Roland Berger Strategy Consultants introduced its new career website yesterday. As part of its new employer branding campaign, Roland Berger is launching this website together with its global HR Facebook presence. These activities are designed to give potential candidates more information about what it’s like to work as a consultant. Besides information about career opportunities and how to join Roland Berger , the new website has blog entries and videos by consultants that provide insights into the multifaceted world of management consulting.

“Our new career website and Facebook presence are designed to reach talented individuals all over the world and get them excited about consulting,” says Per Breuer, Partner at Roland Berger. “In this age of social media and Internet, we want to speak to our target group where they hang out: on the web.”

Focus on personality

The online recruiting presence of Roland Berger is driven by the firm’s slogan: “It’s character that creates impact”. Per Breuer: “Our web and Facebook appearance is designed to truly convey our corporate philosophy and values. We are looking for a variety of people with different interests and skills – People with “get up and go” who want to make things happen. This is the only way to ensure that we provide our clients with long-term success.”

The corporate philosophy is communicated on the website by various consultants from the currently 45 Roland Berger offices in 33 countries. In videos, they talk about exciting experiences around the world. “This plays a huge role for high potential when selecting an employer,” explains Breuer. “This is why it’s important for us to present many stories of individual consultants on our career website.”

Internationality adds value

Greater emphasis on the rising internationality at Roland Berger is being presented on the career website and Facebook. The consulting firm is not only portraying individual consultants from around the world. Global development programs and current recruiting events are also being shown to provide complete information online. “We want to clearly show Roland Berger’s international growth strategy on our website and Facebook page,” claims Per Breuer. “Only in this way can we motivate the best talent around the globe to check out the world of consulting and attract new employees. And dialog via social media is critical.”

To achieve this, Roland Berger’s new Facebook career page is designed to encourage dialog with interested target groups. This living and up-to-date platform provides the right answers to the many questions about strategy consulting.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

Job opportunities across the UK are up in one of the biggest month on month increases for nearly two years, according to the Reed Job Index for October.

October’s Reed Job Index stands at 129, which is 8 index points (7 per cent) up from September. This reverses the decline in job demand in Q3 of this year, and brings the number of new job opportunities on offer back up to the levels last seen in Q1.

Employer demand is 23 points higher year on year, and is 29 per cent above the level of December 2009 when the Index baseline was set at 100, according to the report compiled by job site reed.co.uk. The 7 per cent increase is the second largest month on month rise recorded since the Reed Job Index began 22 months ago.

However salaries for new jobs stayed flat and are two per cent lower than in December 2009 for the third month running, with the Reed Salary Index standing at 97.

Employer demand for new staff rose by 10 points or more across core business job sectors, led by IT (a rise of 24 points – 16 per cent – to173), Marketing (143) and Qualified Accountants (142), as well as in consumer-facing job sectors such as Retail (145) and Sales (143). Demand in the Public Sector is still low, but is up 9 points from the previous month (to 66).

Demand for new staff increased across all 12 UK regions analysed in October. The number of new jobs on offer in London (135) rose 10 index points compared with September, falling just short of February’s record high.

Martin Warnes, Managing Director of reed.co.uk, comments on the Reed Job Index for October: “Job demand across the country has recovered strongly across nearly all areas of the private sector compared to the previous Quarter.

“We do need to be careful not to get carried away by one month’s figures, especially as this increase only brings us back to the level of demand for new staff that the UK was experiencing in the Spring. Nevertheless, the rise suggests a return of employer optimism to a level not seen for the last eight months.”

Source:   www.top-consultant.com

The consulting career path

In this article, we’ll be looking at the consulting career path. We’ll seek to provide you with an understanding of the generic grades within management consultancy firms and what is expected from a consultant as they progress along the career path to attain successively higher grades. We’ll also give an indicative steer on the salary range you might command at each level and the length of time you’d need to spend in consulting to get there.

