Any Business Consultants/management analysts here?
- Thread starter Marti
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I'm a business analysis consultant. What specific role are you referring to?
MillionMills
Superstar
How did you get into that?
By helping leadership at a health insurance firm with different projects as a supervisor. A sr leader recommended me for it and here I am. No degree.
Reality
Make your own luck.
What are you thinking about specifically? And how old are you? Kind of a broad field here...here are some slightly less broad strokes.
Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A): Work as part of a corporation to ensure that resources are tracked, accounted for, controlled, and invested properly. Most medium to large companies have some type of FP&A, but how strategic / consulting-y those roles are vary by company and by tenure. You could be a bean counter who never really does any real "management" or split your time between bean counting and more interesting strategy or operations planning.
Generally the easiest level to get into. Undergrad business / finance / economics major with appropriate coursework is usually necessary. CPA is a plus. Can also go into this post-MBA. Best hours (think 40-50). Decent comp out of undergrad is like 45-65k base, 90-100k with a respectable MBA.
Management Consulting: Work as part of an independent consulting firm hired by corporate clients to help solve their most pressing strategic or operational problems. Most large corporations hire consulting firms, but the work of consulting firms is behind the scenes / doesn't often hit the press (just a norm). The 3 biggest players here are McKinsey, Bain, & the Boston Consulting group, though there are others worth checking out (the Big 4 audit firms also have consulting arms, for example). Consulting firms almost exclusively recruit from top undergraduate schools and business schools for their junior staff (associates and consultants).
Hours can be intense (60-80), but total compensation approaches $100k for associates, and $180-$200k for consultants.
Corporate Strategy & Business Development: Work almost exclusively on bigger, more strategic projects to set corporate strategy, grow revenues / profits via sales, partnerships, and acquisitions (biz dev). Usually report out to very senior figures. In my opinion, probably the least straightforward to break into directly because this is where most ex-consultants and ex-investment bankers go when they're ready to work much better hours for less pay.
Hours can actually vary though (40-60). Undergrad base can vary, but tends to start around $70k. Post-MBA is usually around $110-$120k straight out of school, $130k+ for experienced people.
I want to assist new small businesses/ growing family owned businesses etc.
Is there like a business development consultant role?
What about consulting businesses on s much smaller scale?
Ok. Assist them with what? For example, I work for a large health insurance firm.
As a consultant I've been tasked as a Scrum Master, a User Story Writer and a Salesforce Administrator.
As a Scrum Master, I helped a software development team work more efficiently.
As a User Story Writer, I helped a software developers understand business requirements and testing requirements.
As a Salesforce Administrator, I help business leaders address their business use cases with Salesforce.
So if I wanted to independentally consult a small or family owned business, I would pick an area of focus from what I listed.
Giving general consultation is vague and can range from accounting to human capital etc.
Unless you plan to work with a team.