This is more of a catch-all category for those with a "consulting" job description in the corporate world. This can look like in-house consulting services, implementation teams, B2B consulting businesses, and a host of other things. As a general rule, people in this category have pursued the corporate track and often have at least a decade of experience in their industry.
The following five career types represent the most popular areas of corporate consulting. Technology is developing at a rapid pace, and businesses need to keep up if they want to achieve their goals and maintain a competitive edge.
Information Technology IT has ballooned into a massive part of commerce and includes components like:. Unlike management consulting, which tends to be the realm of enterprise businesses, IT consulting is relevant and even essential for businesses of virtually every size. Over-time, weekend work and travel are all part of the job.
IT consultants need to possess a detailed knowledge of leading applications, analytics software, security practices, cloud computing, etc. They also need to keep abreast of emerging technologies. It's a challenging field, but the ever-growing demand also means it's fairly easy to get into. Put simply, business consultants analyze a business's practices and then recommend improvements.
They will usually have some form of specific expertise that they are hired to leverage on behalf of the company. Business consultants are hired for their experience and track record rather than their credentials. If you can consistently solve a specific problem that many businesses face, you can succeed as a business consultant. That said, unless you find a way to start a consulting business outside the usual channels, a minimum of a Bachelor's Degree is going to be required to get a foothold in the corporate world.
Business consultants typically end up in consulting after several decades of experience within an industry, and they usually have advanced expertise in a specific niche. Companies are no longer free to simply reshape large areas of land at will. Large organizations must accurately predict the environmental effects of their activities, find ways to limit the damage, and ensure that they remain compliant with environmental laws and regulations.
These environmental laws and regulations apply to a huge number of industries — from construction to waste management to energy development and city planning. Before starting a project, companies in these industries and many others must hire an an Environmental Consultant to analyze the effects of their proposed plans and submit their findings to local government.
Environmental consultants will often work for large consulting firms, but they can also work as independent consultants as a part of smaller firms or government agencies. The success of an environmental consultant typically relies on their ability to get proposals accepted by highly knowledgeable biologists, which means they will need to have a similar level of training and understanding.
When businesses purchase large, complex software suites that are fundamental to their operations, it's crucial that they successfully implement the software and optimize their workflows around it. The largest, most complex software solutions are rarely effective "out of the box" and must be tailored to each business's individual needs, which is often handled by the business selling the software.
Yet even when we move past the bespoke tier, we still see a high degree of complexity, which is why there's usually a thriving 3rd party market of niche experts dedicated to helping businesses implement software. Corporate software consultants must be highly skilled in a particular software niche and adept in analytical thinking and problem-solving processes.
They will usually need a Bachelor's Degree in software engineering or software development. Sales is generally considered the most important part of a business, and EVERY business on the planet wants to improve their sales team's performance. This makes sales the perfect field for corporate consultants. The role of a sales consultant is typically focused on training salespeople, but they can also be hired to advise on workflows, choosing or using a CRM, and methods for managing the sales team more effectively.
The path to becoming a sales consultant is pretty straightforward. You need to have excelled at sales and then excelled at managing a sales team. The more sales teams you've managed successfully, and the higher up the corporate ladder you've climbed, the more attractive you will be as a consultant hire.
Often, when someone has developed expertise in an area, they choose to build and run their own business around that expertise rather than continue as an employee. The particular expertise being sold can be virtually anything, and thanks to the emerging gig economy, thousands of new independent consultants are creating highly lucrative businesses for themselves. While different independent consultants build their businesses in different ways, most are using the internet as their primary avenue for generating leads and landing new clients, which is the strategy we teach here at Consulting.
The ten consulting career types we've already covered can ALL be navigated as an independent consulting, with business consulting being a particularly popular choice. In addition to these, the following five fields are especially popular among solo consultants.
All businesses need to attract, convert, and retain new clients. And to do this, businesses must build out and execute complex marketing channels like:. Choosing the right marketing channels to pursue can be challenging for business owners.
There are a lot of options and if you choose wrong, you can end up sinking your business before it even gets going. Furthermore, the marketing world is constantly changing. Marketing channels and the technology that powers them are always evolving.
