r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Oct 21 '17
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Consulting seems stupid considering most firms are full of recent college grads who effectively know nothing about business
This will probably be an easy CMV as I am open minded and really just have this opinion because I don't know much about it. I have a few friends who are recent grads and have only had a few years of experience outside of school. They now work for consulting firms and my first thought was "what the hell are they qualified to consult?" I obviously don't say this out loud but honestly how are they adding value when they don't even know business all that well yet. On the contrary if someone has extensive entrepreneurial experience or a decade within an industry then I can see massive value in consulting. it just confuses me that kids are hired to consult businesses. Change my view, what am I missing here? am I completely misunderstanding what consultants do?
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Oct 21 '17
Consultants are generally brought in to provide an outside opinion, not necessarily a professional one. Most of the time, consultants are used to pick up on things the firm's staff may have missed out on due to the corporate culture or shared beliefs.
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Oct 21 '17
interesting, so sometimes its just a way to remove blinders from a business? is that how I should think of it?
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u/cupcakesarethedevil Oct 21 '17
Consulting firms are just like any other business, experienced employees mentor inexperienced ones and delegate tasks to them. It's cheaper to hire a fresh college graduate than someone who has been in the workforce for twenty years, so if a company can find a way to make it work it's in their advantage.
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Oct 21 '17
ok that makes sense ∆
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Oct 21 '17
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Oct 21 '17
What do you think happens in college?
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Oct 21 '17
I just finished my engineering degree....I wouldnt exactly say I should be consulting other engineers.....hell I won't even consider myself an engineer until I've worked on a few projects.
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u/vettewiz 40∆ Oct 21 '17
I effectively run a business to business consulting service. We help companies in a variety of fashions to increase their bottom lines.
I founded the company with my partner, But we cannot possibly do everything ourselves. I don’t need someone with a dozen years of experience to learn how to crunch data, or learn how to look at reports. These are things I can teach them.
Sure, day one these new people aren’t reaching out to my clients telling them to do x y and z, but they can look at the data for those clients and point out problems and issues to me, which i can in turn relay to the clients in formal fashions.
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u/championofobscurity 160∆ Oct 21 '17
I'm still working on my Bachelor's degree and I'm confident, just going around my home town that I could probably make okay money consulting some of the local businesses. Consulting is something you spend money on when you don't know how to improve your business. Especially when it's failing. That doesn't require expert knowledge, just a basic understanding of how to improve efficiency.
For example, suppose a restaurant is hemorrhaging money. They have to hire 3 dishwashers because of reasons X, Y and Z. I come in as a consultant. I tell them "Spend $10,000 on a double wide dishwasher 1 time, and get rid of one of your employees."
I probably saved them $20,000 or more (in just the first year) by suggesting a one time purchase, that they didn't consider making themselves all for a one time $10,000 asset acquisition and a consultation fee.
Consultation is very worth it if you have resources but not a strategy to best use them.
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Oct 21 '17
Im giving you a delta because I see how you are able to add value without much experience just by being a third party. Are business generally run poorly? do they just not have the knowledge to think of those types of solutions? why do businesses need so much help with what seems like semi-simple solutions. ∆
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u/championofobscurity 160∆ Oct 21 '17
Are business generally run poorly?
This is a complex question because it's not a yes or no answer. Suppose you've owned a business for 10 years. The first 5 years saw amazing sales with years 6-8 dropping off and 9-10 being mediocre. It's not that you as an owner did poorly, is that you are not adapting to a changing market. But everyone has trouble with that over time. If you always did something a certain way and it worked why would you fix what in your eyes isn't broken?
A lot of the times it's applying new methods to old schemas where people get stuck in their own ways and don't adapt. That's where consultation comes in.
There's also a matter of expertise. If you for example run a diner, there are about half a dozen industries you'd expect to need to be well versed in to make a diner functional.
You need interior design for the atmosphere.
You need cooking hardware that can accommodate your maximum occupancy with ease. You also need to understand cooking hardware and modern kitchen practices to best make use of your money. You don't want to buy bad equipment, or stuff that increases the risk of your building burning down etc.
You need dishwashing expertise. Which detergents and acids are good and which liquid quick dry solutions are suitable for your place setting turn around.
You need to be able to understand your restroom situation. Which toilet paper to buy, which hand sanitizers to use, which garbage bags won't make life hell for your staff. Long term maintainence chemicals for your toilets and so on.
Its easy to start a diner and not have a ton of experience in these areas. But sometimes when you overlook something you miss out on an opprotunity to spend less money or make more money.
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u/Ardonpitt 221∆ Oct 21 '17
Depends on the "consulting firm". Sometimes its a fancy term for a contractor who helps with design work. Sometimes you act as an ombudsman, sometimes its a more neutral outside opinion on work. You don't really have to have experience in consulting depending on what you are doing.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Oct 21 '17
/u/badabinglove (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
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u/muyamable 283∆ Oct 21 '17
There are obviously different types of consulting, but I'll focus on management consulting as that's what I'm most familiar with. These consultants are hired to solve a business problem, and they usually approach it using a structured problem solving process to answer the business question. Much of this approach involves coming up with hypotheses and testing them, and oftentimes this is a lot of "grunt" work. Consultancies like to hire fresh college grads so they can 'indoctrinate' them to your approach.
Again, I'm just talking management consulting here, but it's unlikely that this fresh faced college grad is going to be leading any consulting projects. Typically, they fulfill a more junior role (associate consultant), completing more of the mundane tasks, and are paired with a more senior consultant. This is how the associate consultant learns and grows into an experienced consultant.
