Consulting Blog for Business Consultants

Just found a great article titled “Consulting - How To Get Started” posted on HubPages. It does a really good job of giving you an overview of what a consulting career is like, what to expect, and what sorts of qualifications you need (and where to get them)…

But I think it falls short in a few areas…

Here’s why…

The Strong Points

Before I get into the points that I think the article misses, let me highlight the things I think it does well.

The article is actually very comprehensive, so I’m not going to repeat everything here. You should read it yourself to see if you agree with me or not…

So here’s what I think the author does well:

• He correctly emphasize the need for continuous growth and learning as a key to succeeding in consulting.
• He briefly mentions a rarely-discussed activity that is sure to catapult you quickly to the next level: Finding and following an experienced mentor.
• He warns that successful consultants do indeed need to have a great deal of skills, and be constantly on the lookout for improving them through training. He also identifies several web resources for consulting training (look for the side bar in the middle of the article)
• He does cover a few points about the lifestyle of a consultant… long hours, travel, etc.
• He does a good job describing the importance of consultant-client relationship and points out a few key concepts
• He does a great job enumerating what it takes to become a consultant.

What’s Missing

Now that we got the strong points out of the way let’s focus on what I think the author is missing…

• For an article with the title “How to get started”, it doesn’t really tell you how to get started. It gives you a lot of great information, but if you’re ready to hit the ground running, the article doesn’t tell you what to do tomorrow.
• I think having a mentor (whether it’s a person, a group of experienced consultants, or a consulting training program with an ongoing thread) is the most reliable and the quickest shortcut to consulting success. I wish the article went into that in a little more detail.
• Another really critical area is the consultant-client relationship. The article touches on this (a whole section) and gives some great pointers… but it doesn’t get into as much detail as I think the topic deserves. For example, it would be great to have a bulleted list of things to do or to avoid…
• The article seems to be geared mainly at the consulting industry in general. Everything here applies to all consultants in any industry. It would have been nice to have a section dedicated to independent consultants, in particular… (OK, so this is a bit selfish, since that’s what our blog focuses on. But why not?! We could wish for it anyway, right?)

Your 2c Worth

So what do you think about this article?  Did you agree with my comments?

Let me know!

Post your comments below…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Consulting, Consulting Skills, Consulting Skills Training, Getting Started. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.