments »

I thought at this point it might be useful to describe what an average consulting day would consist of. I will walk you through a typical day on client site in the hope that you get a good feel for what life might be like for a consultant.

Here is an average Thursday for you, probably in April time, from one of my first major assignments as a junior consultant. No two days are alike and the idea here is just to give you a flavour of what you might be asked to do as part of an assignment.

Beware the inadvertent commitment

By David Reinhardt. November 19th, 2010. Posted in On assignment 2 Comments »

We’ve all been there – the client starts a sentence with “While you’re working on the widget design, please could you also…” and at clocking out time you’re working on a widget supplier brief while everyone else is catching up on Eastenders.

The lighter side of day one

By David Reinhardt. October 15th, 2010. Posted in On assignment 1 Comment »

Everyone has something they look for on the first day of an assignment. For me it’s quite process driven – I want to know if I can get an ice cold diet coke (inputs) and whether the toilets are clean (outputs).

Of course, there are the work related factors. How easy is it to get meeting rooms? Has the client setup all the things they need to in order for you to be productive quickly? We looked at this in a previous post “Hitting the ground running on day one of your assignments” where we considered intelligent and naive buyers of consulting. In this post we’ll take a consultant’s view – what do I look for when I arrive on site?

Making the most of an assignment

By Mike. October 8th, 2010. Posted in On assignment No Comments »

Being able to make the most of assignments can be the difference between a successful consulting career and a “didn’t quite happen” job.

During your consulting career (and especially at the start) you will inevitably end up working on at least one “dead end” assignment. This is where one or more element of the assignment (e.g. workload, management style or interest level) is not as good as it should be.

You will have four options.

Hitting the ground running on day one of your assignments

By David Reinhardt. September 24th, 2010. Posted in On assignment 1 Comment »

I recently started an engagement at a new client and was amazed to arrive on the appointed first day and find a desk, a PC setup for me with a user account, email, printers, etc and an access card. By 10:00am I had been taken on a tour of the facility, done the obligatory health and safety briefing, been shown the coffee facilities and met a few of my key contacts. By 10:15am I was in front of Outlook and setting up meetings for the rest of the week.

I was reflecting on this and I decided that I shouldn’t be amazed – that story should repeat itself on every engagement. Consultants are expensive. Hourly or daily rates quickly rack up and buyers should be looking to get the most out of their investment.