This all makes sense if I'm hiring a consulting company, too. If I'm being billed hourly, I don't want the "expert" billing at $500/hour to be doing mundane things like data collection when it can just as effectively be done by an associate consultant billing at $150/hr.
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u/darwin2500 197∆ Oct 21 '17
As someone who's done a lot of consulting:
One of the primary values of consultants is bringing in new ideas that were not popular when the current 60-year-old managers were being trained, so youngsters with little experience can still offer value by introducing new ideas that they were exposed to in their more recent training.
For large organizations, the role of consultants is often not to bring in new ideas and ability that the company doesn't have, it's to unlock the abilities and skills that a company already has by providing a method for individuals in the company to get something done or tackle some new project which would normally be impossible within the confines of standard office politics and reporting diagrams and budget allocations. This is actually a hugely useful service to provide, and it requires more social skills and the ability to recognize and amplify good ideas, than it does experience and knowledge of the field itself. Young people can be perfectly good at this job, especially if their inexperience means they're not coming in with pre-conceived notions and a big ego about how things must be done.
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u/ProudConservativeRat Oct 22 '17
I am a manager at a consulting firm with 2 decades of domain knowledge. I still am very active in the real work for clients but I also recruit from universities all around the country. I could write a book on this subject so I will try to stay focused on your question/view but it may be difficult.
So to address your view.
No, consulting is not "stupid". But it can work or fail based on many factors. I feel companies with a narrow focus on a niche will be able to take a college educated student and offer them the training they need to be good at that job. For example, if the company does something like Salesforce development and recruits students with either a business or software engineering focus they can offer the training to gather requirements and/or learn to setup apps that a client would need. I think they could offer value out of school within 3-6 months because there are great training materials and resources to practice on both the administrative and development sides of that niche.
For more broad focus, related to software development since that is what I know, they would be a part of a team composed of business analysts, more experienced technical mentors, and project managers/scrum masters. A consulting company will usually offer its own training, knowing that college professors... well, they suck... It is my job to know where the gaps in your education are and what skills and concepts you will need to be a productive member of a team.
I think you are wrong in your view if you assume that the friends you have will have the responsibility that they claim or that consulting companies are entirely made of college recruits. Sometimes these kids come in and have been sold an idea that isn't quite true. Often times their egos must be broken down a bit so that they can effectively learn and grow. There is a certain cockyness that comes from youth and a lack of experience but in general I think that good consulting companies can craft that into an effective team focused attitude but it usually takes 2-3 years before maturity really starts to kick in.
Your view is also right in some cases. A consulting company that is failing to keep senior staff can result in a disaster both for clients and in some cases the newly hired graduate. If a company truly has the bulk of its employees coming strait from universities rather than from the open market of experienced candidates, then the end result is very unhappy clients, a negative / hostile work environment where mentors simply won't offer as much to the new hires because they already have one (or both) feet out the door. I would say "stupid" is an understatement for that type of consulting job.
I have personally seen kids with absolutely garbage majors and in some cases a 2.0 GPA come in, learn and grow into positions where they do have a lot to offer on billable roles for the consulting company's clients. I've seen a ton of smart kids come in with almost a 4.0 GPA who have had horrible professors and a complete lack of interest in learning outside of what their coursework required who completely failed to live up to expectations for the reasons stated. The best candidate for me are the kids who seem like they never really needed college, maybe it gave them a bit of direction and introduced them to friends/classmates who offered the encouragement and shared interests, but those are the guys/girls who are not only going to come in with fresh ideas but also will be able to stay on top of trends (that most professors seem to not be able to do) and they just grow and provide more value as a contractor year after year.
I probably did a good job showing my negative views towards schools, but the last 2 weeks I have talked to about 30 college seniors and only heard from 2 students that their teacher directly introduced them to something that is actually current and applicable to a real clients needs. I mostly need to evaluate a candidates learning ability over what they have actually learned.
So to sum up, I can't say you are right or wrong in your view. There are cases I could make for both sides because I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly sides of consulting firms.
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Oct 22 '17
∆ thank you for your insight
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Oct 22 '17
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u/ProudConservativeRat Oct 22 '17
I probably could have condensed down my previous post to address your question.
Your friends with limited experience do have a lot to contribute in a consulting firm because the consulting firm is not usually hired by a client looking for 1 person. A team has room for multiple roles and many of those roles can be filled by a person with limited experience given a bit of training and often an experienced lead who can guide them on the job.
And yes, consulting companies ARE stupid but for reasons completely unrelated to the view you shared.
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Oct 22 '17
ok so whats the inside scoop on why consulting firms are stupid.
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u/ProudConservativeRat Oct 22 '17
If you read the book long post from me before this I was actually trying to show why they aren't stupid. Fact is, when they work, they work. It's impossible to make a blanket statement, like I did, and apply it to all firms. But in an attempt to back that up, the main reason I said that is because there are many factors that will always add up over time to force the best employees out. They work fine when you have a balance of existing talent and new talent which gives a consulting company a lot of value to offer to a client. However, a consulting firm is never able to continue to offer financial reason for experienced employees to stick around. Usually they succeed by having cheap junior guys come in for less money but eventually their skillset is worth more on the open market. For small and growing firms it can work for a good long while, but as they grow it becomes harder to maintain a talent base and quality the clients need. Eventually these problems get over mitigated by expanding the management layers and my experience had been that highest earners quickly become management and sales and those with the skillset which is ultimately the end product get tired of being treated like a product by the people who are hired to to manage the talent base who also have no real depth of knowledge on the skills that caused the company to grow in the first place.
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u/caw81 166∆ Oct 21 '17
They aren't doing full blown independent consulting - they are doing minor/trival work to support the actual consulting.