New channels are constantly being developed. How effective any given channel is for a business can change drastically in as little as a year. This is why many businesses will hire marketing consultants to help them plan, improve, evolve, or even run their marketing campaigns.
Many independent marketing consultants specialize in one or two digital marketing channels, which they will often offer as a turnkey service to consulting clients who are a good fit for those channels.
Online marketing is one of the few fields where degrees and certifications mean literally nothing, and everything revolves around results, making it a common business pursuit for people of all ages and backgrounds seeking a new career and a new path to entrepreneurship.
Everyone has to make financial decisions. Businesses and individuals need to manage their day-to-day expenses, taxes, insurance, and investments. For individuals, life-changing situations such as marriage, a career change, or the birth of a child can present a number of financial challenges. For businesses, managing finances for things like product development, hiring new employees, and benefit programs can be demanding.
You have to make sure that the outcome itself is clearly defined, however. If you want to improve communication within the organization, for instance, what exactly would that look like? Are there objective measures e.
Would you like to see more people eating lunch together? Better attendance or more participation at staff meetings? More cooperation among staff members with different jobs? Different ways of doing the work growing out of increased communication? Determine what skills and experience the consultant must have to accomplish your goals. There are several considerations here:. Consider what kind of working style and personality will fit with your organization.
Often, consultants who are effective with health and community service organizations, particularly community-based ones, are those who are respectful of and can communicate well with a broad range of people. Decide how much you can afford. This consulting position may be part of, or funded by, a grant of a specific amount.
In that case, determining what you can spend is easy. Recruit candidates. In practice, consultants are often hired informally. They may be people with whom the organization has worked directly or indirectly the director or a board member has had experience with the consultant in a community context, for example , who have a good reputation in the community, or who are personally acquainted with the director or others in the organization. They may have worked with a colleague, who has given a positive recommendation.
Screen applications, interview candidates, and make your choice. The whole process of screening applications and interviewing candidates is described in detail in. Either way, check them before you hire. As we stress in every other part of the Community Tool Box, your work is never really done. This evaluation accomplishes several purposes:. Otherwise, choosing a consultant can seem like a time-consuming and difficult task…and it may be.
The results, however, if you do it right, are more than worth the effort. She can provide what the organization itself cannot, and can work for just the length of time needed to accomplish her task.
Choosing a consultant entails defining the task you want her to do, deciding on the qualifications and personal characteristics she should bring to it, setting a price you can afford, recruiting candidates unless you already know exactly who you want , and going through a hiring process, if necessary.
You can find information on choosing consultants for nearly any activity in any field. A checklist for choosing consultants from the Association of Consultants to Nonprofits. More advice on choosing a consultant from Carr Communications of Rolla, Missouri.
Choosing a Consultant. Guidelines for choosing consultants from Oxford and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in helping nonprofits with fundraising. The health experts we interviewed highlighted the importance of a well-run department.
This asks how likely staff would be to recommend their hospital to someone if they needed care and treatment. Professor Cliff Shearman, vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, believes that a high-functioning department is at least as important as the individual consultant you request. Patient review sites can also help you to build up a picture of consultants and hospitals.
These are some that could be worth checking:. Organisations or health professionals may have to pay to be listed on sites such as these, so some may not have reviews. Make looking at such sites part of your overall research, rather basing your decision entirely on reviews. The logic behind patient choice in England, introduced in , is that competition improves standards.
And opting for a different hospital could mean better or more convenient treatment. But there are a few things worth bearing in mind before you exercise your right to choose. GP and health writer Dr Margaret McCartney feels personally that offering people choice of provider is often oversold, and can lead to some feeling more anxious than before. Entrepreneurs by nature tend to be independent risk-takers. They started the company and it is their baby. Obviously, they should know how to raise it.
However, none of us knows everything about growing and managing a business. Sometimes it makes sense to seek the counsel of others, but who is right for you and your business? When selecting a consultant, follow these five simple, but important, guidelines:. First and foremost, an effective consultant must be a person of the highest character. He or she must be the consummate professional.
The consultant must be willing to put the best interest of the client ahead of their own. Related: Hiring a Consultant? Shun the Hour Turnaround and Other Hype. For example, the consultant must be willing to tell clients things that they need to hear, but may not want to -- even if doing so means that the consultant loses business.
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