Oct 06 2021

By Ed McLean, Learning Designer and Developer

Two people with the job title “management consultant” may in reality do very different things in very different conditions.  If you are considering management consulting as a graduate career then this poses a challenge – how do you find a role that is suited to you? The answer is to start by understanding the different types of consulting companies.  This blog post will explore just that. Let’s start with the basics:

What do management consultancy companies do?

Put simply, management consulting companies are hired by their clients to do tasks that are beyond the client’s capacity or capability. For example, a retail chain may be excellent at all things retail, but have no skills (i.e. capability) in an area that is new to them, for example, AI. They may then decide to hire an AI consultancy with deep expertise in this area to help them. Alternatively, it may be that they do have the required skills (i.e. capability) in the company, but everyone is tied up with their day to day tasks and they have no capacity to take on substantial new projects. In this case a consultancy can help increase their capacity to help them do that project.

What areas do management consultancies work in?

Once you consider that management consulting companies are essentially expert helpers in any area of business you start to understand the breadth of areas that they could work in. For example, as described by rocketblocks.me there are four main types of firm:

Strategy: These management consultancies help companies decide what to do, in response to challenges they are facing, for example “Which countries should we expand into”, “What kind of products should we develop” or “How much should we charge for our product”. Companies include BCG, Bain, McKinsey, Strategy&, Oliver Wyman, LEK, Roland Berger.

Implementation: Once a company has decided what to do someone needs to do the work. Management consultancies that specialise in implementation help companies do things, for example, setting up a call centre, developing an advertising campaign or building an app. Companies in this area include Accenture and Deloitte.

Functional specialists:These are management consulting companies that focus on one particular area of functional expertise (as opposed to industry expertise which we’ll learn about in a moment). It could be that a management consultancy specialises in marketing campaigns, financial restructuring, human resources, pricing – or virtually anything else. Companies in this area include Design – IDEO and Frog (both design consultancies) and citrusHR and HR Works (both HR consultancies). In the strictest sense of the term a functional specialist could work across multiple industries (e.g. applying their expertise in a retailer one day then a manufacturer the next).

Industry specialists: These companies have deep knowledge of just one industry, for example the pharmaceutical industry or higher education. Examples in this industry include Clearview Healthcare, GMR Aviation.

In reality, the borders between these different types of companies are rather fuzzy. A functional specialist in say, HR, might help with both strategy and implementation. Nevertheless the categories above provide a useful framework to think about to think about what might be right for you.

What does this mean for you?

Depending on which kind of company you apply to a number of things can differ:

Type of work: In strategy consulting you may be engaging in research, deep thought and analysis and the creation of presentations and reports for clients. In implementation consultancies you may be creating a project plan for how something, say an IT upgrade, will be implemented. You may even be doing that IT upgrade yourself. Aside from the experience of doing the work, the skills required for working in these different consultancies might also be quite different.

Type and personality of clients and industry: If you work for a management consultancy that focuses on the healthcare industry your clients (perhaps NHS doctors) might be quite different in character than say the senior management of commercial companies that you might work with in another consultancy. Another example might be that a consultancy in fashion marketing would have a very different feel to a consultancy specialising in data analysis for banks. To some this won’t matter, but to others it may be important.

Number of opportunities: It takes far fewer people to develop a plan (strategy) for say, digitising the customer services of a retailer than it does to set up 25 call centres globally with tens of thousands of staff (implementation). There are consequently uneven numbers of opportunities in different areas, with pure strategy roles having relatively few opportunities compared to other areas. An area like audit has large numbers of roles because all UK companies must have regular audits carried out by a third party, whereas roles with PR consultancies specialising in the museum sector are likely to be few and far between.

Competition to get in: When there are not many opportunities and there are a lot of people keen to do them (e.g. strategy) competition can be very high indeed. This results in very high entry requirements.

Summary - Some things to consider as you explore a management consulting career

As you explore the management consulting sector and adverts for roles consider:

  1. What type of work would you be doing in this role? How would you feel doing that type of work? Do have skills in the required areas (and/or would you be interested to learn those skills?)
  2. Do you have any idea of the type and personality of the clients and industry that that consultancy operates in? How could you research this? How do you feel about what you uncover?
  3. What are the entry requirements for the roles you are interested in? Are there hundreds of opportunities that you can find or are there just one or two? How might this inform you job hunting strategy?