Best Careers 2009: Management Consultant

Overview. Top Ivy Leaguers frequently target this career, for good reason. Management consulting is one of the few careers in which you get to be a big shot, giving advice to corporate honchos—even if you're just in your 20s. And there's great variety. For two months, you might consult with a restaurant chain, then spend the next six months with an alternative-energy producer. Starting pay is solid, and it's realistic to expect six-figure pay within a few years. Stick with it, and you could see mid six figures before you're 40.

You might ask why corporations pay fat consulting fees to hear the advice of a 20-something with limited work experience. Because the top consulting firms arm their freshly minted top-tier grads with files full of detailed data developed by senior staff. Not everybody admires this business model. Several analysts (details below) have warned that management consulting firms too often come up with plans that sound good in theory but, in the real world, turn out to be expensive disasters.

A Day in the Life. It's 8 a.m. and you're airborne, off to visit a new client, a large medical center. Your project is to develop a plan for improving the center's supply chain, with heavy emphasis on continuity—ensuring that immediately after a natural disaster or terrorist attack, supplies will keep coming. On the plane, you review notes that the project leader gave you about the client: its background, needs, wants, and financial resources. You then call up a database of your firm's info on supply-chain management. When you first meet with the client, you're pedaling hard: As a 20-something with no experience in the client's business, you're trying to seem as confident, knowledgeable, and open-minded as possible. You meet with people all day, returning to your hotel at 7 p.m. You start cranking out a piece of the proposal and work until 11, because the client is expecting something in the morning.

Smart Specialties

In-house management consulting. Some corporations, unhappy with consulting firms, keep a stable of business analysts in house. This niche offers the variety that comes with consulting work, without the pressure to maximize your billable hours.

Sourcing advisory services. As pressures to control costs continue, ever more companies are looking worldwide for both human resources and for their supply chain. This is among the fastest growing niches in management consulting, led by such firms as Alsbridge, TPI, and EquaTerra.

Recession-resistant niches. In the slow economy, it's wise to pick a recession-resistant specialty. Safe bets: Obama's priorities of healthcare, alternative energy, and infrastructure (especially mass transit,) along with management consulting's bread and butter: information technology.

Salary Data

Median (with eight years in the field): $125,000

25th to 75th percentile (with eight or more years of experience): $106,000-$185,000

Note: Including cash but not equity bonuses and profit sharing. These figures are typical of M.B.A. holders, but pay is highly variable-top management consultants make in the high six figures or more.

(Data provided by PayScale.com)

Training

Top management consulting firms don't care much what you've majored in, but they do value good grades from a designer-label college. You need to be able to think on your feet and communicate impressively. Consulting firms feel that, with those raw ingredients, they can turn you into an effective part of their team with in-house training. If you live up to their expectations, after a couple of years, firms will often pay for your M.B.A. Older workers get hired mainly if they have senior expertise in a particular field or a lucrative "book of business"—loyal clients.

Learn More

• Vault.com offers a wealth of information about this profession, although most are fee-based resources
• Careers in Management Consulting by the staff of WetFeet.com
• The Fast Track: The Insider's Guide to Winning Jobs in Management Consulting, Investment Banking, & Securities Trading by Mariam Naficy

The following books are critical of the profession:

• Consulting Demons: Inside the Unscrupulous World of Global Corporate Consulting by Lewis Pinault
• Dangerous Company: The Consulting Powerhouses and the Businesses They Save and Ruin by James O'Shea
• House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time by Martin Kihn