Consulting: How to become a consultant

by Andrew Crabtree

Consultancy as a job description is a term that you hear a lot. However, what actually constitutes someone being able to call themselves a consultant? If you wanted to call yourself a doctor or an accountant there is a clear set of qualifications and experience that you need to demonstrate to be allowed practice the profession. They even give you a certificate that you can hang-up in your office and letters after your name to provide validation to your prospective clients. Basically anyone who wishes to do so can call themselves a consultant. And conversely protective clients who are looking for a ‘consultant’ will have a variety of role requirements which confuse matters further. **Consultants leverage their networks along with their own expertise and experience to add value to their customers cause. As a consultant you can draw from two sources; expertise and experience that provide you with a unique set of skills and knowledge in that which you can help create the value-adding components that your clients’ businesses lack - your USP (unique selling proposition). This value comes from two streams of expertise; technical expertise and operational expertise. Technical expertise is gained through the qualification and experience gained within a specialist field, this is where you as a consultant will be most comfortable and can be referred to as a ’sweet spot’ or ‘bread and butter’. This expertise is what made you a success in your specific industry in the first place. If you are consulting within a specific area - e.g. stress analysis engineer - you are acting as a Technical Consultant. As a technical consultant you will need to drawing down on your expertise and experience to ensure that you are acting in your clients best interest. Whether you chose to rely more on your technical knowledge or you experience / gut will vary from job to job. It is important that you recognise this fact before you undertake any value-add work for you clients. The other stream of expertise that can be applied to the role of a consultant involves the use of your operation experience on the field. You find that by identifying and applying yourself as a Operational Consultant allows you to sector jump and not be tied down to one specific industry. For example, if you are an expert in implementing CDM into an organisation this can be applied to the construction, rail, energy and other industries pretty seamlessly. As an operational consultant you will be be calling upon the expertise that you have developed in a specific area. You will find that you will specialise in a specific area incorporating a process or methodology throughout different businesses and sectors. It is highly regarded - especially for those of you going it alone - that becoming a Operational Consultant is a more valuable route to take. This is due to the fact that you have a much wider range of clients across many industries who will all be suffering from the same issue that you can help to resolve for them. But do not discount being a Technical Consultant particularly if you are looking to join a larger consultancy as you can help to harness the collective skills, qualifications and experience of the wider organisation. Your specific expertise can be used to pool together with others with specific but required expertise to meet the best needs of your client.

38 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 21, 2019