Firstly, though, a caveat. The consulting industry encompasses a wide range of firms offering a quite diverse set of consulting ser­ vices. In some firms, project teams of 10 consultants would be the norm, whilst in others 100+ is not uncommon. In some firms, the typical project will last 2-3 months; in others a year or more is not unusual. As such, any attempt to characterise the typical career path runs up against the issue that consulting careers are inherently different depending on the type of firm one joins. However in writing this chapter, we aim to provide a broad overview of the remuneration and responsibilities you can expect at different points in your career- and the speed with which you can expect to attain those levels. When seeking to understand whether consulting is the career for you -and the level at which you might expect to enter the industry- this assessment should prove enlightening.

Within the consulting industry, there’s a wide variety of job titles used and sometimes a lack of consistency across firms. But for the purposes of this article we shall limit our discussion to the following generic grades:

• Business Analyst/junior Consultant

• Senior Consultant

• Project Manager

• Principal/Associate Partner

• Partner

• Practice Leader/Senior Partner.

In practice, many firms will have additional grades in between each of these categories so that a consultant being promoted every 1-2 years in favourable market conditions is quite attainable. However, for the purposes of understanding your career progression and how your role will evolve within a consulting practice, this level of detail is excessive and adds nothing to your overall understanding of how your career will progress.

Business Analyst/Junior Consultant

The Business Analyst grade is the level at which new university graduates (and often Masters/PhD candidates) will enter a consulting firm. Barring any internship experiences a candidate has gained, it’s likely to be the first full-time professional job that an employee has held. Firms rarely recruit into the Business Analyst ranks any candidates who are not coming straight from University (or a post­ graduation gap year).

In some firms, this grade will be referred to as a Junior Consultant- whilst in other firms Business Analyst and Junior Consultant will be two successive grades to allow seemingly swift career progression for new joiners who impress during their first year in consulting. In practice though, there is little difference in the actual day-to-day responsibilities of the two and so we group them under one heading here.

Straight from university you are likely to command a remuneration package (i.e. Salary + Benefits + Bonus) of £24k to £35k. Your time at this grade is likely to be 1 to 3 years: 1 year being exceptional for more mature Masters/PhD graduates who have excelled on the job; 2 years being what a high achieving Bachelors degree graduate can expect; and 3 years being what competent rather than exceptional graduates can expect. At the point at which you are close to being promoted up from this salary grade, you are likely to be earning a remuneration package of £42k to £49k.

The exact focus of your role at the Business Analyst/Junior Consultant grade will depend on the type of consulting you are performing. But fundamentally you will be responsible for undertaking research and collating data so that the nature of the challenges facing a client are fully understood and decisions can be taken on how the project should evolve based on hard data and research findings. This will usually involve you working under the supervision and guidance of more senior members of the consulting team; so you will not be responsible for determining what data/research is and is not collected. You can also expect that the information and data you collect will be vetted and verified by your manager before findings are passed on to the client.

This description makes the work sound very dry and unrewarding, but in reality there’s often tremendous variety in the industries and issues that you are researching; frequently lots of interaction with client team members or customers to secure the data or insights that the team needs, and lots of scope for you to interpret your findings when reporting back to the consulting team.

The two main areas of progression you will notice as your time at this grade lengthens will be firstly that the trust placed in you to deliver will grow considerably. You will progress to the point where you are delivering the required outputs by a given deadline rather than being micro-managed on a day-by-day (or even hour-by-hour!) basis. Correspondingly, the fastest way to progress through this rank is to demonstrate time and time again that you consistently deliver what’s expected in the timeframe in which it’s expected, with no nasty surprises. Do this and you are likely to accelerate your progression ahead of your peers. The second progression you’ll notice is that you’re likely to be granted more and more exposure to your clients, which also makes the job more rewarding as your learning about the industries you are operating in is accelerated.

Senior Consultant

In some firms there will be a ‘Consultant’ grade bridging the junior Consultant to Senior Consultant divide and this will command a salary somewhere between the two grades. But in terms of responsibility and role, there is no fundamental shift until the point at which you have become a Senior Consultant. An established Senior Consultant is likely to earn £64k to £77k and will have amassed up to 5 years’ consulting experience.

