Best Careers: Management Consultants + Analysts
Management Consultants made CareerJournal’s Best Careers List. Their ranking criteria were based on which careers make for happy and satisfied working folks. Since the list wasn’t compiled based on salary alone, and instead was based on not being miserable in your career, I applaud the list and the editors of CareerJournal.com for initiating the research.
I was interested to know exactly what is a management consultant and what makes it such a great job? Management consultants / management analysts help companies improve their performance. They’re hired by businesses to analyze lots of data, get a look at the big picture, crunch some numbers and from that information, propose recommendations (I’m guessing pie charts are involved) as to how the client might go about being more efficient, thereby increasing profits.
Why is management consulting ranked so highly? People pay you for your opinions and actually do what you tell them to do. You have a lot of independence, there’s quite a bit of variety. Who would be good at this? Someone with a good head for business (duh) since your whole job will be to make companies better than they were before they hired you. Having a number-crunching, analytical brain which is connected to a people-person would probably be necessary. Being a management consultant/analyst will require a lot of thinking and a lot of telling the client results and recommendations they may not want to hear; i.e.: “That whole department is redundant and if you want to streamline this company, you’ll have to let them go.” Although, as with everything in life, I’m sure it’s not all bad all the time.
The pay is pretty middle of the road — $48,070 to $72,480. But if you’re a senior partner at a management consulting firm, the Association of Management Consulting Firms says your typical earnings in 2004 could very well have been upwards of $317,339.
How do you get to be a management consultant? There aren’t many degrees offered in management consulting. Most people start out in an entry-level position as a research analyst or associate with a bachelor’s degree in business or economics. Advancing to a consulting position would probably require a master’s degree in a pertinent field of study, as well as some years of experience actually working in the field in which the individual wants to consult. Which makes sense—who would want to hire a consultant with no real-world business experience?
Posted by Alexa Harrington
MBA | Business School | Management Education