The responsibilities you will shoulder at this grade will be notice­ ably greater. Firstly you can expect to be a subject matter expert by this stage in your career, meaning that you have an area of expertise and are entrusted by your firm to lead or manage aspects of the project that relate to this area of expertise. So within the broader project, there may be various sub-teams and you may be responsible for leading the team looking at ‘customer loyalty initiatives’ or ‘online customer acquisition’. You are not the main interface with the client to discuss progress of the overall project, but you will quite likely present updates on progress made by your sub-team and the conclusions the sub-team is reaching.

With this level of responsibility would usually come the expectation that you are managing a team of client staff and/or more junior consulting staff- whatever team has been assembled to address the objectives of your sub-team. Whilst not accountable for the success or budget of the overall project, your standing in the firm will be greatly influenced by your success in steering the sub-teams you are responsible for during the course of the year- and clients’ perceptions of the effectiveness of your sub-teams and the results they delivered.

At this Senior Consultant level, you are unlikely to have any specific sales targets to meet, but you will be expected to try and uncover opportunities to do further work for the clients you are serving, and potentially also to become a known figure within your specialist area by starting to speak at conferences, write thought leadership pieces and the like. Certainly any aptitude for the selling of professional services will start to be noticed once you have reached this level within your firm.

Graduating MBAs will often be brought in at the top of this Senior Consultant grade, with the expectation that they will quickly be promoted to Project Manager. In some instances where an MBA candidate comes from a consulting background or has significant project management/client relationship experience, then they may join straight at the Project Manager level. Correspondingly, if you are contemplating leaving a consulting firm to do an MBA, you should do so before hitting the top of the Senior Consultant grade if you are hoping to return to consulting at a more elevated grade than you were at when you left.

Project Manager

From a day-to-day perspective, a Project Manager is expected to oversee and ensure the success of the client project. This has many facets. It means ensuring that the project team is adhering to the project budget – that the project is going to be delivered within the constraints of the resources promised to the client at the time the project was sold. It means ensuring that the client is delighted with the way the project is progressing and that concerns or short­ comings regarding the project are quickly uncovered and addressed. It means managing any political conflicts or situations arising within the client organisation or its interface with the consulting project team. And of course it means ensuring that the quality of the work being undertaken and the recommendations that will be delivered to the client are beyond reproach.

There is both upwards and downwards management needed in this role. Working for you will be a team of more junior consulting staff and their peers from the client organisation. They will need careful and tight project and man management to ensure tough deadlines are adhered to without any compromising of the resulting output. But above you will be Principals and Partners who are likely to have sold the project to the client and who are present on the assignment for only a small portion of time each month. They will need to be carefully managed as well, both to ensure that their expertise and insights are being captured for the benefit of the project, but also to ensure that they do not become panicked about the progress or direction of the project team.

At the Project Manager level you can expect to also have increasing levels of sales responsibility. Most probably the ‘farming’ of existing accounts – which is to say uncovering the potential for new assignments with existing clients, usually with the involvement of Principals or Partners of the firm when it comes to actually securing the contract win. But you will also be expected to develop your own network of contacts within your specialist area and to become a recognised expert in your field such that you are on the radar of prospects at other potential client organisations. The most successful Project Managers will feed Principals and Partners within the business with a stream of potential leads/client meetings, so that their importance to the firm’s business pipeline is cemented.

At this Project Manager level your remuneration is likely to be in the range of £74k to £1OOk and you will probably have 5 to 9 years of consulting experience. Progression above this grade is almost unthinkable without strong sales skills (as there are very few firms who employ ‘delivery-only’ consultants above this grade; almost all will require you to become increasingly responsible for securing project wins).

Principal/Associate Partner

Above the Project Manager grade your role is increasingly sales­ oriented. You will be responsible for seeing that projects are being delivered to the satisfaction of your clients and that opportunities to win both follow-on and unrelated work are being secured. Unlike a Project Manager who is likely to be devoted to one project, you are in all likelihood going to be overseeing the delivery of multiple projects. You will need to ensure you put in enough face-time with each client that your relationships are strengthened and the projects are perceived to be on track. Yet at the same time you will need to be broadening your network and constantly hustling for meetings and opportunities to extend your client portfolio and pool of prospective clients. There will be no progression from this grade until the other Partners have seen you consistently exceed their sales threshold for new Partners and hence project wins become your absolute mantra at this level.

Working effectively whilst on the move also becomes critical at this grade as you’ll be travelling from client site to client site more than probably any other grade of consultant. You are likely to make appearances at each client for the key milestone meetings and project presentations, but in the interim need to be well briefed on the direction and state of the project and the issues being encountered. At any point you may field a call from an anxious client and so you need to be well briefed on the issues even when not on client site yourself.

Remuneration at this level varies considerably but a range of £9 7k to £1 30k+ can be considered the norm with professionals at this level typically having 9-12 years’ consulting experience.

Partner and Practice Leader/Senior Partner

Above Principal/Associate Partner level your role will evolve again. As a Partner you will be responsible for building the business- which means both a frontline role yourself at winning new client assignments but also a key role in coaching your Principals to achieve the same outcomes. Alongside this will be a broader remit that includes an important role in attracting and hiring high-calibre staff into the business, since alongside client wins, the capacity of the business to serve clients is the main constraint to the firm’s continued growth. Retention strategies and new initiatives to aid both recruitment and retention will be firmly on your radar and your performance in this area will often be as key to your further progression as your ability to bring in new business.

Once a Partner, the final stepping stone – and this is for the elite few rather than for most Partners – will be a move to lead a global consulting practice within the firm and so become a Senior Partner with a number of Partners from around the world reporting in to you. With every successive career ladder climb here, the importance of working on the business rather than working in the business is magnified- and the likelihood of ever progressing this far becomes diminishingly small.

Remuneration for those at Partner level varies enormously- both as a function of the size of the firm and also the type of consulting work being undertaken. A range of £150k to £800k+ gives a feel for what a Partner can expect to earn – with £300k being quite attainable for a high achiever. Figures well in excess of £800k will be achieved by a small number of the most senior Partners within our industry.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

Younger management consultants are highly motivated and report high levels of job satisfaction, according to a research report published today by the MCA (Management Consultancies Association). But the report also found that work-life balance is the most significant concern amongst young consultants, particularly women.

The report, Who wants to be a management consultant?, is based on a survey of 320 consultants with less than five years experience of the industry. They all work at MCA member companies.

High levels of job satisfaction
Two out of three young consultants rated their job satisfaction as good or very good and also reported high scores for the interest and diversity of their work and opportunities for advancement.

Alan Leaman, Chief Executive of the MCA, commented: “This generation of management consultants were attracted by the quality and interest of the work that they do. Consulting fits very well with what they are looking for in a career.”

Work-life balance
A majority of consultants rated their work-life balance as good or average, and a further 7% said it was very good. This was an improvement on their previous perception of the industry before they joined it.

But these are relatively poor scores compared to other aspects of the consulting role, and the issue is felt particularly keenly by women consultants.

Women are much more likely than their male colleagues to rate their work-life balance as average rather than good. And they are also more likely to want to reduce the time they spend away from home over the next three years of their career.

Only a minority of young consultants (17%) say that they are unlikely to remain in the industry or plan to leave. A further 20% were unsure. Of these, nearly two thirds of women (63%) cited a poor work-life balance as their principal reason for leaving, compared with just 39% of men. Men are much more likely to say that salary is their top reason for leaving.

Alan Leaman commented: “This generation is putting a greater emphasis on work-life balance. Managers of consulting firms, and their clients, will need to respond effectively, particularly in order to retain their most talented female employees.”

Other key findings in the research:

• Over half of the young consultants had undertaken an internship – the vast majority are paid

• Around a third of young consultants have a post-graduate qualification; the most popular is the MSc

• Recruitment is from a wide-range of UK universities. 64 are represented in this survey, although around two-thirds of the consultants went to a Russell Group institution

• First degree qualifications vary enormously. Business is the most common, followed by economics and engineering. 15% have humanities or arts degrees.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com